Notes tab displays by default when it shouldn't

I just checked one of my other courses, and the exact same settings are working just as they should, so I'm stumped.

Hi there Lisa! Happy to lend a hand. 

First, let's rule out whether this problem only happens in one particular file. To do that, open a new Storyline file. Go to the player settings, and enable the Menu and Notes tabs. Then preview the slide. Do you see the Menu tab opened first?

I did a quick test in Storyline 360, and it appears to be working correctly. You can check out a Peek of my testing here. 

If it seems like this problem is happening in just one file, would you mind sharing that file with us by clicking here?

Hi Lisa,

Sorry to hear that you're running into an issue with your Notes tab. I'm not sure that I've seen a similar issue. 

You mentioned that it's not happening in other courses.

Could you try to import the file into a new one and see if this alleviates the issue?

If you need us to take a look, feel free to share the .story file. You are welcome to share it with me directly here if you need to share privately. Just please be sure to include the forum URL/link as well.

Hi Alyssa and Leslie. Thank you for your responses; sorry for the delay in my reply. I was out of office. I think I've figured out the problem. The menu in the course is suppressed until the third page. On the first (title page), no tabs display. On the second page, I have only the notes tab displayed (with the transcript for audio on that page), and the learner has to select what audience organization to which they belong before they can proceed, so that variable-driven content will display for them later. I don't want them to be able to jump to other pages in the course without first selecting their audience, so I have to suppress the menu on this page. Since SL is designed to retain the tab that has been displayed in previous pages, SL seems to interpret that I want the notes tab to be displayed by default after the second page, even though the player is set to display the menu by default. Once I turned on the menu tab on the second page, it worked fine, but like I said, I don't want them to be able to navigate anywhere from this page without selecting their audience and then clicking the Next button. Please let me know if this doesn't make sense. I know this is a design feature in SL. Unfortunately, it hinders my ability to have audio on this page for 508-compliance purposes (for vision impaired learners). I guess I'll just have to remove audio from this page, but if you or anyone else have any other ideas on how to make this work or think the design is not supposed to work this way, let me know. Thanks for your help!

Hi there, Lisa.  It sounds like you're using the Transcript tab as an alternative to closed captions for your audio.  Can you used the closed captions feature instead and just do away with the Transcripts tab?

I'm hoping to come up with a solution that will preserve accessibility for your learners and streamline your design process a bit!

Hi Crystal. We're already using closed captions, but we also wanted to include a transcript on the notes tab because it allows the learner to pause the page and read it. Captions are considered 508-compliant, but they're limited to only some disability groups because they require the learner to read and watch what's going on the page all at the same time. This kind of activity may be taxing for some learners, especially those with dyslexia or other cognitive disabilities. At any rate, using captions and transcripts is what our team currently does, and I'm not inclined to try to change our standard just because of this problem. We're trying to make our courses as 508-compliant for as many disability groups as possible. Unfortunately, unless there's a solution to force the course to display the menu tab after that second page, I think I'm going to just have to remove the audio and transcript from that page and hide the notes tab.

I'm having this exact same issue and I don't see a solution here. We have:

1. Welcome screen with no tabs.
2. Disclaimer/EULA screen with Notes tab.
3. First screen of course with Menu and Notes tab.

On screen 3, I want to default to Menu tab, NOT the Notes tab. Storyline does seem to be carrying over the displayed tab from Slide 2. Any way to override this functionality so that I can default to Menu tab on Slide 3, NOT Notes? This seems pretty basic.

Hi Paul!

The last tab you visited or opened will remain open on the next slide. In other words, if you visited the Notes tab on slide 2, then the Notes tab will remain the default open tab on Slide 3. 

I'll let our team know you have a need to set the default open tab manually--thanks for letting us know what you'd like to see!

I would like this too! Is there any way to choose the default by screen? After a knowledge check where we have the menu suppressed but not the transcript, the following screens default to transcript even though they're supposed to go back to the menu.

Hi Julie,

For now, there isn't a way to set a default tab on a slide-by-slide basis. That would make a good feature request, though! Thanks for adding your voice.