Restricted or Locked Navigation Without Time Limits From Timeline

Hello D - Curious, if you want your user to be able to click next and advance when ready, why restrict the navigation at all?

Without any other interaction on your slides, your slide duration is the only thing left that Storyline can restrict your navigation with.

If 5 seconds is too long, and you want a 2 second pause (for example), then you can adjust the slide duration for each slide to 2 seconds...

Hi D, 

Thanks for the replies.

I'm using Storyline 2, and for now, have set my navigation to Free. I'd like to use Restricted, but when I do, I can't get around the 5 second slide duration. Obviously, I could shorten the duration of the elements on every slide to less than 5 seconds, but then they're harder to see when editing. Ideally, I'd like to disable slide duration as a factor limiting navigation, and still have it set to Restricted so that users can't jump forward, but they can jump backwards. Possible?

Thanks again.

D - What would you use to restrict the navigation if you removed slide duration as a factor?

With that being said, one easy way you can do this in Storyline 2 is:

1. Set the state of the player Next button to "disabled" at the beginning of the slides timeline
2. Create another trigger to change the state of the player Next button to Normal using the new "when timeline reaches" trigger

I've done this recently with a project I'm working on and it worked great.  I just set a delay of 2 seconds before the Next button was functional and it really does prevent people from clicking Next all the way through (at least as quickly...).

Hope this helps,

B

Thanks Brian,

I implemented your suggestion. Works great. 

D, that's awesome!  Thanks for the reply back and letting us know

Tx, Brian, for posting this. Looks like a good compromise, and sort of brings back the Restricted functionality of SL1 where the Menu was locked but Learners could still click on the Next button to more forward. I'm going to reference your suggestion on this thread where a community member asked a similar question. This just may work for her.

I'm personally not a big fan of restricting navigation, but there is the occasion where it's necessary.  In this case I just wanted to slow them down a bit, and the new timeline trigger combined with control over the player buttons worked great.

Brian,

Super Hero Rebecca posted a link to this thread for me, as I asked a very similar question in the thread she referenced above.  I am in need of finding a workaround to this new limitation. 

Hi Bobbi,

I was mistaken ;( and I'm SO sorry to have built your hopes up. I acknowledged my error here, where Super Hero Phil and staff member Emily  have confirmed that this cannot be done in this way...at least not in the way I interpreted it.

Sincere apologies,

Hi all,

Over on a thread that I started yesterday (found here), Jill McNair came up with an idea of using a blank base layer with a very short time line (in my example i set it to .25 seconds), with the actual content (and obviously longer timeline) on a second layer.  This works brilliantly with the restricted navigation menu, but because of the extremely short base layer timeline, the next button is virtually unaffected!

Also, on the same thread, Mike Cohen also came up with an idea of how to work around this, using some variables.  For me, I find this work around to be a little more cumbersome, but regardless, it works great too!!!

I am posting an example .story file of both work around ideas.  Hopefully one of these ideas will work well for the next person who runs across this issue.

Thanks to all who have provided input.

Jill McNair's Restricted Navigation example with Blank Base Layer

Mike Cohen's Restricted Navigation example with Variables

Bobbi, tx for posting these. Jill and Mike, tx for the workarounds! Can't wait to test them out.

Thanks for sharing these examples Bobbi!

Hi All

I've come across another problem with the new restricted navigation..

If you have a slide with layers that pause the timeline of the base layer (for example when you have audio on the base layer and new layer) and these layers don't get closed, the learner can't then click Next to move forward because the base layer timeline hasn't ended.

We have several SL1 projects that are built like this and I would imagine it's common practice for other designers to have layers opening that don't get closed. So it's going to be a load of work implementing workarounds when we come to upgrade them. Groan.

Personally, I think this represents an incompatibility between SL1 and SL2 projects, which should be addressed with some priority. I have submitted a feature request.

Thanks Dayn for submitting the feature request. Have you seen some of the other workarounds for this issue? I know the one here is getting good feedback from other users. 

Hi Ashley

Thanks for this. I hadn't seen that post. That's a very helpful short-term
solution. I still think this should be a restricted menu option though. If
you publish your projects frequently, as I tend to do, then hacks to the
published files become a bit tedious.

Dayn

*Dayn Wilkins*
Managing Director
Interactive Solutions : The Media Centre : Huddersfield : HD1 1RL
T:01484 689152 : dayn@interactivesolutions.co.uk :
www.interactivesolutions.co.uk

Hi Dayn,

I know you already submitted the feature request, so for the time being you'll have to use the workaround or another you create on your own - or change the menu navigation option to free. 

Also, just an FYI when you reply via email your signature is included in the thread and you're welcome to edit your post if you'd like to remove that information. 

Hello everyone.

All this is great if you are starting on a new project.  But some of my colleagues have upgraded to SL2 and are working with files created by me on SL1.  Does this mean that they will have to make changes on each slide (mine has a series of 200) for the additional trigger which will activate at the end of a very short timeline (as mention by Brian) - 2 seconds ?

Oh !! just read Dayn's thread. Ashley, hope we get a patch to fix this problem.  I have not been able to migrate to SL2 for reasons like these, where as all the new programmers are working on SL2.

kindest regards

Hi Natasha, 

It looks like you also posted here regarding this issue, so I just wanted to link for the answer I provided here. 

No, it works only in one layer slides, but what if, i have single(common) audio file for multiple (4-5) layers. If i jump to another layer the audio layer gets off, I want that audio to play continue while visiting other layers.

Please suggest...

Hi Sagar,

This thread is a bit older, but if you've got the audio on your base layer, you could look at the settings to ensure it's not set to pause the base layer within each slide layer. 

Sagar,

This is a complicated thread, so I'm not sure what "it" that you are referencing.

If all you need is for an audio to continue to play while you visit other layers, you can place it on a layer and it will play. If new layers are not set to close other layers, the audio will continue when other layers are shown. The only thing you need to do is have a method to close each layer before you go to the next one. (Maybe "Hide this layer when user clicks ..." followed by "Show layer when user clicks ...).