I've been putting together some non-interactive click-throughs to demonstrate software processes in addition to guided walk-throughs but I'm having difficulty maintaining the mouse cursor's position between slides if I make changes to the slide order. Is there a way to manually instruct the mouse cursor to start from the end point of a newly inserted previous slide or do I need to recreate the entire series of slides (because each successive slide that gets recreated breaks the link to the next slide)?
I thought it would but I'm finding that, if I change slide order or insert a slide in an existing series, the mouse start points don't adjust to align. I may be doing something wrong though because the mouse clicks are only audible maybe 1/3 of the time too. I've attached an example of what's happening.
This is an extreme example as I've changed the order of 2 slides and then created a new slide by copying and pasting a previous one. When leaving the copied and pasted slide, the cursor as no motion path. If I delete the cursor and add a new one, it doesn't start from the preceding slide's end point. As you can see, the mouse movement becomes very disconnected.
That's helpful regarding the timing. I'll change my workflow to instead make use of when the timeline ends vs when the animation ends. I think I just went in the direction of when the animation ends so I didn't have to think about how long the slide's timeline was in any given instance.
The same file I sent displays the problem with end points and start points not lining up though. As each slide changes the cursor start point jumps all over the place and does not pick up from where it left off on the last slide. The file I sent was the result of creating a few slides and then cutting/pasting/inserting a few slides to move things around.
The slide you sent doesn't have that jumping around issue for me. I also moved slides around and cut and pasted and it all worked the way it should. Not sure why it's not working for you.
As I've continued to play with this feature I've found that mouse continuity is tied to the numbering of the slides. If I have slides that transition from a slide numbered 1.1 to one numbered 1.2 and then to one numbered 1.3 with cursors on each, they will connect. If I change slides around and have 1.1 jump to 1.3 and then to 1.2, the cursor will maintain its connections for the numeric sequence 1.1, 1.2, and then 1.3.
I had this happen in a project with a large number of slides where I had to insert an additional step between 2 slides. I duplicated a slide that already had most of the elements I needed and then changed the jump to triggers to insert it between the 2 existing slides. In the project, the slides are now in the numbered sequence 3.9, 3.11, 3.10, and 3.12 as that's the order in which they are presented to the user.
When the slide transitions from 3.9 to 3.11, the cursor on 3.11 starts where the cursor ends on 3.10. Then, when the slide transitions from 3.11 to 3.10, the cursor starts where it ended on 3.9. Finally, when it transitions from 3.10 to 3.12, the cursor starts on 3.12 where it ended on 3.11.
I copied and pasted the slides into a new project which renumbered them but maintained their sequencing. You can see in the attached example that, as the slides automatically progress, the cursor's start points jump around because it follows the slide numbering not the viewing sequence.
For instance, the third slide we view is 1.4 (numerically the fourth slide). When that slide loads, the cursor jumps to the end point from slide 1.3 even though we haven't viewed that slide yet. Then slide 1.3 loads with the cursor's start point jumping to align with the end point from slide 1.2 which we actually viewed 2 slides ago.
is there a way to force the slides to renumber themselves into the correct sequence so the cursor will align?
EDIT: I figured it out! I didn't realize you could resequence slide numbering by dragging and dropping them. For the slides that were out of sequence, I just dragged them below the slide that they were supposed to come after numerically and a little arrow appeared. When you release the mouse, it reorders the slide numbers so that the one you just "dropped" will come, numerically, after then one you dropped it under. This doesn't change anything regarding slide ordering based on triggers so everything is maintained in that sense. Sorry to be a hassle! Thank you for your help!
The cursor feature is in a sense an extension of the screen simulation feature. The feature is designed to progress in a linear fashion.
Example:
1.1 has a cursor
1.2 is designed to pick up the cursor from the slide 1.1 in front of it
1.3 is designed to pick up the cursor from 1.2, etc
If you jump from 1.1 to 1.3, it makes sense that the cursor will jump to the position based on 1.2 because Storyline is building the animation based on the previous slide. It doesn't dynamically change the cursor position.
Your slides
Your triggers are set to jump to pre-defined slides rather than next slide. Thus when you move them around, the numbering will not change because the slide ID is part of the trigger. If you changed your trigger to jump to next slide, it remains in a linear structure.
