Storyline: Another take on the Manual Advance Slideshow

I was creating the framework for a 4-page help section of a program in Storyline. One of our instructional designers had placed a somewhat familiar-looking screenshot of a slideshow into a design document, and I thought I recognized it. It was Kevin Thorn's posting on his take of the manual-advance slideshow. While Kevin's version comes from more of the designer side, mine comes from more of the programmer's side.

I had already created (well, 9/10ths created) my version, which I am sharing here. 

I use two variables:

• HelpPage (Number variable; legal values 1-4)
• HelpDirection (Text variable; legal values "left","right")

I make 8 layers to the slide, two for each distinct content page - one for coming in from the left, another for coming in from the right. I also include on the slide a the layer that serves as a reusable function ("SussHelp") - more on this below.

I set the HelpDirection and the HelpPage variables by right and left button clicks. The HelpDirection gets set to "left" if I click on the left button, and "right" if on the right button. If I click on the left button, the HelpPage value decrements; if I click on the right button, it increments. If the value of HelpPage goes to 0 (zero), I set it to 4; if it goes to 5, I set it to 1.

I then show the "SussHelp" layer at the end of each (left or right) button click. This layer contains 8 triggers that decide which of the 8 layers gets shown, depending on the values of HelpPage and HelpDirection.

Building the manual advance slideshow made more sense to me this way. Again, I came from more of programmer's side than Kevin's version. You'll have to decide which version more suits your design needs. They both function virtually the same.