Implications of using custom Next Previous?

Feb 06, 2014

I've created a template that uses a custom Next and Previous. I.e. they are in the Slide Master and simply have "jump to next slide" and "jump to previous slide" triggers on buttons.

And I've disabled the default Next and Previous buttons on each page.

Here's my question. What are the implications of this? Does it affect LMS tracking, navigation, funtionality, etc.?

I've noticed one imimplication to doing this custom navigation: In Story View there is no apparent linking betweenn slides (i.e. arrrows showing a connection). Consequently, slides are displayed horizontally, as if un-linked.

This suggests to me that there may be other implications. Does anyone have any experience with this? I ask as I'm building a template for a large global client and we need to hammer out / resolve such matters before the template goes into production.

Thanks kindly!

Dave

11 Replies
James  Marshall

Hi Dave,

Hope you are well.

Can I ask why you want to disable the standard back and next buttons?

Is it because you want  specific custom navigation buttons?

To me the custom navigation may give you the overall look you require but as you've started to discover it gives you a less intuitive build process and may be more of a hindrance. We've have created projects that use both custom navigation and standard navigation, when using custom navigation we place the buttons on each slide not the master slide to give us more flexibility but with some nice tweaks to the colours in the player properties you can create some really nice on brand templates using the standard navigation which I would recommend.

Hope this helps James

Jill McNair

Hi Dave,

I have created a several courses with custom navigation.  Here is what I have noticed:

1. Though I haven't uploaded these courses to an LMS personally, there has been no client feedback that tracking was an issue.  One thing to note though, all of these courses tracked results using the Results slide, so I cannot speak to what happens with tracking number of slides completed.  

2. If you are using scenes or branching, you will need to place custom navigation buttons on any slides that are not going to the literal next or previous slide because you have to be able to send a learner to a custom location.  This is really easy to do - just copy and paste the icon from the master slide and paste it on the slide.  Then change the trigger to jump to where you need it to go.  For example, you may want the Next Button on the last slide of a scene to jump to the first slide of the next scene, and the Previous button on the first slide of a scene to jump to the last slide of the previous scene.  

3.  One option I have used is to NOT place the custom navigation on the Master slide, but instead place the custom Previous and Next buttons/triggers on each slide (just copy/paste them).  This will make the slides show as linked in Story View, and will give you full control of custom navigation without any confusion (because every slide has the buttons/triggers).  

Hope this helps!

Jill

Ashlee Smith

These are really excellent tips. Something else that I have found is that when you link using the  "Prev slide" it actually brings you to the "Prev" slide you VISITED, not necessarily the  Prev slide in your presentation (in terms of, the order that slides show up in.)

What I mean is...

If you have a presentation with 4 slides, and Slide 1 links to Slide 4. When you click the "Prev" button on Slide 4, it won't bring you to Slide 3, it will bring you to Slide 1. Because it brings you to Prev slide you VISITED. 

So what I've found is that in some cases I have to specify that my "Back" button goes to a specific slide, and not just  use the "prev slide" function, just to make sure it always goes where I want.

 I will be interested to follow this thread and see what else comes up. 

Dave Ray

Oh wow. Lots of good interesting stuff in here. Would like to reply to some of it, but will ask a follow up comment and question first.

One of the reasons I don't like the default  / next buttons is because they dynamically add about 50 pixels to the height of the course. I would much rather their inclusion result in their being objects I could move around, and that didn't necessarily result in changing the height of the course.

Or am I wrong? Can the default buttons be used without it affecting the height? (assuming I have not other assets such as submit or the seekbar on that bottom bar)?

Can the buttons be graphically modified. Colours? Background? Etc?

Can they be moved to a new position?

I.e. I'd love to use the default buttons but need more control over them.

Thanks much!

Dave

Nancy Woinoski

Dave Ray said:

Oh wow. Lots of good interesting stuff in here. Would like to reply to some of it, but will ask a follow up comment and question first.

One of the reasons I don't like the default  / next buttons is because they dynamically add about 50 pixels to the height of the course. I would much rather their inclusion result in their being objects I could move around, and that didn't necessarily result in changing the height of the course.

Or am I wrong? Can the default buttons be used without it affecting the height? (assuming I have not other assets such as submit or the seekbar on that bottom bar)?

Can the buttons be graphically modified. Colours? Background? Etc?

Can they be moved to a new position?

I.e. I'd love to use the default buttons but need more control over them.

Thanks much!

Dave


Hi Dave, you are correct the player buttons do add additional pixels to the height. You can't move them but you can modify the colors. 

You modify the colors by going to the player tab and selecting the color link (sorry I can't remember the proper name for the link offhand).

You can also change the names on the buttons by editing the text labels.

Phil Mayor

to make your slides look better in slide navigation (when using navigation buttons on the master)  I add an offside shape with a trigger to jump to next slide when clicked, (you can edit this if needed for branching)

This way I can see how the slides are meant to navigate and the user will never see the shape so I don't need to ever remove it.

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