Key press triggers not working after an overlaying layer hides.
Jun 04, 2012
If you create a layer on a slide and create a method by which the layer is shown (I'm using a "mouse hovered over" trigger connected to a show layer action, with "restore on mouse leave" enabled), when that layer closes, any "key pressed" triggers on the underlying slide or layer will not function.
At this point, if you click anywhere on the slide the key press triggers will begin working again normally.
This leads me to believe that the layer that was previously showing still has 'focus' despite being hidden. This only seems to affect the key board triggers, because mouse click triggers obviously establish the correct focus and activate the right triggers to begin with.
Is this a bug? Is there a workaround or a way to force the underlying layer to 'grab' the focus? Is there something mystical and esoteric that I'm failing to account for?
61 Replies
Hi Shawn,
Do you have a .story file that shows the issue? I'm having problems replicating it on my side.
I am having the same issue. I have my trigger set to advance slide when the user presses the space bar and it is not working. The only way I can get it to work relatively reliably is to have the user click the player window and then press the key and then sometimes it advances.
Hey David, welcome to the community!
Any chance you could share a sample slide illustrating the issue? We'd be happy to take a look at it...
Thanks!
Dear all,
Sorry for digging out this old thread, is there a solution to the problem described ? This occurs with any key : arrow, space, A-Z,...
I experienced this issue when I check "Prevent the user from clicking on the base layer" on the layer. Unchecking this option will make the key press triggers work !
Hi Quentin,
Based on this thread, I see that Peter and Brian were having difficulty replicating this but that neither of the other users shared a file to look at. Since this thread was over a year ago, I'd also like to confirm which version and update of Storyline you're using? Storyline 1 is now on update 7 and and Storyline 2 is on update 2. If you have a sample file to share, can you post it here for us?
Dear Ashley,
We are on SL1 Update 5 (will update to 7 soon ;-)
Here is a sample file:
- you can show and hide layer 1 as much as you want playing with keys "1" and "X"
- but after showing and hiding layer 2, no keypress will be allowed unless you click on the screen (layer 2 has the "Prevent the user from clicking on the base layer" checked)
Hi Quentin,
Thanks for sharing that file here. I'm able to see what you're describing, and what I'd recommend is to place a hotspot over the 2nd layer so that the user can't click or access any elements on the base layer and then leave that element unchecked since that seems to be what causes the difficulty.
Hi Ashley,
We used a transparent rectangle shape instead of hotspot to solve the problem (similar to hotspot).
Should we report this as a bug? Keypress is actually very useful for visually impaired students and also for software training.
Hi Quentin,
Yes, I'll be sharing it with our QA team, as I was doing some additional testing to see how it worked in Storyline 2 as well. Within SL2, for both layers you actually have to click back on the slide to be able to use the key press triggers again - although you can toggle back and forth with 1 and 2.
I don't have a timeframe to offer in regards to when I'll hear back from our QA team, but I've linked it to this thread so that I can update you here once information is available.
Ashley linked me here because I am running into the same issue.
Just to weigh in... we have some pretty big (fortune 100) clients that we develop training courses for on a regular basis. Storyline is an excellent tool for this, but for sure, the accessibility issues need to be resolved.
Seeing as this original post is over a year old I am curious if any progress has been made in resolving this.
Attached is my simple example of the issue if that is at all helpful.
I have grown to really love Storyline, and look forward to it becoming even better!
Hi Mark,
Thanks for sharing here as well - and I linked both threads to the QA report I mentioned. As you'll see in my replies with Quentin, it's about the slide not having focus any longer so clicking on the slide allows you to continue with the keypress triggers ( I know, defeats the purpose of solely keyboard navigation) but we don't yet have any updates to share. We'll update both threads once there is additional information, so please ensure you're still subscribed.
Hoping this gets resolved soon- trying to get our other developers to create more accessible courses and if I can't get event the simplest fix to work, it rather defeats the whole idea that triggers can help Storyline be more accessible!
Hi Lori,
I've seen a few reports that this works in Update 5 of Storyline 2. Are you able to download the update here?
