SL2 & SL360 "Restricted" Menu Navigation and Next Button - Solution / Workaround

Hi Lindsey

here is Module 1 - published with your settings. I checked the story_Content folder and I can see the frame.js file. I haven't made any changes to the file.

Hi Wendy,

I've asked two of my colleagues to look through the content and none of us can see it! We can only see three frame files as mentioned before, not the .js version which is confusing us all...

@Michael Hardin - thank you very much, it worked a treat - for HTML5 too. 

Here are the other 4 published zips Lindsey

Hi Lindsey

you are extracting the files before looking for the file.

Here is a video of Module 1 that I just published for you and the location of the frame.js

Can you video what is happening when you unzip the folder? 

Hi Wendy, thank you for your time!

I think we have figured it out now - and it might be useful for others. We obviously don't have the software on our PCs to recognise that there is a .js file. So I tried to open the only other file that was different - the notepad.exe.

When I opened and amended the script, it asked if I wanted to save my changes to my .js file, so it obviously is the file I'm supposed to edit, but in a different guise!

Oh wow Lindsey - glad to hear it.  I'm going to amend the post above and remove that reference to Java as I think it's wrong and i don't want to confuse anyone.

Glad to know you're all sorted - good luck with your project!

After looking at your screenshot, I see the root cause for the confusion.  In the "Folder Options" (in "Windows Explorer" > "Tools" menu > "Folder Options" > "View" tab) you have "Hide extensions for known file types" checked.  This means any file type associated with a program doesn't show the extension, in this case ".js".  The reason you see "notepad.exe" under the "Type" column is because on your system ".js" files are associated (set to open) with NotePad.  If you go into the "View" settings of your "Folder Options" and uncheck that option, you will always see the file extensions.

That's worked perfectly thank you!

My computer is not allowing me to change these files. I have Notepad but it doesn't give me the option like my previous computer did to open up the frame file with Notepad. What to do?

Hi Caitlin,

When you right click on the file, and select open with, you should see a list of files that Windows thinks it can use to open the file. If notepad isn't in the list, you can use "Use default program..." to navigate to the notepad.exe file. The notepad file is usually in your windows system32 directory.

An easier way to get the file into notepad though is to open notepad, and then just drag and drop the file into the notepad window.

You might also have trouble editing this file if you are attempting to edit the version in the zip file. You can navigate into the zip file using windows, but opening these files doesn't work the same as when they are in a regular folder. If this is a case, try editing the file in the regular folder that storyline creates, and then drag and drop the file into the zipped folder to overwrite and replace the original.

What about swiping? I've got the restricted menu to work with the enabled Next/Prev buttons just fine, but swiping does not work at all. Is there anything to fix this??

Hi there Ros,

I don't see that this has been reported anywhere else in the forums, so I really appreciate you bringing this up here. I created a quick sample file with restricted navigation, and it looks like you cannot swipe next or previous, even when the timeline ends. You definitely should have the option to swipe once the timeline ends, so I'm going to share this with the team so we can get it reported as a potential software bug. I’ll let you know as soon as we have an update, and thanks so much again for letting us know about this!

Wow Alyssa, thanks for researching into this! I tried going into the xml file myself but nothing I tried worked. Seems it is just completely disabled. It would be great to get this feature working asap, as it would really help ongoing projects I am working on that are heavily reliant on mobile. 

I appreciate you contacting the team and hopefully we will see an update soon fixing this bug :)

Absolutely, Ros! We'll let you know as soon as we get more information!

First off, thank you Bobbi for the excellent workaround.  It was definitely a lifesaver!

Has anyone had any success using this workaround in Storyline 3?  I'm assuming if the workaround works for Storyline 360 it should work for Storyline 3.  However, I just upgraded a Storyline 2 file to Storyline 3 and it appears the HTML5 version of the course doesn't restrict the menu anymore even though I changed the frame.xml file and the frame.json file.  I'm assuming the frame.json file is the same thing as what was the frame.js file that I had to change in Storyline 2.  I don't see a frame.js file when publishing in Storyline 3 but I do see a frame.json and that is the other one that I changed.  But when viewing either in the LMS or just on the web with the HTML5 link the menu is completely free and not restricted.  Anyone else having this issue?  

Hi Carrie,

In Storyline 3, you can make the same modification to the frame.js file to restrict navigation as was made in Storyline 2. If you are publishing the HTML5, there is an additional frame.js file that need to be updated in the same way. This copy is located in the html5/data/js folder. 

Just change "free" to "restricted".

You don't need to modify the .json file.

Of course after I posted I was able to figure it out.  ;)  It seems that Storyline 3 puts the frame.js file in an HTML5 folder.  So in order to do this workaround correctly in Storyline 3 you need to change the frame.xml file in the story_content folder and the frame.js file in the HTML5 folder.  That seemed to do the trick.  I am publishing with the setting Flash with HTML5 fallback.  

Thanks for the quick response Dave!  I discovered this on my own and seemed to have written my reply as you responded.  ;)  Got it working now.  Thanks so much!!!

Cool! I'm glad you got it working. And now it is documented here for anyone else that needs it. 
:-)

Hi all,

Great news!  We just released another update for Articulate 360, and included a few important fixes and new features that you'll see in the release notes here.  

The item you may be interested in is how when you restrict or lock navigation, you can now choose whether it impacts just the course menu or also disables the Previous and Next buttons. And you can use triggers to override restricted navigation for individual slides.

Just launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button. Details here.

Please let us know if you have any questions, either here or by reaching out to our Support Engineers directly. 

Very nice!

Hello,

I am trying to use this work around in Storyline 3 and it isn't working.  I've used it very successfully in Storyline 2.  Has anyone else had this issue or perhaps an idea of what I might be missing?

Thanks,

Wendy

Hi Wendy,

Could you share a copy of the course here so that folks could take a look at what you've got set up? I know there were a few mentions earlier in this discussion of it not working in SL3/360 - but then I believe that Bobbi did some updates (hence the updated discussion title).  

We did also push out a change to SL360 (it's targeted for the next update of SL3 as well) that changes how the restricted navigation/next button behavior. You can read more about that here.