How can I get one object to reset every time a user views a slide?
Sep 18, 2018
The slides in my course are set so that they retain their state when you go back to them, which is mostly what we want. Eg. if a link appeared visited when you left the slide, it should still appear visited when you go back. Is there a way to make a single object reset every time you visit the slide, though?
The problem is that our progress bar glitches out with certain non-linear navigation. The appearance of the progress bar depends on a variable that is (correctly) tracking how many pages have been viewed, regardless of the order they are viewed in. If the user only views each slide once, there's no problem. However, when they re-visit a slide that they skipped ahead to, the appearance of the progress bar reverts to whatever it was the last time they visited the slide, regardless of the variable that's supposed to be controlling its appearance. (We have a version of the progress bar with a rectangle that has umpteen different states, and a version that's a slider controlled by a variable, and both have the same issue.)
12 Replies
Hi Griz,
Sounds like a cool setup you have! If you're able to share a copy of your .story file folks in the community can take a look and offer some specific ideas.
You can upload here using the Add Attachment button.
Do you have a trigger running on each slide when the Timeline starts that sets the progress bar with the variable value?
Yep, Michael, that was the first thing I tried. :-) It would be very logical for that to work.
But maybe we did something else that messes it up - we're all new users in my department, so it's quite possible we've done something silly.
If you use the menu to skip ahead to the last slide, then go back to the beginning and view the slides in order, you'll see that the progress indicator at the bottom edge of the slide is in the wrong position when you get back to the last slide, even though the text that tells you how many slides you've viewed displays the right number.
Any ideas?
I couldn't figured out exactly what was going on in your project, so I created a new one using the same idea. I placed the progress bar slider on the Slide Master to simplify things. I didn't use the count variable as it might not be necessary. I was able to eliminate two triggers. See if the attached sample project works for you.
Michael, thank you. I spent hours trying to figure out why yours worked and mine does not, and I learned two interesting facts:
1- OMG Storyline has master slides just like PowerPoint. How did I miss this fact? This is great!
2-The difference between your sample and mine that makes mine not work is that mine has buttons. Take the buttons off the slides in mine and the progress bar magically works like it should. If I add buttons to yours - even buttons that do nothing - the progress bar glitches out. This doesn't seem entirely reasonable, but that's what it's doing.
Maybe someone who is wise in the ways of buttons might understand why the buttons do this and how to get around it?
PS: I agree that there don't need to be 2 variables to track the number of slides viewed and control the slider. One is fine. I added the second as part of an experiment to try to solve the glitch. It didn't help, but it didn't break anything either, so I hadn't gotten around to taking it out.
Hi Griz! Great detective work. By having buttons on the slide timeline, you've made the slide interactive. Interactivity is one of the factors Storyline uses when you have your slide properties set to "Automatically decide" when revisiting the slide. This setting controls whether the slide looks the way it did when you left it.
So Storyline assumes you'd like to see the slider back in the original location when you revisit that slide - it's resuming the "saved" state of the slider when you return to those slides with buttons.
Try changing your slide properties to "Reset to initial state" when revisiting, and let me know if that improves the function of your progress bar!
Crystal, thanks, that absolutely does make the slider behave the way we want. Unfortunately, it makes the rest of the slide stop behaving the way we want.
The trouble is, we want the buttons to maintain their states, since they change colour when visited to show that you've viewed the thing that the button reveals or done the activity that the button is part of. We want a user to be able to go back to a slide and notice any neglected buttons. Resetting the slides removes this functionality.
Are there any work-arounds? Types of triggers we could add to make it re-check the progress bar position without messing anything else, for example?
Hi there Griz,
What if we try and "trick" Storyline by putting the buttons on a layer? Check out the buttons I added to a layer on slide 1.3 in the attachment.
Then, preview the entire scene, and let me know if it still works the way you had in mind.
Hi Griz, thanks for sharing your journey/steps above. I'm dealing with a similar challenge (an always-accurate progress bar) and was just wondering if Alyssa's suggestion worked for you. Or maybe there is an alternative solution I just haven't found yet..
We solved it by getting rid of the progress bar, Bill.
We already had a counter that displayed the number of slides viewed, and we decided the additional visual indicator was not critical.
Good fix! Thanks, Griz. That's helpful to know/going to advocate for same.
I can't remember why I decided Alyssa's solution wasn't viable. I think that either it caused some other problem when applied to real lessons, or we just decided that a dozen authors are not going to reliably remember to do that non-obvious thing every single time they add buttons to a module.
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