8 Replies
Storyline will do that for you automatically. Here's a quick tutorial. Hope that helps.
Forgot to add that when you change the slide order, it adjusts the mouse movement.
Thank you for the reply!
I thought it would but I'm finding that, if I change slide order or insert a slide in an existing series, the mouse start points don't adjust to align. I may be doing something wrong though because the mouse clicks are only audible maybe 1/3 of the time too. I've attached an example of what's happening.
This is an extreme example as I've changed the order of 2 slides and then created a new slide by copying and pasting a previous one. When leaving the copied and pasted slide, the cursor as no motion path. If I delete the cursor and add a new one, it doesn't start from the preceding slide's end point. As you can see, the mouse movement becomes very disconnected.
Here's a tip. https://360.articulate.com/review/content/6d174203-0115-4a70-8f07-7f79aa7f6afb/review
I couldn't replicate any issues by moving slides around.
That's helpful regarding the timing. I'll change my workflow to instead make use of when the timeline ends vs when the animation ends. I think I just went in the direction of when the animation ends so I didn't have to think about how long the slide's timeline was in any given instance.
The same file I sent displays the problem with end points and start points not lining up though. As each slide changes the cursor start point jumps all over the place and does not pick up from where it left off on the last slide. The file I sent was the result of creating a few slides and then cutting/pasting/inserting a few slides to move things around.
The slide you sent doesn't have that jumping around issue for me. I also moved slides around and cut and pasted and it all worked the way it should. Not sure why it's not working for you.
As I've continued to play with this feature I've found that mouse continuity is tied to the numbering of the slides. If I have slides that transition from a slide numbered 1.1 to one numbered 1.2 and then to one numbered 1.3 with cursors on each, they will connect. If I change slides around and have 1.1 jump to 1.3 and then to 1.2, the cursor will maintain its connections for the numeric sequence 1.1, 1.2, and then 1.3.
I had this happen in a project with a large number of slides where I had to insert an additional step between 2 slides. I duplicated a slide that already had most of the elements I needed and then changed the jump to triggers to insert it between the 2 existing slides. In the project, the slides are now in the numbered sequence 3.9, 3.11, 3.10, and 3.12 as that's the order in which they are presented to the user.
When the slide transitions from 3.9 to 3.11, the cursor on 3.11 starts where the cursor ends on 3.10. Then, when the slide transitions from 3.11 to 3.10, the cursor starts where it ended on 3.9. Finally, when it transitions from 3.10 to 3.12, the cursor starts on 3.12 where it ended on 3.11.
I copied and pasted the slides into a new project which renumbered them but maintained their sequencing. You can see in the attached example that, as the slides automatically progress, the cursor's start points jump around because it follows the slide numbering not the viewing sequence.
For instance, the third slide we view is 1.4 (numerically the fourth slide). When that slide loads, the cursor jumps to the end point from slide 1.3 even though we haven't viewed that slide yet. Then slide 1.3 loads with the cursor's start point jumping to align with the end point from slide 1.2 which we actually viewed 2 slides ago.
is there a way to force the slides to renumber themselves into the correct sequence so the cursor will align?
EDIT: I figured it out! I didn't realize you could resequence slide numbering by dragging and dropping them. For the slides that were out of sequence, I just dragged them below the slide that they were supposed to come after numerically and a little arrow appeared. When you release the mouse, it reorders the slide numbers so that the one you just "dropped" will come, numerically, after then one you dropped it under. This doesn't change anything regarding slide ordering based on triggers so everything is maintained in that sense. Sorry to be a hassle! Thank you for your help!
The Cursor
The cursor feature is in a sense an extension of the screen simulation feature. The feature is designed to progress in a linear fashion.
Example:
1.1 has a cursor
1.2 is designed to pick up the cursor from the slide 1.1 in front of it
1.3 is designed to pick up the cursor from 1.2, etc
If you jump from 1.1 to 1.3, it makes sense that the cursor will jump to the position based on 1.2 because Storyline is building the animation based on the previous slide. It doesn't dynamically change the cursor position.
Your slides
Your triggers are set to jump to pre-defined slides rather than next slide. Thus when you move them around, the numbering will not change because the slide ID is part of the trigger. If you changed your trigger to jump to next slide, it remains in a linear structure.