Disabling the Enter Key for Text Interactions

Aug 20, 2013

I am working on a project, where I need the user to press a hot key F8, instead of the Enter key to submit the interaction.  We changed the submit key to F8, but the enter key will still submit the text entry.  Is there a way to disable the enter key?

30 Replies
Daniel Mitchell

OK. Split the scene after the slide with the text interaction. Make the correct hotspot or hot key to go to the new scene after submitting the interaction. Then, add the trigger:

Show Layer Try Again

When the user presses the Enter key

This should still be sent in as a feature request to disable the Enter key on text interactions. Something this simple shouldn't be this complicated.

Daniel Mitchell

Ouch. You are right.

This one came so close. It seems that the user has to press enter for the text interaction to show as complete. The problem seems to be that if you type the required text and immediately press F8, Storyline says that the answer is invalid...

It seems like it doesn't even see the text in the text field until after you press Enter.

This means that if the user accidentally presses Enter after typing, sees the Try Again layer, clicks it, and then presses F8 (which is what I did in my preview, thinking it was testing both possibilities), the transaction works.

However, if the user types the needed text and presses F8 without pressing Enter... No such luck.

Alecia Edmonds

I am having the same trouble...when my users click 'Enter', they exit out of the text interaction and go to the next slide.  I tried setting the 'Enter' key to show the feedback layer, but it still skips the feedback layer all together and goes to the next slide.  The best I could think of was to warn them not to press 'Enter' or they will lose their work. 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Alecia,

It sounds like the "enter" key is the submission trigger for your interaction? If you have feedback layer set up, it should be showing those instead of jumping directly to the next slide. If you're able to share a copy of the .story file here, even just a few slides we're happy to take a look. 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Alecia,

Thanks for sharing your file here. First off, it doesn't seem it's just the enter key causing this behavior, but using submit also didn't show your feedback layer. 

I looked at your course settings, and noticed that you were not setting the questions to show feedback, and therefore it was navigating to the next slide no matter what. If you enable "feedback" by question - you'll see it creates a layer automatically. You can either use this layer or customize it to fit your needs. Also, I added a trigger to show the feedback layer you've created based on the user clicking "enter" and that worked correctly. So with that there are a few different paths you could take here and it all depends on what behavior you'd like in the end. Are you reporting this to an LMS? If so, you'll also need a results slide to track all the information. 

Take a look at the changes I made to the first text entry slide in the attached version. 

Ed Crane
Ashley Terwilliger

 Also, I added a trigger to show the feedback layer you've created based on the user clicking "enter" and that worked correctly. 

Hi Ashley,

If the number of attempts is set to 2 for a question, should the Enter key then cause the Try Again layer to show when pressed after an incorrect entry? The behavior I'm seeing is that it does not, it shows the Incorrect layer.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Ed, 

The Enter key would submit the question/text entry if it's at the end of the text entry box and there isn't space to start a new line. You'll see this described here. 

If you've set it for two attempts, you should still see the Try Again layer, so it sounds like we may need to take a look at your .story file to check out the behavior. 

Matthew Jones

Hello,

 

I am quite new to Storyline and using STORYLINE 2. Does anyone know if this issue has been resolved or if there is a workaround please?

 

I have used a similar elearning tool (Assima STT) and it had the function to remove the need to press enter and would love it to be in Articulate.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Matthew, and welcome to the Storyline crew! 

If you're using a text/data entry field, the enter key will behave as described here. I know some folks have looked at creating a larger entry field so that if learners did press the enter key it would only advance them to the next line vs. submitting the question. Would that work for you? 

If you need some other ideas, can you share more details on your set up and needs? 

Matney Jorgensen

I am having an issue similar to the ones in this post but a little different. I am trying to stop users from entering an answer that has already been entered. I did this by adding a trigger that checks for previous answers and then shows a layer to indicate to the user that the answer has already been used.

My issue is that when the user clicks on the submit button on the 2nd question, the interactions works as I have intended. If the user simply hits the enter key, somehow, my added trigger is bypassed and the answer is accepted as correct even if it has already been used in a previous question.

I am attaching my file to see if anyone has any suggestions. The acceptable answers are budgeting, banking, insurance, mortgages, investments, retirement planning, and tax and estate planning.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jen Jennifer

Add another trigger for all the triggers that show already entered layer and make the modification to this new trigger to show already entered layer when user presses a key "enter" with same conditions. Refer to the story file attached, i have added the new modified trigger for banking. similarly add it for all other fields as well.