Storyline 2 behavior on QHD screens is TERRIBLE, no scaling! Please Help!

What I find interesting is that a friend of mine just bought a new HP gaming computer and has no issues and it seems it has a similar graphic card. She has no issues with Storyline UI like I do. I just wonder if it is somethings to do with Surface Pro and HP spectre. It is a pain, no matter what fix we can find . I hope to they find a solution soon.

It's gotten me seriously looking at other development software options at
this point.

Can you get the specs on the system and monitor combination she purchased?
It would be interesting to see if others got similar results.

Richard I just remembered I was going to get those specs for you. 

Here is something I just saw, if you go into the program files for Storyline and right click the Storyline.exe there is an option to "Disable display scaling on high  DPI settings.". When checked, this solves all of my issues with the scaling issue when I don't have it connected to another monitor.  When it is connected to another monitor it goes back to tiny UI.  We are getting close, does anyone else have this issue?

Hi Catherine,

The monitors may have different display settings and therefore changing the overall set up once connected to the external monitor. You mentioned the Storyline.exe file, and changes to it there - but that's not something I can assist with. 

I had this issue on mine. I right clicked and disabled the scaling.

I found it only worked properly if I shut down and restart with the monitor plugged in as my primary monitor.

Once restarted, everything was perfect.

I hope that helps

Thanks for stopping by to share your experiences, Mark! 

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a further update regarding our plans to add support for high density displays to Storyline.

For some time now, we’ve been working on adding support for high density displays to the next version of Storyline. Once preliminary support was in place, we invited a number of you to the Storyline Beta Program to help evaluate the feature.

While we’re now broadly satisfied that the feature works as intended, reaching this point has proven far more challenging than simply flicking a switch. Storyline does an incredible amount of custom drawing behind the scenes, including rendering complex slides with multiple effects, animation etc. Consequently, we’ve encountered numerous issues along the way (sometimes limited to obscure combinations of hardware and operating system), all of which have taken considerable engineering effort to resolve.

After extensive evaluation, we’ve determined that the engineering effort and risk required to re-implement the feature in Storyline 2 as an Update is simply too great at this time. In reaching this decision, we’ve been particularly mindful of the need to prioritize this feature amongst other upcoming bug fixes and other issues that we’d like to address through the Storyline 2 Update program. We’ve also considered the availability of viable workarounds for this issue – such as changing display resolution when using Storyline, or using Storyline on a standard density display as part of a multi-monitor setup.

While this news will understandably be disappointing to those of you affected by this, I wanted to underline that we remain committed to supporting Storyline 2 customers with regular Updates. Most recently, Updates 8 and 9 (May 2016) and 10 (July 2016) resolved a number of significant issues that broad sections of our community were encountering in areas ranging from the visual quality of slide notes to issues with the way courses communicate with an LMS.

I’d be happy to provide more context around this decision or discuss further individually with anyone who’s interested. We'd also encourage you to reach out to our customer support team should you need help with any of the workarounds suggested above.

Simon Taghioff
Product Manager
Articulate

It is encouraging to know that Storyline 3 will address this issue.

As a Storyline 2 user, I am currently investigating competitive products
like Captivate, which has come a long way in and functionality and
usability since the last time I took a look.

I will be assessing Storyline 3 for a variety of competitive features such
as complex actions, responsive layouts, round trip graphics editing, and
the ability to export handouts without purchasing a special version of MS
Office that is no longer supported by the Office 365 deployment.

Hi Alexander, I just wanted to let you know that responding via email includes your signature here so you're welcome to edit the post to remove that information as well. 

Once we're able to share information about the next version that Simon mentioned, we'll be certain to let folks know. 

I have similar issues with Adobe Cloud stuff -- I found this article and was going to try to find a way to adapt it for Articulate Storyline... I'm using Windows 10.

http://www.danantonielli.com/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix/

*some time later*

Okay, I tried this solution with success, though the software isn't as "crisp", but it's much easier to see for me (I'm very near-sighted), so this is a working solution for me.

I followed the instructions as indicated on the site above, and then created the manifest file but named it "Storyline.exe.manifest" and placed it in the same folder as the Storyline.exe file (in C:\Program Files (x86)\Articulate\Articulate Storyline 2).

I hope this solution helps!

Thanks Ursula for sharing the update and testing it out. Please just keep in mind that if something isn't behaving as expected in Storyline the changes you'e made may be a part of the issue and not something we're able to offer support for. 

I totally understand - just figured I'd provide a solution that seems to work, but it's also easily reversible if necessary. :)

It is now March of 2017 and this problem is still there.  If you try to search support guess what issue doesn't come up?  This has been going on for over 2.5 years.  I just downloaded the latest release of Storyline 2.0 to my Surface Pro and still can't read the UI. 

Any new advice out there?  I don't consider this to be a feature request after nearly 3 years.

I have found that if I connect to an HD monitor with my HDMI connection, it solves most of the resolution issues. 

Thanks for your suggestion.  But I need to work from my Surface at clients and that means the built in monitor.

J

Hi Jay,

I'm sorry that this is still causing you such headaches, and I wanted to link back to my earlier response in this discussion as I know they often get lost in these lengthy forum discussions. 

Although we're still in the same situation with Storyline 2 based on when it was developed, the design decisions made at the time, and the considerable risk to make changes to the Storyline UI, our Engineering team took all this feedback and made a change to how we were dealing with the hi-DPI issues while we were developing Storyline 360, as a part of the Articulate 360 suite of tools. You may want to take a look at the Articulate 360 trial, and also know that when we release Storyline 3 later this year the same change in behavior will be applied there. 

If you'd like to discuss any of the upgrade options and pricing with our Success team, they'll be happy to talk with you and provide some ideas that fit your needs and situation. You can reach them here. 

Has this longstanding issue been resolved? I am considering purchasing Storyline for my Dell XPS high res 13" laptop but will not do so until I know I'll be able to work in it without eyestrain and headaches.

This has not been fixed in SL2 - and as far as I know, there are no plans
to do so. According to Articulate it has been fixed in SL3 - available
either stand alone or as part of the suite.

If you have SL2 and don't upgrade ($$) to SL3, then using a lower def.
monitor when you develop works around the problem.

Jay

I just downloaded the free trial of Storyline 3 and I'm happy to report that the issue is fixed, at least on my computer. I'm so happy to be able to see the toolbars and menus without a magnifying glass! =)

Glad you're up and running with Storyline 3, Laura!  

Sounds great but where does that leave those of us who are stuck on storyline 2?

I spent $4.50 for a used monitor. Plug it in and works fine.

Jay

In a terrible spot. Especially if you consider that the main difference between Storyline 2 and 3 is IS ACTUALLY FIXING this damn bug. I did not find a lot of other differences that would gain for a version upgrade. I would call it Storyline 2.1 There is no Library tab, or menu redesign. Nothing significant. Just couple of regrouped items in the menu with new icons and few extra triggers. Thats it! OMG they added a DIAL object, such a bright innovation.. seriously? And rectangle buttons in the menu is another breakthrough I guess)

So it seems like the main FEATURE of Storyline 3 is fixing a BUG of Storyline 2 ;) And that is a 700$ upgrade.. ouch!