Moving Timeline - Scrolling Back and Forth Shortens the Slider Length

Dec 31, 2020

Katerina Kmet
By Katerina Kmet

Good day,

I have created a slider, with the hopes of allowing learners to scroll along a group of people to learn what they do.

The problem is, if you scroll back and forth the sliding path gets shorter and shorter.  For example, the first time you scroll through you can see everyone. When you get to the end and try and scroll back you can no longer view the first person or the last person. 

There are variables involved which I don't often use so it could be an issue with the variable set-up, the triggers, or the slider settings themselves. 

I have attached a copy of the slide with identifying information removed. 

Note, I am really not familiar with variables at all, but participated in a training session on how to create a moving timeline which I duplicated in this project.

Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

5 Replies
Walt Hamilton
over 3 years ago01/04/21 at 7:56 pm (UTC)

I think that the problem is that if you move the slider fast, some variable changes are skipped in part, because the time the motion path takes to complete.That is, whether the variable changes by .5, or 1.5, it triggers only one motion path.

Rather than trust the learner to move only one step at a time, I would  put an arrow on each side of the graphic. If right arrow is clicked, move right, etc., with error checking to prevent too many moves.

If you want the learner to move it back and forth, and choose when to stop, you may be better off putting it in a scrolling panel.

If you absolutely must have the slider, I would change the length of each motion path to 234 (half of the width of each picture), make 21 steps on the slider, and an increment of 1. That way, each movement moves the picture half its width, and is more predictable.

Rebecca Levan
over 3 years ago01/04/21 at 8:28 pm (UTC)

Hey there Katerina!

Happy to meet you here in the community - appreciate you stopping by and posting!  

Thanks for sharing your file here.  I dug in to it a bit and made some minor edits. Things seem to work as expected now, as long as you take your time scrolling and give the animations a chance to catch up to the slider button.  If you move too fast, things get all out of sorts!  I've attached the edited file for you, but here's a quick run down of what I did:

  • First I disabled the triggers applied to the timeline (MovingHRGroup) since you want the timeline to move when the slider (HRGroup) moves - You've already created triggers for that.

Fun fact: Triggers are created automatically with a new motion path so another option is to just edit these - Storyline is so smart! Here are more details on that: Motion Paths and Triggers.

  • Second I unchecked the seekbar in the player controls as it didn't seem needed.
  • Third I adjusted the slider properties so that the slider ends at 13 rather then 21.

Additionally, I did some searching in the community and found others that have had this similar issue with moving timelines.  This could suggest a bug.  If you haven't already, I'd definitely share your file with support so they can take a closer look.

I hope this info helps you out Katerina - If you don't mind stopping back by here to let me know, I'd appreciate it!

Katerina Kmet
over 3 years ago01/05/21 at 1:25 pm (UTC)

Hi Rebecca, thank you for your support this definitely helps. 

I will definitely share the file with support as well since if you scroll to fast back and forth it still does cut off the ends. I can forsee a learner scrolling through them really quickly then complaining it doesn't work properly, it is just too tempting to slide it fast, :)

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