Lightboxes, notes and email. Paperless and efficient!

Hi all,

We’ve been using Storyline for about a month now.

I must admit it has changed the way I look at developing eLearning content.

Something that has always bothered me is that I always need to have a piece of paper next tom me to write my notes on. As a former programmer my desk is always in disarray so I never find that piece of paper back.

So to circumvent me having to look for something that will never be found again, I thought of following solution.

I’ve create lightbox slide which I added to the player tabs. It allows me to enter comments as I go along in the course. When I’m finished I can the send an e-mail to me with the content of the notes copied in the body of the mail. Paperless and efficient!

How It works

1.       declare a global variable called “notes”

2.       declare a global variable called “email”

3.       create a slide

4.       add a control allowing you to edit the content of the notes variable (via an input field)

5.       add a control allowing you to edit the content of the email variable (via an input field)

6.       foresee an email button on the slide

add a trigger to the mail button  that executes the following javascript

var player = GetPlayer();

var email=player.GetVar("email");

var subject="My notes";

var body_start=player.GetVar("notes");

var mailto_link='mailto:'+email+'?subject='+subject+'&body='+escape(body_start);

win=window.open(mailto_link,'emailWin');

7.       add a tab player taband call it e.g. “notes”  in the player properties

8.       configure the tab that it lauches your new slide as a light box

9.       publish your course (preview doesn’t allow javascript to be executed)

10.    whenever you want to add a comments click on the player “notes”-tab

cheers

Geert