Storyline for high-dpi monitors on Windows 8.1

Hi Kevin,

We don't offer a timeline in regards to product updates or fixes, so unfortunately I don't have additional information to offer. We have shared this thread and others with our QA and Product Development team, so they're aware of the need and thoughts from customers such as yourself. Once we have additional information to share we'll be sure to include it here in the forums. Also in the meantime, it does help for tracking purposes if you'd also like to share your thoughts in the form of a feature request. 

Hello again..

today a new update was released for articulate storyline 2 does it include a solution for the problem mentioned in this thread??

please confirm

thanks

Hi Dana! Our latest update to Storyline 2 was May 7, 2015 as you can see here. I have no update to provide in regards to this issue as it is still in the hands of our QA Team.

I don't mean to add fuel to the fire, just wanted to emphasize how important this update is to the working customers of Storyline 2.  I'm using a Boot Camp Mac to work on the Windows 8.1 OS for Storyline but have similar issues with the high rez display.  

It's a big problem - one that will continue to grow as computer manufacturers are more commonly putting high resolution displays in their monitors.  Please keep us informed of any timelines and progress!

Hi Brent,

Thanks for sharing here - I know it's one that our team is aware of and continuing to look at. I saw a recent thread here where a user shared another idea and I know it worked for one of our team as well. 

Is there any progress on correcting this problem?

Hi Jeannine,

This issue is still with our QA team in regards to how high resolution monitors work with Storyline and having to use the DPI setting of 96. 

So I was tired of messing with Parallels on my 15 inch MacBook Pro Retina and bought a new Surface Book (I7).   Storyline is basically unusable unless you have extraordinary eyesight or want to work on a display that looks like it is out of 2000.  

No Mac application. 

Incompatible with modern PCs.  

Time to try another e-learning suite.

Hi Brad,

We have let our product team know that users who are operating on high resolutions monitors are having difficulty with Storyline. We'll continue to share threads such as these with them, but in the meantime you'd need to reduce the machine's horizontal resolution to 1920 pixels or lower.

Hi Ashley

I appreciate the response.  I know software updates take time, but It has been almost two years since this threat was opened.  I do not think the product team fully understands (or cares) how frustrating this is.  

I would honestly rather purchase a new development platform than utilize Storyline with my resolution at 1920 or lower.   

Hi Brad,

This has been a common topic as you can see from this thread, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that we do hear you. From top to bottom, we are all very well aware of this request and continue to keep updating our product team with comments such as those that you have shared here. 

I'd like to add my input here. 

I gave a presentation yesterday to ELT professionals (English Language Teaching). My plan was to talk about how Storyline was perfect for building quick e-learning courses for language students. Because Storyline does not work with high-DPI displays, however, I ended up having to demonstrate a competitor product (which scales perfectly on such displays).

I can't say my presentation is going to make anybody go out and buy a rapid e-learning suite, but if someone were to do so, unfortunately it wouldn't be Storyline.

(And having come on to the forums, I now know of potential workarounds, but I'm not sure I feel comfortable recommending a product that needs such a clunky workaround.)

Hoping this gets fixed soon.

Would it be possible to buy all your folks on the development team some hi-res computers running Windows 10 and hi-res monitors in excess of 2,000px wide? Maybe if they see how frustrating it is for us to work on Storyline under these conditions, it might spur development. 

In all seriousness, this is a serious issue. If I adjust to see Storyline, then PowerPoint and other office applications are so big, I barely have any workspace. I can't be constantly switching DPI settings just to work in one application. Please fix this soon.

Maybe all their developers are tied up designing the next-gen e-Learning authoring platform. Thats the only feasible reason I can think of not to fix this. Apart from the impracticalities of not being able to use Storyline on modern screens, I'm finding my clients are requiring responsive design. Also, as Flash is now incompatible with so many platforms, I could really do with a purpose built HTML5 authoring tool. I'm looking forward to future announcements. Now I'm getting excited! Ps I'm hoping SVG image support is included as I need to graphics to look crips on all resolution devices. 64 bit support would be useful too.

The HTML5 authoring tool for eLearning is an excellent idea. I have played
around with Hype on Mac for this purpose but the implementation is
cumbersome.

I just put in a request for this issue.  Any updates?

Hi B!

You may find that user interface elements in Articulate Storyline are small and difficult to read on high resolution monitors—generally, monitors that display more than 2,000 pixels in width. We're working to improve performance on HD monitors. In the meantime, you may need to reduce your screen resolution while working in Storyline.

Does reducing screen resolution work for anybody else? That was the first thing I tried, but for me the DPI issue was still there regardless of screen resolution.

Reducing the screen DPI setting does help, but then every other program looks terrible! 

Hi Christien,

I'm not sure how much weight my answer will carry for you - but the DPI setting did work on my Windows 8.1 system. It showed other things a bit smaller, but I was able to work with it, since I could zoom browser items separately. I know a lot of Mac users have mentioned that in Parallels or VM Ware the DPI can make it quite smaller, so if you're able to disable the retina display within the Windows environment that seems to resolve it. 

Thanks, Ashley. I agree that reducing the DPI setting helps with Storyline ... but it causes issues for me with other programs. It's very rare that I need to use Storyline and Storyline only. Most of the time, I've got Storyline and a bunch of other programs open.

And when I change the DPI setting, those other programs look bad. I can use them but the change in DPI interrupts my workflow to the point where I find myself getting distracted and irritated ... perhaps that's just me, but I set up my production computer just so and anything that takes me out of my workflow is, in short, costing me both time and money.

I assume that this DPI issue is not a minor fix or it would have been done by now, but it would be great to get an estimated timeframe on when the fix will happen ...

I certainly can understand the whole workflow set up and how this is interfering with it. I am not a part of our development or engineering team, so I can't say for certain how big a fix it is, but I suspect your assumption is correct. We don't have dates or timelines to offer, (even if I did, we're not able to share until things are released as it could always change!) but once we do have additional information to share we'll certainly let you know. 

This thread is 2 years old...and still no real solution...and I paid over $2k for this software (or my company did) so that I can dumb-down my laptop to work with this "remarkably power" software...

This might be kinda of a huge failure. I want to be kind here but dang...Two years with no actual solution? you could've re-written the software in something other than VB-6 by now.

There seems to be little other choice than to add my suggestion to resolve the issue of requiring 96DPI.

I'm posting this on as many related threads as I can find. Sorry if you are seeing this a second time.

Hey everyone. Fixing the tiny appearance of the Storyline UI on ultra high-def monitors is possible, BUT it creates much more serious issues when you do.

Adobe products experience similar UI shrinkage, and I was able to easily fix it on those products and in Storyline by following the instructions to create a custome MANIFEST file found here. http://www.danantonielli.com/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix/ the video version here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4GCfugE0xQ

The problem is that when I try to either Preview or Publish, Storyline gives me the "Storyline needs to close" dialog. I'll keep messing with it, and will post some updates. Obviously, the next product from Articulate will need to be able to accommodate these new monitors as they are becoming much more common, especially in the mobile space.

Thanks, Robert, for finding this.

One of the links you posted had some extraneous characters. Here's the correct link: http://www.danantonielli.com/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix/

It's clearly not a perfect solution, especially as Storyline apparently crashes if you try to apply a custom manifest. However, it does show a way forward ... and perhaps fixing the bug that causes the crash when the custom manifest is applied is a relatively easy fix for the Articulate coders?