Storyline 2 - Next Button

Hi Jane,

I also wanted to point out that in Articulate Storyline 1, restricted and locked navigation settings only affected the menu. In contrast, the navigation settings in Articulate Storyline 2 affect both the menu and the player buttons, making it much easier to control the overall navigation for your course. To learn how to restrict or lock navigation in Storyline 2, see this article.

I think that the Next button should probably be shown in it's disabled state if it isn't functional (because the base timeline hasn't completed).. maybe something for Storyline 2.0.1?

Although you could use triggers to disable the Next button until the timeline ends by putting this on your slides:

Hi Jane - do you want the next button to be active at any time or just after a specific point in the timeline?

By default the next button should be active throughout the timeline.

If you want to restrict it, you can add a trigger to change the state of the next button to either disabled or hidden when the timeline starts.

If you then want to activate it before the timeline ends - you could add a cue point to the timeline at the point in which you want it to become active and then add a trigger to change the state of the next button to normal when the timeline reaches the cue point.

or if you want to wait until the end of the timeline to activate it, you can add a trigger to change the state of the next button to normal when the timeline ends.

There are so many options - it makes my head spin.

Hope this helps/ Nancy

In a good way, not like, in an exorcist kind of way

I'm disappointed to see that if I change the state of the NEXT button to "hidden," the PREV button moves into its place, and then jumps back when the NEXT button reappears (similar to turning off the NEXT button via Slide Properties in SL1). Basic user-interface guidelines say standard buttons shouldn't move. Articulate missed their chance to fix this usability issue.

Thanks goodness the "disabled" state can be used to keep the NEXT button where it belongs, while still showing that it won't work yet.

I think her problem is related to Restricted navigation. In Storyline 2 when you use Restricted navigation it won't let you click Next until the base timeline completes. The nice thing about Restricted navigation is that if someone backtracks to previous slides they can move around freely, but the trade off is that people will have to wait to hear all of the navigation on each new slide. Maybe a happy medium is to give them a seek bar and let them jump ahead within the slide if they want.

Judy, I just ran into this today and agree I was a little disappointed to see the PREV button work that way. Will be planning to submit a "bug" request.

I'm glad to see this feature implemented in SL2 as it's been a long-time feature request for many in this community. However, I have not used it and probably won't.

If the design even remotely calls for anything other than linear the first thing I do is turn off Player navigation and build each UI from scratch. As a designer/developer I then have complete control over navigation control(s) when custom-built.

Thanks everyone! You have replied during my snooze time (Australia) so I was very excited to see so much discussion here this morning. With all of this information, I can see that the seekbar was causing the problem for me. All fixed. Thank you!

in my opinion, this is most inconvenient

I have narration on every slide, though all users will not want to listen to the whole thing before clicking next. However I can't use Free navigation as we do want people to go through in order.

Is there a workaround?

Hello Mike, can you provide some clarification as far as what's keeping you from developing your course in this way?  You should be able to do this pretty easily...

Hi Mike and welcome to the forums!

Storyline is quite versatile and can handle just about any instructional design. The challenge is often learning the skills and understanding the capabilities and limitations of the tools we choose, and then trying to make the tool fit our designs. Instead, design 'for' the tool and it's capabilities and limitations.

Without fully understanding your design, I do think there's a way to accomplish what you want to do. You can still keep things linear and in order. Break your design into major chunks (lessons, chapters, sections, etc.) and place them in their own scenes. Within a scene, design the instruction that allows learners to freely discover the content or "explore" that scene's slides.

You can set a tracking mechanism to keep them in that scene until they've at least visited the important bits prior to advancing the the next scene. This should satisfy both the learner and your linear design.

Another option is to turn off the Player navigation altogether and design custom navigation.

See what I did there? Design before develop.

I love this feature in SL2! The trigger didn't work well for me to change the state to Normal when the timeline ends, even when I dial the timeline down to one second. I just applied that trigger to the layer's close button and it works perfectly. 

My project is in scenes (was initially developed in SL1 in which you can click next at any time within a slide's duration). However in SL2 the user needs to wait until the media ends before the Next button is active (by default, no doubt there is a way around this).

I tried adding a trigger to make the Next button Normal when the timeline starts, but it doe snot seem to work this way.

Within a slide we have audio, and some also have a video which either plays concurrently automatically, or plays with a user click, as well as images which enlarge to a layer with user click, while keeping the base audio playing.

Anyway I have another developer figuring out a workaround, but this change in default functionality is kind of a surprise

Hi Mike,

Also, here is the reference on how to change the state of the next button from hidden/disabled to allow the user to access it.

I am just finishing up a course in Storyline 2 and was very surprised to find that I can't use the restricted navigation anymore without making the learner wait until the end of each slide to continue. This is a compliance course that is divided into four scenes - I want the user to have to complete an assessment at the end of each scene before they can continue. However, I want people to be able to click next whenever they want as restricting the next button has proven quite unpopular at my company. But I also want to show the menu to give learners an idea of their progress throughout the course. Is there any workaround where I can restrict the menu but still allow users to click the next button whenever they want?

I found this feature change very frustrating and disappointing as it's very restrictive.

Hello Adrienne!

I wanted to point you to this thread where Bobbi has found a good workaround for this.

You are welcome to submit your thoughts to our development team here Adrienne.

I have a similar situation as Mike and Adrienne. I'm a little displeased with this new logic, but mostly that it doesn't give the option when using "Restricted" to let the users advance to the next slide before the timeline ends. I'm going to try out the hack that Emily suggested here and see how that works. If not, I will unfortunately revert back to SL1 for this training module I'm working on.

Hello Lee,

You could also share a feature request about this.