Reorder States - and its purpose is what exactly?
Jul 16, 2022
Hi folks. Just curious as to what the Reorder States 'functionality' is from the May 24 build? Is it just the ability to rearrange them in whatever sequence one wants within the panel (???????????), or does the sequencing impact prioritising what gets displayed as the button states are interacted with?
Like, a longtime pet bugbear of mine with Storyline buttons is that the SELECTED state only appears after the user's mouse has moved off the button. Nearly all my clients request that the SELECTED state appear immediately after being, you know... selected.
So, the workaround was to simply select all the items in the SELECTED state, copy, cut and then immediately paste back into the state, which somehow severed the subservient relationship to the HOVER (or DOWN button if applicable).
This worked, kinda satisfactorily for a long while (apart from the hassle of having to then enter each SELECTED state of every button if there was a stylistic or text edit change required. It wouldn't simply flow through from the NORMAL state), but again, recent updates have 'broken' hacks that worked or fixed things that weren't broken. Or just fixed things and broke things simultaneously.
So, back to my question, is there ANY practical importance or real-world implication as to how buttons behave when interacted with dependant on whether the sequencing of the states is prioritised from left to right or vice-versa?
If yes, then why is it not explained more clearly here: Reorder States?
And if no, then why is this a feature? As it is, all it does is jumble around my states ANY and EVERY time I click on them. It's a frustratingly stupid change that has absolutely no value to anyone who has used STATES since Articulate began.
The ability to change the name of a state is very definitely a welcome addition. Brilliant.
5 Replies
Prior to re-ordering states, states were ordered in sequence of their creation. With the feature enhancement it allows you to move it in sequence. We added the state renaming as well.
Thus you have more control over how the states display when working with the states. A lot of people like to re-organize the states if they create additional states after the fact and then want to move them into the sequence that looks better while they're working in the states panel.
How you organize the states in the panel has no implication on how the states behave since they're either triggered because of the pre-built settings like the visited state or they're triggered with a trigger.
Your states shouldn't move around when you open and close them. I did some tests to see if something's not working right and am not experiencing that. If that continues for you, contact our support team so they can look into what's happening.
It's a wonderful feature for those of us who have to do maintenance (if the creator put the states in a logical order), and for our OCD friends.
Never understood why it wasn't termed CDO... more alphabetical arranged.
Ok, I get that that is all it is then. I guess this is one of those things that Articulate prioritise as a 'fix' when there are waaAAAAAaaaaay more important things to address. Funny how used one gets to simple routines of copying, deleting, creating the new state, pasting, in sequence... etc, etc, etc... just to keep our <blink><blink> nervous tics <blink> happy.
As it stands, this shifting of states within the States panel is causing me a migraine and I don't like it. No siree. Not one bit.
It's a pity that the "HOVER trumps SELECTED" issue is still a thing. I have seen it explained elsewhere that this is simply how buttons work but every time I tell clients that they have to move the mouse AWAY from the SELECTED button in order for the SELECTED state to become visible they say, "no, you did it this way before" and I have to explain that that was a hack that doesn't work anymore, and it gets tiresome. <blink><blink><blink><blink>
Hover is dead. Get used to that. Touch devices and devices that donot have mouses standard are rapidly getting more and more popular.
Check articles on it like this one:
https://www.usecue.com/blog/hover-is-dead/
In Storyline that means...either use the same state for hover and selected... or donot use hover.
I'll just pass on your details to my bureaucratic-loving lumbering behemoth clients (whom I love adore and treasure) and you can tell them that they can't have animated colour changes or tooltips that pop up on hover on their ancient windows desktop systems. :)
I know, I know, I know...
I'll have to insist on conditioning them to the modern age. And save myself the hassle of Storyline hacks and workarounds.