Restricted Navigation

Oct 14, 2014

I have a course that has multiple (7) scenes.  We want to use the default player menu pane to allow users to do 2 things: 1) have a visual representation to see where they currently are at in the course progression, and 2) be able to freely jump back to a prior (already viewed) scene/slide for review, if so desired, and then forward again up to the furthest slide viewed.  However, we do not want the user to be able to randomly jump forward to a scene without going through a linear progression.  Because of this, I have chosen "restricted" for my menu navigation option.

Ok, so all that works just fine.  But then, here's my dilima.

With "Restricted" it seems to not only restrict the menu navigation, but it also seems to disable the default "next" button until the timeline ends.  Although we want the user to go in a linear progression, we want the user to be able to advance forward with the next button at any point of the timeline when they click the next button.  

Reason for this: We have audio voice-overs that present audible information for users who prefer to listen to the information being presented.  We also use the notes panel, which contains the written text of the script for those who would prefer to read the information instead of listening to the voice-over.

For those who choose to turn the volume (audio) off and read the script themselves, they often read the text in its entirety before the audio on the timeline has completed. But then, they are forced to sit and wait until the timeline ends before they can proceed.

We could potentially use the seek bar, which would allow the user to click and jump to end of the time line and then click next... but we really do not want the seekbar (for aesthetic purposes) on our player, nor do we want to create extra "clicks" for the user.

I know I can use variables to add a condition to the next button to prevent it from moving forward until that condition is met. So, I thought maybe I could do the reverse.  Maybe I could create a true/false variable "Proceed" and set the default to True.  Then on the "next" trigger, set the condition to allow the user to jump to the next slide when they click the next button if "Proceed" equals "True". 

Unfortanetly, this didn't work for me.

Then I thought, ok, i'll set a slide trigger to adjust the variable to true at timeline start and then add the condition to the next button to allow the user to jump to next slide if the varible equals true.

Again, this didn't work for me.

I really need to figure out how to achieve a hybrid of using the restricted menu, yet allowing the user to advance to next slide when clicking the next button (even if prior to timeline end).

I know we could set up our own navigation buttons instead of using the default. However, because we want to maintain consistency with our course design/layout/navigation; and because we don't want to give up an of the stage "real-estate" in order to build our own navigation, this is not an option for us.  Default player "next" button it is.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!!

78 Replies

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.