Jittery Scrolling Panel Experience
Mar 08, 2024
I have some projects where I use scrolling panels to hold large amounts of dense text and images. Some users have commented that the scroll feels jittery/jumpy and that it's easy to lose their place in the reading because of it, and I do agree with them. To better clarify, when I'm scrolling through it, each tick of the scroll jumps a large enough distance through the content in the scrolling panels that it's easy for my eyes to lose track of where I was in the reading for a brief moment. Adding in that these scrolling panels can have a lot of text to go through, users have commented that the experience is frustrating.
Specifically, I'm talking about scrolling panels and not the textboxes that have the ability to scroll. The textbox scrolls in comparison are way smoother than the scrolling panel's in my experience, and I'm not sure what's happening in the backend to cause this difference, but I'd like the scrolling panels to feel more like the textbox scrolls. If I didn't need to include diagrams and images, I would switch entirely to using the textboxes.
Does anyone else find this to be a problem with their users? Is there a way I can implement Javascript to improve it? I've not come across any discussions on this, but given the feedback from my users, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed. I've brought this up with Articulate's Support team somewhat recently, but it comes across more like a quality-of-life improvement rather than a critical issue warranting immediate attention, so I'm curious if anyone has their own solution for it.
Additionally, I noticed that this jumpiness is more prominent when viewing the project on my personal Windows laptop than on my workplace's Macbook even with the same mouse used to scroll, so there's a possibility that it may not be as noticeable in some devices.
Thank you.
4 Replies
Hi Quinn!
Sorry to hear you and your colleagues have run into this setback!
To clarify, are you observing the jumpiness during preview mode in Storyline, or after publishing to an LMS? Also, it would be helpful to see a screen recording of the behavior as you are experiencing it on your end. Would you be comfortable sharing that here in the discussion or privately through a support case?
Looking forward to hearing from you!
This is present in both the preview and after publishing. I've already submitted a case with a screen recording of this behavior to someone on your Support team a few months ago. I was notified that it's not a bug, but they saw the difference in the scrolling behavior and submitted a feature request on my behalf.
I'm not hopeful that it'll be addressed anytime soon (if at all) as I haven't seen anyone else really discussing it, so I'm looking to see if there's a JavaScript solution I can implement.
I shared a screen recording capturing this erratic scrolling behavior in preview mode here. You can see how, in the scrolling panel, the contents in the page and the scroll indicator on the right "bounces" on every other tick. This does not happen with the text box scroll. It's much more obvious on my windows laptop than on my mac. At one point, I had suspected the issue might be related to the mouse I was using, but even after switching to a different mouse this problem was still present.
Hi Quinn!
Thanks for sharing your files!
I tested the functionality on my end, in the current version of Storyline 360, using a Macbook Pro via Windows Parallels. I was able to observe a slight difference in the smoothness of the scrolling behavior as well. I see that your feature request has been received by our team, and we'll be sure to notify you as soon as we have updates to share!
In the meantime, I'll open the floor to our community who may be able to offer workarounds solutions.