Next/Prev Scene navigation with custom Next/Prev Slide buttons

The "previous" trigger isn't really a "go back one slide" trigger but rather works like just the back button in your browser.

The next slide trigger goes to the next slide if there is one. Otherwise it does nothing. You can work around this if you modify the "Next Slide" trigger of the last slide of your scene to go specifically to the first slide of the next scene. Repeat for every last slide of a scene but the last (scene).

Hope this helps,
Alex

Hi!

I've noticed other oddities with Storyline navigation triggers. You piqued my curiosity and got me to run some tests. I'm now convinced this is a collection of bugs. I'll be submitting a bug report shortly.

Short answer:

For now, the best workaround I can come up with is what you already came up with: have a button on every end-of-scene slide (i.e. NOT on a master or layout) with a "Jump to Scene: Next Scene; When User Clicks [this button]" trigger.

Also note: The "Previous" trigger and the "Prev" player-based button work like a "Back" button in a browser. A "Previous" trigger on slide 1.3 will take you to whatever slide you were previously visiting. That might or might not have been slide 1.2.

Why this is a bug (or multiple bugs):

I wanted to figure out where the problem lay, so I tested:

• "... Next Slide" triggers
• Layouts
• "... Previous Slide" triggers

It turns out none of them works the way I expected. See attached .story file.

I've set up my player to include Next and Prev buttons.

Slide 1.3 is the last slide of Scene 1.

I've linked Scene 1 to Scene 2 (So in theory, Storyline should recognize slide 2.1 as being the next slide after 1.3).

There are four triggers that might cause the player to go from slide 1.3 to slide 2.1:

• Jump to Slide: Next Slide
• Jump to Slide: Slide 2.1
• Jump to Scene: Next Scene
• Jump to Scene: Scene 2

I also wanted to test the trigger:

• Jump to Slide: Previous Slide

There are two possible locations for these triggers:

• On Slide 1.3 directly
• On the Layout Slide used by Slide 1.3

That's five types of trigger, two locations each-- hence you'll see ten buttons in the attached .story file. When you preview the project, there are also the player-based Next and Prev buttons, for 12 buttons total.

Results:

• Jump to Slide: Next Slide NEVER advances to the next scene
• Jump to Slide: Slide 2.1 ALWAYS jumps to slide 2.1
• Jump to Scene: Next Scene advances to the next scene ONLY if it's on the normal slide. It does NOT work if it's on the Layout slide.
• Jump to Scene: Scene 2 ALWAYS jumps to slide 2.1
• Jump to Slide: Previous Slide ALWAYS jumps to the slide I was previously on, no matter where it was or how I transitioned. (Something to test: Is this true when user navigates via a "Review Quiz" or "Retry Quiz" button on a quiz results slide?).
• The player-based Prev button behaves the same as the Jump to Slide: Previous Slide trigger.
• The player-based Next button jumps to the next scene, provided it's the end of a scene and the scene is linked to another scene.

There are multiple odd things about this. Storyline seems to handle the concept of "Next Slide" just fine whether the trigger is on a slide or a slide layout. Despite this, Storyline's concept of "Next Scene" seems to rely on the trigger being on an actual slide, NOT a layout.

How Articulate could fix this:

I'd like to see the "Jump to Scene: Next Scene" trigger work correctly on a Layout.

This would enable an easy fix to the original problem: On the layout, on the "Next" button, after the "Jump to Slide: Next Slide trigger, users could just add a "Jump to Scene: Next Scene" trigger. This trigger would activate only when the "Jump to Slide" trigger failed to activate (i.e. because it's the end of a scene).

This is the button at the top right in the example I posted. It's on the Layout and has the triggers "Jump to Slide: Next Slide" followed by "Jump to Scene: Scene 2". It SHOULD be "Next Scene" instead of "Scene 2", but as I said, "Next Scene" doesn't seem to work on a layout.

Thanks for your answer!

The problem is the Next button is part of the Slide Master with the "go to next slide" action hard-coded so we have to copy-paste a button on top of the SM one with the "go to next scene" action on each end of scene slide. Not quite clean !

As Alex pointed out the next slide trigger does not jump scenes this is by design and the previous button is historic unless you code it.

In a slide master Next scene will not work as it doesn't really know what the next scene is

It doesn't work for the next buttons in the player, either. I have to manually tell Articulate that Next goes to the first slide in the next scene, which just seems silly.  I agree--this is a bug.

You are welcome to submit your thoughts to our development team here if you would like.