Slides vs Layers, what's your preference?

I always get a heart attack when I open some third-party file and see an ocean of slides - it's very easy to discern whether the builder lost control of a project.

And then there is the sheer heartache of opening up a simple-looking module and realising that there are stacks and stacks of layers all doing their own thing and governed by variables and triggers that just are impossible to decipher.

I'm probably more guilty of utilising layers to their maximum trying to keep everything self-contained.

Really curious about how other people use Storyline. I think I know stuff but I realise I taught myself through trial and error and am now using my own personal hand-crafted workaround habits thinking this is the norm.

What do you mean by item 1?  Where does Storyline give a time on Publish? Where do I find the Project Information?

Regarding Item 2: I have never allowed seeking on any of my layers. My clients are pretty typical (IMHO) in that they do not want a user to be able to scrub through the content without actively engaging with it, even if that merely entails clicking a NEXT button to get to the end.

I use a Chromeless skin on my player and so have to (love to) create my own bespoke navigation buttons and progress bars. How does 'enable seeking' allow for a layer to be paused? Wouldn't a PauseTimeline variable and trigger be sufficient?

Item 3: All content on layers is visible for Focus Order editing in my experience. Isn't it just a question of shifting the layer items to just after their 'layer button' within the Focus Order panel?

Item 4: This is both a good and bad thing. :) But it would be an excellent feature request if we could make our choices apply to ALL layers within a slide/module and not have to toggle those options in each and every instance.

Item 5: I don't understand how that's a bad thing or what this actually entails. Regardless of whether it's a layer or a slide the block of information 'belongs' to the base layer/slide and therefore the user doesn't need to 'see' progress on that content until it has been viewed/interacted with.

I would love to know how you have arrived at these conclusions. Maybe it is a question of YMMV (Your Milage May Vary) with regards to how Storyline is being utilised.

Neither. Hiding what i want not to show at start using GSAP.

My personal thoughts:

The learner can't distinguish between slides and layers, and wouldn't care if they could. On the other hand, neither of them costs anything, but I've seen some pretty cluttered designs that look like someone was trying to cram 10 slides worth of material into one slide. It looks like they think they have to buy the slides, and don't want to pay for any more than they have to. Here are my personal thoughts of the items you mentioned.

1. Not a concern for me. If I haven't run the project from start to finish, just like the learner, I don't think I have done responsible Quality Control. So I time it in the process. Actually, if I or the learner needs to know the time, the project doesn't have enough interaction to justify the time required to publish this format. A book or movie is in order.

2. Diarmaid is right, there are other ways to pause a timeline, if somehow everything is rushing on at an artificial time frame, rather than the learner's pace. (You may think I am BIG on learner-centricity, but it's only because I want them to learn from my modules.)

4. Sometimes I want the base objects available, Other times, I cover or hide them. I don't create so many layers a day that those two clicks are going to hurt me. But as Diarmaid says, SL contains a lot of places where it would be nice to make choices that can be applied either globally, or in bulk.

5. I agree with Diarmaid. I'm fortunate not to have worked for a government entity, so I don't produce text projects that are hundreds of pages long, or ones that have six hour videos. It's a poor use of resources to pay an ID to create text or videos. If your final result is a book, give them a Kindle, or if it's a video, let them watch it on a phone. I was fortunate to work for a college, and we produced projects that the students could go through while standing in the lunch line. It may have started as a recorded two-hour lecture, but when it got to the students, it had 12 min of video, and they spent most of their time on interactions. Allen's school bus driving module comes to mind.

Again, YMMV.

Hi Diarmaid, 

 Really appreciate the feedback and am glad this conversation topic resonated with you! I agree, I think a lot of content delivery depends on the material, audience and preference of the creator. Few answers/clarifications: 

Item 1: under the publish menu / LMS-LRS tab / if you click the 3 dots next to the Title field you are taken to the Project Info tab. There under Duration, Storyline will automatically total your project's length, but only for the timelines on your base layer slides (not your individual layers). I submitted an enhancement request to add layer timeline durations to this calculation but no feedback yet other than it was received. 

