Output of Text Box Containing Variable = Pixelated

Hi Mark,

Thanks for sharing the images here, and I'm curious to see if you could share a sample .story file here so that we could see what you've set up. Also, what update and version of Storyline are you using? I know folks used to use the variable reference in text boxes in Storyline 1 to have the text appear crisper but your example seems to show the opposite! 

Hi Ashley,

I've attached a basic file that I had created just to troubleshoot this issue. I'm using Storyline 2, Update 9.

You'll see that when previewing within Storyline the text appears fine, the issue is when it is published. Please let me know if you need any other info.

Thanks Mark - this will help ensure I'm setting up mine to match yours.

Also where are you testing the published content? 

I've tested both just an HTML export locally on my computer, simply by opening the story.html file in multiple browsers...and then I've also tried uploading a SCORM version into our LMS as well. Both yielded the same results....

Thanks Mark - we do always recommend testing the published output in the intended publish environment as testing it locally can cause odd behavior as detailed here. But I'll look at publishing and uploading to an LMS. 

Thanks Mark for your patience while I took a look at this. I see the behavior your describing and this is something we've shared with our QA team, and is the current behavior based on how we have to render the variable text. It'll continue to be something our team evaluates as we look towards further updates and fixes, so I'll keep you posted in this thread if there are any other changes. I found in my testing some fonts behave better than others, so you may want to play around with different options...for example Open sans rendered less "bold" and pixelated. 

Thanks Ashley, appreciate you looking into this...just disappointed with the outcome. This seems like pretty basic functionality to me, and although I'm not hopeful, I hope it gets fixed in an upcoming update soon.

I'll certainly keep you posted here and as I mentioned it's something our team is taking a look at in terms of how the text renders as a part of the published output. 

Hi Mark and Ashley. I am experiencing the same issue and wonder if there has been any progress. I noticed that the problem does not occur when launching my course in Firefox. Perhaps that could be a clue??

Hi Mark!

I do not have an update regarding this issue. There were variances noted between the same font and the flash vs html5 output, so perhaps that is the difference you are noticing Mark.

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately no update from me on this either... the majority of our users still experience the Flash version, so as frustrating as it was it had very minimal impact on users and I was able to just live with it.

Not sure yet if this is still an issue in 360 or not...

Hi Mark, I think this is a Browser issue in the flash player, when the text does not have an embedded font and therefore is using the browsers default font. I have had the same issue on a number of sites that use flash independently from Storyline.

Chrome had this problem before the latest version. I have attached the output from my version Version 55.0.2883.87 m

You can test your browser settings on https://www.whatismybrowser.com/

Regards Doug

Thanks Doug for sharing here - and within a variable reference or a text entry we're not able to embed the fonts, so we will fall back on the default fonts for a users' system or browser.