Storyline 3: Controlling when the NEXT button appears

Oct 19, 2021

Good morning, everyone.

I want to keep the NEXT button from appearing on a slide until after the user has viewed the lightbox slide and then closed it. I can't figure it out. I appreciate the help. I'm using Storyline 3. Many thanks!

6 Replies
Maria Costa-Stienstra

Hi, Shel.

Thank you for reaching out!

When you use a Lightbox, it is usually triggered with a click. If that's the case, you can use a visited state to trigger the Next Button. 

I would use the following triggers:

  • Change the state of the Next Button to Hidden when the timeline starts.
  • Lightbox slide when the item is clicked. 
  • Change the state of the Next Button to Normal when the item is in the visited state.

Windows 10 (1) 2021-10-19 at 1.57.49 PM

Here's what it looks like:

Screen Recording 2021-10-19 at 01.47.10 PM

Let me know if this works!

Walt Hamilton

Shel,

Opening a lightbox stops the timeline on the original slide, and closing it resumes. Acually, closing it resumes the timeline even if it was previously stopped. So it's pretty easy to trigger actions from the timeline after a lightbox, if you pause it first.

In the sample, Method 1 is perhaps the easiest, but I think Method 2 may provide more flexibility.

Shel Holtz

Thanks for the info, Walter. I wasn't able to open the file; I got a compatibility error because of "text scrollbars." I use text scrollbars, so I'm not sure what the problem was, but I wanted to let you know. I'll see if I can make it work based on the note you shared. One question: When you say, "If you pause it first," can you elaborate? Pause the lightbox? Thanks!

Walt Hamilton

Shel,

The textboxes thing is something in 360 that keeps it from being compatible with SL3. (Not a valuable upgrade, in my opinion. I wish the programmers could spend their time working on some of the requests that users make.)

I misspoke when I said closing a lightbox will restart the timeline; you have to restart it.

For future reference, here's the sample in SL2, but anybody should be able to open it, or import its slides into 3 or 360.