I've been struggling for hours with a simple, freeform drag and drop activity in Storyline 3, in which users drag and drop shapes onto one of two drop zones, which are shapes with dashed outlines and no fill. On preview I kept getting an 'incorrect' response and I couldn't work out why. Then I added a fill colour to the drop zone shapes. Bingo. I'm astonished that something so simple, that worked so well in Storyline 2, is impossible in version 3. Is it deliberate, or an omission? Why would you remove such a small and simple function?
Not an answer to your question, but I was wondering... if you set a fill color to your shape and then turn the transparency of the fill color up to 100%, would that possibly be a work-around you could employ until Articulate gets back to you with a solution?
Thank you, Brian - I didn't think of that, and will try it! I suppose in the great scheme of things, it's not a big deal - but I was just astonished that this little feature no longer exists, and frustrated that it took me so long to work it out!
I'm astounded that this worked in SL2. If an object has no fill, there are no pixels for the program to register; you can't click it, nothing. The interior just isn't there; only the outline exists. If you have ever gotten it to work, I suspect that you dragged or dropped on the outline. Transparent fills work because those pixels exist, even if you can see right through them.
I'd have to back up what Walt shared that this was likely a bug in Storyline 2, that was fixed in Storyline 3/360.
If you tried dropping the item onto the edge of the box - does that recognize it as a correct drop target? It sounds like the transparency method is working for you and what I would have recommended too. 🙂
Thanks for your feedback. I started to doubt my own memory, so I opened up an SL2 file and made the unfilled boxes much bigger than the drag items so there was no risk of them being accidentally dropped on the outline. It still worked.
I'm not sufficiently technologically minded to realise about the pixel issue, so I didn't think anything was unusual about this. That's why I was so annoyed when it appeared to me to be a feature that was inexplicably removed, rather than a bug that you've fixed!
I've attached a sample of the quiz question to demonstrate. I've made the answers obvious so you don't need to spend time guessing!
We've found that the issue with a drag and drop questions has something to do with the recent SL3 update. When tested on a computer that hadn't been updated, the drag and drop worked fine- but once updated, the interaction no longer worked correctly.
Sorry not to reply sooner; I've been away on holiday.
Hopefully, Ali has/will have an answer for you. For me, it was a question of giving the shapes a fill colour, either the same as the background (so that they appeared transparent) or 99% transparency of the background colour (with the same effect).
I haven't yet attempted to work in SL3 a drag and drop created in SL2, so have no idea about that one!
Nick - it seems that this was a bug in earlier versions that's now been fixed! If that's the case, I'd suggest it's a bug that should be re-introduced - except that in doing so, it runs the risk of introducing some other, unwanted, bug!
GRRRR! I find it as annoying and perplexing as you do. Why 'fix' something that wasn't a problem in the first place? Doubly irritating when you think of all the things that were real problems and took years to be fixed (such as paragraph formatting) - and still haven't been fixed completely, in my view.
There is an unpredictable and very obvious overlap between the two.
Have you tried publishing to see if there's still an issue with snapping? I've noticed that it doesn't always play well when previewing, but when I publish and try it things work perfectly.
I took a look at this in Storyline 360 - and set my drop target to transparent (the items I dragged were not transparent - as that is how I read the posts here). I was able to drag and drop them successfully on the transparent shape and they snapped to center as I set as well. I took a quick Peek of how this appeared for me in Preview, but if you're seeing something different I'd love to take a look at your .story file.
The fix that was implemented in Storyline 2 was specific to the HTML5 output, as that element wouldn't allow for the transparency on the drop target. That does not appear to impact Storyline 360.
Have just had the same problem - drag and drop quiz slides copied across from SL2 weren't working in SL3. Correct answers were coming up as incorrect. Original targets were rectangles with no fill (although they did contain text). Giving them fill made them work.
Thank you to all who went through the process of trial and error to discover this solution - you have saved me potentially hours of frustration. But may I add my voice to the many who are frustrated by this change!!
Ashley - I am attaching a sample of the problematic slides. I have fixed the first one, which now works. The second and third are not fixed (the drop targets are still 'no fill'), and do not work.
Thanks Kirsti, we did report it to our team to investigate further what's happening with the targets that have no fill. As you mentioned it did work in Storyline 2, so we'll take a look and helpful to have your project file as well.
I'm happy to share that we just released another update for Articulate 360, and included a few important fixes that you'll see in the release notes here.
I'm sure you'll be most interested in:
Fixed: Drag-and-drop questions weren't always evaluated correctly, and drag items weren't precisely centered in drop targets.
Just launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button for Storyline 360. Details here.
22 Replies
Not an answer to your question, but I was wondering... if you set a fill color to your shape and then turn the transparency of the fill color up to 100%, would that possibly be a work-around you could employ until Articulate gets back to you with a solution?