Item 2: we are the same way, users need to view all of our content. If you enable the seeker on layers users see the seekbar and can pause the content. This has helped our users who feel "lost" and not in control of content on multiple layers where the instruction continues and they cannot stop it to take notes. Under your player controls if you set your seeker as "Allow drag after completion" users cannot drag the seekbar themselves. When they revisit a slide/layer they can manipulate the seeker bar but only after the slide/layer has fully completed first. I use the default prev/next buttons on slides (layers don't have them). You could get the same result with your variable, the enable seekbar is just a faster "fix" that I use. 

Item 3: that is correct that all slide/layer accessible text/instructions appear in a slide/layer focus order but they need to be reset (default is layers first and base layer last). Additionally, it can cause some confusion if a screenreader advances to the layer accessible text before clicking the variable to advance to the layer. The following forum discussion is very helpful in explaining the nuances and I almost commented there instead of starting this new post: https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/focus-order-question. 

Item 4: absolutely agree, a default application would save time on this one!

Item 5: so we offer technical training for accounting software and most of our users are accountants or have a finance-focus. We've received feedback that they would prefer to just repeat a slide for note-taking/if they missed something but with layers when you repeat a section it kicks you back to the base layer and you have to them advance to the layer in question. My thought was that if instead of layers I used a series of slides that are indented on the side menu users would more easily be able to replay the slide in question rather than hunting for it within layers. You can indent your menu items from the player window / menu option and indented slides would imply they are "sub-chapters" to the "parent" slide. 

I've found both these forums and linkedIn Learning extremely helpful in 1. learning this application and 2. keeping up on the latest and greatest enhancements. 

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Will 

Hi Walt, 

That's an interesting observation and I am conjuring some pretty crowded slides in my mind at the moment! I'll be sure to avoid that potential pitfall. 

Thank you for the insights as well. I'm on the government accounting application side of the shop and our trainings at the moment are basically presenting a manual in an alternate form with audio/video and some interactivity. 

At this point I'm working on ensuring the content is as usable/functional as possible but am excited to incorporate more storyline features in future (the storyline step-by-step video/interactivity feature for sure!)

Thanks, 

Will 

Hi Math, 

 I'll have to look into GSAP, thanks for the suggestion!

Will

Ha! Wow. I've never seen that. I guess that's where I should put all my metadata and legalese (or whatnot). Wow.

But that made me realise that I set my slides to a default 5-second timeline. I used to be fond of epic animations but over the years I have found clients want minimal (zippy) animations and *BANG* the content is there.

I have rarely used a timeline, other than one containing media (audio/video) that extended longer than 10 seconds. 

So that would not be an indicator of the time it takes to complete one of my modules. The content would have to be read, absorbed and acted upon. So we rely on ye olde stopwatch technique. :)

Thanks for the info. You live and learn. I'm 25+ years as a graphic designer and I still only know about 15% of what Photoshop is capable of. I definitely know that I know very little about the inner workings of Storyline and the scheming machinations of the developers.

Anytime, thank you for the insights as well! I'm a BA who learned Storyline out of necessity.

If you haven't looked into it yet I'd strongly recommend checking out the Storyline record / step-by-step feature. You basically record an activity, storyline captures your keystrokes, mouse clicks, page navigation and you then have the option to import the video as pre-populated interactive slides. Once populated you tweak here and there but basically you're interactivity example is complete.

Keep the feedback/ideas coming, I'm happy that I got such great responses to this request!

Layers or slides depends on the project and complexity.

I don't think layers should have their own focus order although it sounds like a good idea, I often have objects on layers at different points in the focus order some maybe before objects on the base layer and some maybe after. Having a focus order for every layer not only creates a lot of additional work then this wouldn't be possible. One trick is that if the layer is modal setting it to prevent user clicking will mean you do not need to move it in the focus order.

Hi Phil, 

 That's a really cool trick! You would still need to organize your layer objects in the layer focus order so they are in the correct order for a screen reader though right? 

Thanks!

Will 

Yes, correct order on the layer. You just don’t need to move them around to be before the button or object that opens the layer. Saves a little time.

Sent from my iPhone

Thank you, very helpful!