Scrubbing the timeline

Aug 06, 2015

Is there a way to scrub the play head on the timeline so you can see your animation in action without previewing or hitting the play button on the bottom left corner? I find these 2 methods highly inefficient especially when I'm only making minor adjustments and want to see how they look right away.

54 Replies
Robert Watkins

I full well intend to get into how SL 360 wants me to work, and i've figured out cue points are indeed the way to do what I need in terms of timing. And the community aspect was also a large factor in my company's decision to purchase. Prior to this I was forced, and I mean forced, to use Lectora. Going from that to SL is like going from a rusty push mower to a riding mower with heated seats and a cup holder. I'm just really gob smacked that a feature so needed and so requested is not going to be even going to be implemented, or considered for implementation. That tells me that SL is running on legacy code with severe limitations, which is a dread thing for all of us and exactly what led to the downfall of Lectora. That code will determine what can and cannot be implemented, not the community. 

Alastair Steele-Leith

Hi, 

I see this was raised and discussed over the past 3 years. Again, i am working on something with SL3 and surprised this is not a feature. In fact i would have thought that any software that utilised a timeline with animations would allow you to scrub it to fine tune things. 

I think Articulate needs to start getting its act together. I would have thought this functionality would have been integral to software of this nature. Plus still no direct way of having sound play across slides.

Both features many have asked for guys, but still not delivered. You charge enough for this. I wonder if your competitor, Adobe Captivate can do it? ;)

Alastair Steele-Leith

With their subscription costs at close to £100 a month, i don't think so. I already paid some £1500 for SL3, now i get at the end of the day that they invest in the subscribables. I'd be happy to pay for an upgrade if it contained this ability and the background music capability. I wonder why some 7 years since first request why it has not been added. Even subscribers are asking for it. 

Kelly Auner

Hi, all!

I have some great news to share. We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 66, we’ve included important fixes and new features.

One of the features we’ve included is:

Scrub the timeline to quickly see when timed elements appear and disappear on the stage without previewing the entire slide.

To take advantage of this update, launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You'll find our step-by-step instructions here.

Please let me know if you need additional help!

Michael Marcos

Hello Al, while timeline scrubbing is exclusive to Storyline 360 update 66 and later, it is compatible to SL3, which means any course authored with this update will have no problems opening up in SL3. 

I appreciate the enthusiasm Josh! About the weird issue you mentioned, are you able to provide more context with us? I've been unsuccessful in getting something to happen by zooming in and out of the timeline using my mouse's scroll wheel. 

Glenn Harris

The scrub is OK but if you have an animated object with anything other than fade, it does not display correctly.

I have a callout that I have animated to wipe from the right. When I use the scrub feature it only shows the animation as a fade.

Sort of OK feature but let down if all you can view is a fade.

Michael Marcos

Hi Glenn! Thank you for your feedback. That is correct, timeline scrubbing will show basic fade-in/fade-out animations where objects are applied any kind of animation to give a quick sense of the timing. To see the full animation along with slide interactions, previewing the slide is the best way to experience the content's intended behavior. 

Michael Marcos

Thank you Maura. I appreciate you chiming in! The timeline scrubbing feature  was built with the goal of increasing productivity by allowing authors to see where objects appear on the timeline, eliminating the need to manually toggle visibility on/off as folks here have noted in the past. The intent was not to replicate preview or publishing to Review, as those modes are the best environments suited for testing the complex workings of triggers/interactions. 

A comprehensive description of what this feature does can be found here

Michael Marcos

Hi Al! I apologize as I may not have come across as clear as I imagined. When I said that SL3 users won't have problems opening courses authored in SL360 Update 66. What I meant was that this feature doesn't prevent SL3 users from opening the courses created in SL360 Update 66, not that the feature itself is supported in SL3. Timeline scrubbing, as with the other timeline improvements are all SL360-specific. 

You can refer to this support article for a comprehensive list of feature compatibility between SL3 and SL360.  

Josh Olsen

This happens when using a touch surface mouse, like Apple's Magic Mouse, so may only be a corner case.

Any forward and backward gesture by a finger on the top surface of the mouse is interpreted as a scroll wheel gesture. I would imagine this would rarely happen with a mechanical scroll wheel.