Next/previous buttons

Apr 30, 2021

John Glasgow
By John Glasgow

Hi, anyone familiar with the following problem?

I have slides with Next/Previous buttons, which contain multiple slide layers.

By default the same Next/previous buttons are displayed on the slide layers and there does not 'appear' to be any way to suppress them.

Which means that the user can accidentally bypass slide layers if they choose to use the next button on any of the slide layers.

The only way I can see to prevent this is to not display the next/previous button on the base layer at all,  which means inserting a trigger and an instruction to inform the user how to proceed.   Anyone got a better solution?  

4 Replies
Kalena Hornkohl
3 years ago04/30/21 at 1:03 pm (UTC)

In this case, I typically rely on triggers and variables to make the Prev/Next buttons active or inactive. How I do it depends on how my layers are set up (e.g., if they must be visited in order or if they can be visited in any order). Here's my setup if they can be visited in any order:

Each slide layer has a variable associated with it, and when the layer is visited a trigger sets that variable to TRUE.

The base layer has a trigger to disable the Next button at the start of the timeline IF those variables are false.

Each additional layer has a trigger that will make the Prev/Next button active at the start of the timeline if all those layer variables are true. That way, in case they revisit the base layer, it will still do a check that all layers have been visited and allow the person to navigate forward at will.

Judy Nollet
3 years ago04/30/21 at 1:05 pm (UTC)

Hi, John,

It sounds like you don't want a user to be able to click the built-in Next button in the Player until after they have viewed all the layers in a slide. If that is what you're asking about, the solution is to disable the Next button until the layers have been viewed. Here's how to do that:

  • Create a T/F variable with a default value of False.  
  • Add a slide trigger that changes the state of the Next button to Disabled when the timeline starts with the condition that the value of the variable = False. 
  • Add a trigger that changes the state of the Next button to Normal when the user has viewed all the layers. There are different ways to determine if the layers have been viewed.
    • If the user clicks a button to view each layer (like in a tab interaction), then change Next to Normal when all those buttons reach the Visited state. 
    • If the user if forced to go through the layers in a specific sequence, then change Next to Normal on the last layer. 
  • Add a trigger that adjusts the value of the variable to True when the user has viewed all the layers.

If you're using a custom Next button, you could control it the same way.

If you're not familiar with conditions and variables, you can find out more in Articulate's User Guide: 

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