Custom forward/back controls
Apr 02, 2014
Hi folks. Apologies in advance if this has been answered elsewhere. I am creating a training with custom navigation controls "in-slide" (not default player "prev/next" buttons). The client wants to be able to control the user's navigation options when it comes to moving back and forward in the training. Particularly, we want to limit the "forward" button so that a user can only advance forward as far as they have already progressed in the training. That is to say, if they have viewed slides 1-10 of a 20-slide scene, they should be able to click back to slide 3 to check something they missed. Once they do, they should then be able to quickly click forward to return to their current position (slide 10). But we don't want them to be able to skip ahead using the forward button through slides they haven't yet watched/completed.
It seems that we could accomplish this using a variable with a trigger on each slide to keep track of the user's progress, but I'm curious if anyone has any other suggestions or tricks they've used in a similar situation. Copying and pasting triggers on around 200 slides seems tedious, and I'm wondering if there's a better way.
5 Replies
Hi Nick and welcome to Heroes!
You could use a method similar to the one described here to track the variable, and I'd suggest a new variable for each slide, so that when the slide is visited again it's not reset. You'll also want to enable the slide's revisiting properties to resume saved state to keep track of the variable throughout the course.
Thanks for the suggestions, Ashley. This looks like a workable solution. However, I'm still hoping to find something that wouldn't require a unique variable (or a unique value to input for a variable) on each slide. Again, just because of the quantity of slides in this project. I realize I may be bumping into the limitations of the software, but it seems like if the button's functionality is the same on every slide, there should be a more universal solution. Any other suggestions, or should I bite the bullet and get cracking on these variables?
Hi Nick,
You could set it up on a slide master, that the variable is reset when the slide's timeline starts and then adjust at the end of the timeline, but the problem with that would be your set up of allowing them to click back and forth - it would delay that. Have you looked at using the copy/paste for triggers though? It makes it easy to duplicate and you'll just want to change the variable for each one.
You could also look at segmented it further so that maybe the variable is only on every 5th slide, so they can't get too far just by clicking next, next, next - and would have to pause for a period of content?
Ashley, thanks again for providing some options. I've figured out how to accomplish the goal, using the unique variables as suggested above. What puzzles me about Storyline is that it is keeping track of which slides the user has seen (hence the "graying out" of slide names on a standard menu tab). But there seems to be no way to channel that information into the training itself?
Sorry, I'm really not trying to be difficult! Just trying to figure out if I can accomplish the desired outcome without the additional hours required to create and adjust 200+ unique variables. Any other thoughts would be much appreciated!
Hi Nick,
Yes, that is kept in the menu - but the Storyline system variables are not accessible throughout the course. It is a popular feature request to be able to access them though.
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