Resuming or maintaining progress in a web object when lightboxing other slides or navigating to a new scene.

Oct 02, 2020

Hi. I'm trying to create functionality that toggles between a web object slide and a quiz scene, either navigating to the quiz scene or using a lightbox for the quiz scene.

No matter what I've tried, the web object starts over from the beginning; a page reload. I've tested videos, google forms, and other sites that have some kind user data entry, but all reload when you close the lightboxed quiz scene or reload when you navigate back to the slide with the web object. I don't think the "resume save state" slide setting has any control over a web object, nor do I think it matters if you import the entire web object as package of files into the SL project, which I've also tested. Has anyone been successful resuming a web object where you left off, other than using slide layers, or have the same want/need to figure this out?

The scenario - The web object would be the main slide and the quiz scene would be in a lightbox and closing the lightbox would not prompt a reload of the web object. I'm open to the idea working the other way, quiz scene is main and the lightbox is a web object, if something like that could work. Navigating between two scenes is also on the table, the web object in one scene and quiz in another.

14 Replies
Lauren Connelly

Hello Nathan and Michael!

Thank you for sharing this with us! I've tested this out on my end using Storyline 360 Update 43 (Build 3.43.22859.0) and Storyline 360 Update 44 (Build 3.44.23192.0), and I see the same behavior. It looks like the web object refreshes whenever returning the slide with the web object. I've filed this as a bug and included both of your comments. We'll update you when we have more information to share.

I appreciate you both taking the time to share this bug with us!

Olivier C

Hi, 
I'd like to add my vote for this. We had similar problems before with this behaviour. Back then I was able to work around it with the help of a lot of JavaScript code.

In a current project however, it seems to be a real dealbreaker. We would like to add a little game as a web object, which triggers lightboxed content slides in Storyline. With the refreshing behavior the game restarts from the very beginning after closing a lightbox, so we have to look for another approach.

Olivier C

Hi Nathan. I'm a afraid I won't be able to share the full implementation of it, as it was commissioned work for a client.
The project actually consisted of some sort of JavaScript application running along the storyline project. The web object was just an empty shell (basic html-skeleton), and the contents of it was generated using JavaScript. Because of the web object behavior when opening and closing a lightbox, the web object reverted to that emtpy skeleton every time, and I had to make sure to generate all of its contents again. In that case that was possible, because I was generating it in the first place. Unfortunately that also makes it's probably not a solution for your (and my) current problem.

In the current project I'm embedding a web object that is not fully under my control (a Construct 3 game).

AVT Connect

I would like to see this resolved too as I'm very close to a final hurdle in creating Vimeo-based interactive video player using Storyline, but I've tried everything to stop reloading of the base slide as it triggers the Vimeo embed to reload too. Even manipulating the DOM via javascript and embedding the player via JS doesn't help, the whole page/base slide gets reloaded...

Lauren, has there been any movement on this issue?

Jean-Guy  Boulay

Adding my +1 to this. and a suggestion, If the master slide had an option to resume saved state, then the layers on that masterslide in theory should not refresh, letting us use persistent webobjects. If it helps anyone, we at CGS have had a little success saving data to cookies and then reloading them, but that can be problematic when it's a tonne, plus some clients are opposed to cookies.