Thank you, Brian - I didn't think of that, and will try it! I suppose in the great scheme of things, it's not a big deal - but I was just astonished that this little feature no longer exists, and frustrated that it took me so long to work it out!
Thank you so much for this post!
I was desperately trying to get a similar drag & drop interaction to work . I had Picture and text grouped and it just wouldn`t send the answers.
Reading your post I tried to save the grouped element as a picture in a .png Format and now it works!
Hooray! I'm so glad my mini-rant had a positive effect!
A colleague of mine tried a drag and drop activity using shapes with 99% transparency, which doesn't show any colour, and it also worked!
Hi Brian - just an update. My colleague tried it with 100% transparency and it didn't work. However, 99% did work!
Good to know! I hope they get this bug worked out quickly in SL3
I'm astounded that this worked in SL2. If an object has no fill, there are no pixels for the program to register; you can't click it, nothing. The interior just isn't there; only the outline exists. If you have ever gotten it to work, I suspect that you dragged or dropped on the outline. Transparent fills work because those pixels exist, even if you can see right through them.
Hi all,
I'd have to back up what Walt shared that this was likely a bug in Storyline 2, that was fixed in Storyline 3/360.
If you tried dropping the item onto the edge of the box - does that recognize it as a correct drop target? It sounds like the transparency method is working for you and what I would have recommended too. 🙂
Thanks for your feedback. I started to doubt my own memory, so I opened up an SL2 file and made the unfilled boxes much bigger than the drag items so there was no risk of them being accidentally dropped on the outline. It still worked.
I'm not sufficiently technologically minded to realise about the pixel issue, so I didn't think anything was unusual about this. That's why I was so annoyed when it appeared to me to be a feature that was inexplicably removed, rather than a bug that you've fixed!
I've attached a sample of the quiz question to demonstrate. I've made the answers obvious so you don't need to spend time guessing!
Thanks Anne for sharing that example, and sorry this fix caused you confusion!
No worries. I know what to do now!
Anne, what did you find as a solution for this?
We've found that the issue with a drag and drop questions has something to do with the recent SL3 update. When tested on a computer that hadn't been updated, the drag and drop worked fine- but once updated, the interaction no longer worked correctly.
Hey Laura!
I'm happy to help and I have a couple questions to start with:
Thanks for letting us know about this-- I'm sorry if it's causing headaches!
Hi Laura
Sorry not to reply sooner; I've been away on holiday.
Hopefully, Ali has/will have an answer for you. For me, it was a question of giving the shapes a fill colour, either the same as the background (so that they appeared transparent) or 99% transparency of the background colour (with the same effect).
I haven't yet attempted to work in SL3 a drag and drop created in SL2, so have no idea about that one!
Hope you get the answers you need.
Nick - it seems that this was a bug in earlier versions that's now been fixed! If that's the case, I'd suggest it's a bug that should be re-introduced - except that in doing so, it runs the risk of introducing some other, unwanted, bug!
GRRRR! I find it as annoying and perplexing as you do. Why 'fix' something that wasn't a problem in the first place? Doubly irritating when you think of all the things that were real problems and took years to be fixed (such as paragraph formatting) - and still haven't been fixed completely, in my view.
Have you tried publishing to see if there's still an issue with snapping? I've noticed that it doesn't always play well when previewing, but when I publish and try it things work perfectly.
Hi all,
I took a look at this in Storyline 360 - and set my drop target to transparent (the items I dragged were not transparent - as that is how I read the posts here). I was able to drag and drop them successfully on the transparent shape and they snapped to center as I set as well. I took a quick Peek of how this appeared for me in Preview, but if you're seeing something different I'd love to take a look at your .story file.
The fix that was implemented in Storyline 2 was specific to the HTML5 output, as that element wouldn't allow for the transparency on the drop target. That does not appear to impact Storyline 360.
Have just had the same problem - drag and drop quiz slides copied across from SL2 weren't working in SL3. Correct answers were coming up as incorrect. Original targets were rectangles with no fill (although they did contain text). Giving them fill made them work.
Thank you to all who went through the process of trial and error to discover this solution - you have saved me potentially hours of frustration. But may I add my voice to the many who are frustrated by this change!!
Ashley - I am attaching a sample of the problematic slides. I have fixed the first one, which now works. The second and third are not fixed (the drop targets are still 'no fill'), and do not work.
Thanks Kirsti, we did report it to our team to investigate further what's happening with the targets that have no fill. As you mentioned it did work in Storyline 2, so we'll take a look and helpful to have your project file as well.
Hello everyone,
I'm happy to share that we just released another update for Articulate 360, and included a few important fixes that you'll see in the release notes here.
I'm sure you'll be most interested in:
Fixed: Drag-and-drop questions weren't always evaluated correctly, and drag items weren't precisely centered in drop targets.
Just launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button for Storyline 360. Details here.
Please let us know if you have any questions, either here or by reaching out to our Support Engineers directly.
Awesome, thanks Leslie!
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