Text entry still has hidden (selectable) text after setting the corresponding variable to (blank)

Jul 22, 2020

Hi all,

I'm working with a text entry for a project. I want to use the same text entry to make the user enter multiple values. After clicking a button, I do something with the entered text, and then I clear the text entry (by setting the corresponding variable to blank). So far so good, after clearing the text entry the placeholder text is shown as expected. However, it is still possible to drag over the placeholder text, and this reveals the previously entered text, which is then selected by draggin over it. This is confusing for some learners (understandibly).

Is there a way to avoid this behaviour? I've searched the community, but most answers were related to quiz behaviour, or revisiting the slide. This is not desirable, as it would require a lot of rework. Also, to me this seems to be a bug rather than intentional behaviour on the Storyline side?

Note: this is part of a JavaScript-heavy project, so in the provide example it might not seem to make much sense why I want to achieve this. The provided storyline-file is stripped down to just illustrate the issue. 

Thanks in advance for any help.

7 Replies
Ned Whiteley

Hi Oliver,

I think this is a bug as I can't find anything wrong with your triggers and how you have set them up. Interestingly, if you set a new value for Actions_ActionInput rather than reset it to blank, the new value appears after you click the arrow for the first time (as it should), but it is not possible to reveal/highlight the old text.

Leslie McKerchie

Hello Oliver and Ned,

Great news!  We just released another update for Articulate 360 and included a few important fixes that you'll see in the release notes here.  

The item you'll be interested in is:

Fixed: Resetting a text-entry variable so it had no value didn't actually clear the text-entry field

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.

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