Poor text quality in Storyline

May 01, 2013

Hi

I know there are other threads about text quality, but most seem to be from Studio. 

I've included a screen shot of a slide and as you can see the quality of the text is not very good; it looks rather fuzzy. I've not been able to find a question/answer as to why this is. I've taken the screen shot from preview mode and it looks just like this when I view it published. I've not yet created a finished course in Storyline and to be honest if this is the quality I'll be stuck with, then it's unlikely I will. I'll go back to using other authoring software; and that would be a shame as there's some very good things about Storyline, but if it can't present clear text then I'm not prepared to compromise on my quality. 

I'm using Arial 12. 

When I look at what I'm writing now and can see my screen shot below, it really highlights how poor it is.

Are other people still suffering with this? 

If I'm doing something wrong I hope you can help. If it's not me, is Articulate going to do something?

Thanks 

Nigel 

41 Replies
Doug Brown

Hi Nigel

I have added a Calibra 13, which is similar size to Arial 12.(Slide 3)

Also added Calibra 12 which is smaller than Arial 12 (Slide 4)

Demo at:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/tempshare-stage.storyline.articulate.com/stp17pl76tu3u0jtl51u3510iq18jj4/story.html

I prefer Calibra 13 over Arial 12, but It this may may just be my personal view.

Modified story attached

I try to grab what I see and post next

Doug

Peter A

Hi,

I've been dealing with this as well and I figured out a painful workaround.

Here's what was done:

1. Create a blank variable called "x" (or anything you want)

2. At the end of each text box call the variable (e.g. "This is my sample text. I want it to look crisp. %x%")

That seems to work. At times I have to highlight all the text and make sure it's the right font and size.

While this work-around seems to do the job, it's an unnessary step and hopefully the rendering issue is fixed very soon.

Hope that helps.

-Pete

Andrew Pearce

Thanks Peter! That did work for the most part. Unfortunately, it made my bullet points so small to be almost unusable, but the text is alot crisper than without it.

Articulate-- any word on when a "fix" for when this issue can be addressed?  I love this tool, but having to "hack" text boxes to display correctly is really unacceptable.

Peter Anderson

Andrew Pearce said:

Articulate-- any word on when a "fix" for when this issue can be addressed?  I love this tool, but having to "hack" text boxes to display correctly is really unacceptable.


Hi all, 

Our team has put the improved rendering of published text on the front burner for our next update. Please be sure to enable the "Check for updates at startup" feature in Storyline to be notified when new updates get released.

Thanks for your patience.

Shailesh Mewada

Peter Abdelmessih said:

Hi,

I've been dealing with this as well and I figured out a painful workaround.

Here's what was done:

1. Create a blank variable called "x" (or anything you want)

2. At the end of each text box call the variable (e.g. "This is my sample text. I want it to look crisp. %x%")

That seems to work. At times I have to highlight all the text and make sure it's the right font and size.

While this work-around seems to do the job, it's an unnessary step and hopefully the rendering issue is fixed very soon.

Hope that helps.

-Pete

Thanks Peter, this is great!Nice workaround…I was struggling to improve the text quality.


Shailesh

Morten Billcliff

Thanks for the workaround, this has also been annoying me immensely.

For accessibility the text ought to be selectable as well as being sharp (in fact we, as content authors ought to be able to choose whether or not any individual text is selectable or not).

I'm guessing it works because the flash content then gets rendered as a dynamic text field as opposed to a static text field which is anti-aliased for animation by default in flash. I don't get it though, cos flash text has had the option of antialiasing for readability for over 5 years, and the SL developers ought to be able to leverage this feature. Same thing goes for selectability, another textfield option in Flash.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Morten and welcome to Heroes! 

The quality of the text in our published output is something that our team is aware of and working on updating. I don't have a time frame for when future releases will be available but the best way to stay up to date is to follow Articulate on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to the Word of Mouth Blog. 

I'm not sure I understand your question in regards to accessibility though and selection of text. If it's a feature that you'd like to see in new versions of Storyline, you're always welcome to share your thoughts in the form of a feature request here with our product development team. 

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