Hyperlinks spanning multiple lines in a text box don't highlight correctly

May 15, 2020

I have text boxes with hyperlinks, and some of them span multiple lines.  When I rollover the hyperlink, only the line I'm hovering over has the rollover effect, not the whole hyperlink.  See attached screenshot.

14 Replies
Andy Banga

Hi Bill,

Good day!

I see that you’re having an issue with the rollover effect of hyperlink texts that spans multiple lines.

As I’ve tested, I’m able to replicate the issue when the multi-line hyperlink texts are in bulleted form. When the mouse hovers over the hyperlink, the hover effect breaks into individual lines. 

Upon searching in the community, I’ve found out that this issue has already been raised and addressed before. As mentioned by their team, the issue had been fixed in an earlier version of Storyline 360 but made its way back into recent versions. More information can be seen in the thread below:

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/hyperlink-hover-effect-on-text-that-breaks-over-lines

The good thing is knowing that their team is already working on the issue. The safe bet here is to wait for the fix on future releases. But if you’re interested, I’ve created a workaround to closely mimic the hover effect. As a quick overview, here are things that I’ve done.

  1. Added a transparent rectangular shape object that covers the hyperlink text. 
  2. Created a Hover state for the Rectangle. Set its transparency to 60% and change the color to match the hyperlink text. For accurate results, I would highly recommend the use of Eyedropper in the color selection.
  3. Added a trigger event to open the intended URL from hyperlink when Rectangle is clicked. 

For reference, please see the attached Storyline file. I hope you find this information useful.

Lauren Connelly

I'm happy to report back with an update!

We just released Hyperlink States in Storyline 360 (Build 3.46.23620.0) today. This feature includes the bug fix where the line would break when hovering over a hyperlink!

You can head over to our release notes to see the other features and fixes in this update.

Now all you need to do is update Storyline 360 in your Articulate 360 desktop app!

bdane@humtech.com Dane

I have the latest version as of today.  At least the display issue is resolved for multi-line links, but please don't celebrate too much yet.  Links STILL don't work for persons with disabilities as you cannot use the tab key to navigate from link to link (hyperlinked text within text boxes).  Please fix this.  I've had to add hotspots to every link I make and it's mind-numbingly tedious to do so, and creates a maintenance nightmare when text changes or the links need updated.

bdane@humtech.com Dane

The behavior in IE is odd.  While hovering over the multi-line link, there's no rollover effect like in other browsers, except for the cursor turning into a pointer.

And after the link has been clicked, only the first line of the link turned purple to indicate a visited state.  BTW, Articulate, it would be nice to be able to customize colors of the visited links.

Leslie McKerchie

Thanks for reaching out and working with our support team, Pano. I can see that Ronaziel has reported this for us to investigate further.

Thanks for sharing your examples as well, Bill. This will certainly help as we dig into this issue.

I've attached this conversation to the report so that we can share updates with you here.

Leslie McKerchie

Hi everyone,

Great news!  We just released another update for Articulate 360 and included a few important fixes you'll see in the release notes.

The item you'll be interested in is:

Fixed: Hyperlinks didn't always work when viewing courses in Internet Explorer.

Just launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button for Storyline 360. Details here.

Please let us know if you have any questions, either here or by reaching out to our Support Engineers directly.

Eric Santos

Hi Donisa,

Sorry to hear you're still running into this snag. The problem of hyperlink hover breaking over multiple lines of one hyperlink no longer happens in my tests. I used the latest version of Storyline 360 and published it in Review 360. Here's the link to my published output.

To rule out the possibility of a file-specific issue, can you share your Storyline file with us so we can look at what you have set up? You may also share it privately by sending it along in a support case. We'll delete it when we're done testing!

If you are experiencing a different issue, kindly share additional details so we can better help. Thank you!