Linking docs without player resource tab
Aug 09, 2017
Using a template that does not utilize the Resources tab and do not have a central/server storage to provide a static URL. This means creating a link to the document file name from my computer. As stated in many other threads, this presents a problem should someone else have to edit the course-the document URL is no longer valid when the course is republished on a different computer.
I have seen where the word doc itself is saved within the published output folder with the manifest files, etc. and a shortened URL is used to make some sort of cyclic reference to the storyline publish folder. That way, no matter who edits the course, the link is still valid as long as they add the word doc back to that published folder where the manifest files are.
Does anyone have additional information about how to create the URL to make this circular reference? And I am having a time trying to process how I would publish the course, drop the doc into the publish folder to get the URL, then have to republish to establish the URL in the course which would of course overwrite the folder and remove the word doc.
Here is the publish folder
Here is the trigger in SL
3 Replies
Hi Tabatha,
The resources that you add as a part of the player should stay in your .story file. Although no one could edit the files themselves, they would still be there upon publishing.
If you're looking to link to items on the slide you could include them as a part of the resource tab as shown here. The resource tab has to be enabled on at least one slide and you can hide that slide from the users view by placing it in a separate scene and removing all triggers to it.
We are not using the player Resources tab, only the menu tab. We have created a lightbox slide that we put the links/URLs to resources on. I can't change this. I wish we used the player resource tab, it would eliminate many headaches. I used to be able to store a copy of the resource document in an output folder in Presenter and Captivate to avoid the entire broken link issue when someone else worked on a file, and I was hoping that was possible here. Looks like no. I think the vendor that developed the course I am referencing and posted the images above thought the same thing. But it didn't work.
I will try what you suggest. It has some interesting possibilities. If it works like I hope, I may have a way to 'fool' the powers that be that the player tabs are not in use.
As long as you don't show it on any other slides no one would know that the resource tab was enabled! The quickest way to do this is selecting all slides in Story view as shown below:
Then, go back and enable it on one dummy slide that you check has no triggers to it, is in it's own scene, etc.
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