Hi, thanks – yes, I did download it, and it actually is more of an issue now! Not sure why – maybe I wasn’t testing it as well as I should have before, but now I can’t really navigate using arrow keys at all unless I tab into the slide each time to create a focus on the slide. Maybe there is another issue going on that I’m not aware of.
The triggers are in the slide, not the master, b/c that causes issues between scenes. I’m also having trouble getting other keyboard triggers to work consistently – press “c” to close a layer, for example, or getting slides to show captions if a certain variable has been set.
Lori
Hi Lori,
Can you share a copy of your .story file so that we could take a look?
Also just an FYI, replying via email includes your signature here so you're welcome to edit the post and remove that information if you wish.
Thanks for the heads up re signatures! Here is the file - it's a rough example just for demo purposes, and a way to try to work out the triggers. Sometimes the arrow keys to nav forward and back work, sometimes not. Sometimes the key press interactions work, sometimes not. Also trying to get the tabbing issues worked out - looks like when a block of text animates by paragraph, the whole text block as well as each paragraph are tabbed to (get the yellow rectangle).
Hi Lori,
Thanks for sharing your file here. I'm seeing the behavior you're describing, and I found an almost identical issue reported to our QA team two days ago.
In the scenario we shared with our QA team, it never works in preview, but it does work in the published output if there are slide and key press triggers are associated with custom navigation buttons vs. the player buttons. I tested a brand new file and was able to replicate your issue with the player navigation buttons, so you may want to look at utilizing custom navigation buttons as a work around.
I also found that the keyboard triggers do work in the HTML5 output, so it seems this is Flash specific.
I've shared all this with our QA team, so I'll keep you posted if there is any other information to share. In the meantime, please look at using the workarounds above.
Thanks so much! I used to have custom nav buttons, but they cluttered the screen and I was hoping to make them unnecessary with keyboard nav. However, it's easy enough to put them back.
Did you find any issues with the keyboard commands like pressing c for close, or s for submit? They usually work for me once I got the trigger applied correctly, but there were occasions they seemed to fail.
I removed the file; if needed, can send again.
Hi Lori,
I didn't experience the same difficulty with those triggers although I didn't see as many of them so it was more difficult to test if it was the same issue with the 2nd click/press as I saw for your navigation triggers. You may want to indicate to the user that clicking on the slide or tabbing to it will also ensure it has the focus so in case they get "stuck" they know a way around it.
I'm having similar issues with an accessibility project and I just figured something out (and by just I mean minutes ago so I might have to do some more testing). I originally built in triggers so that the user can navigate from slide to slide by pressing the right and left arrow keys, but the success of these triggers were sporadic.
I decided to create an object in the middle of each screen for testing purposes (a circle) that would change colour when the user pressed the right arrow key. The interesting thing that happened is now when I press the right arrow key the object changes colour, but the slide does not always advance. So I added one more trigger to have the slide advance when the state of the object changed. It seems to be working. My plan now is to hide the object off screen and use this workaround.
Ashley, I'm not sure what the plan is for future releases, but if the team can work on building in keyboard controls for the player that would be awesome. I submitted this as a feature request sometime ago, but I'm not sure where it fits in the priorities.
Hi Scott,
We'd be happy to take a look at your project file to see how it's behaving as well - but as you'll see in my reply to Lori above, it was an issue in regards to issues with the prev/next button associated with the right/left arrow triggers it's something we've shared with our team but I don't have any further updates to share on that.
Hi Ashley, I've done some additional work on the project and it's working a bit better, but there are still issues. Let me know the best way to upload the project if you don't mind taking a look, just incase you have some additional recommendations.
Hi Scott,
Sure, I'm happy to take a look - and at least I'll be able to confirm that it's the same issue as I mentioned above. You can send it along to me here and that'll be a private set up or you can always share it here in the forums using the "Add Attachment" button.
Hi Ashley. I'm also having a problem with triggers not working after a layer is hidden. Could I send it to you to look at?
Hi Christine! Are you able to share your .story file in the forum reply so that the community can assist? If you need to share it privately, you are welcome to do so here.
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