Weigh in: Is restricted navigation really restricted?
Mar 19, 2014
Most of my clients ask for restricted navigation. Storyline supports restricted navigation which will prevent skipping ahead in the menu. Unfortunately, restricted navigation doesn't do anything to restrict the player controls in the course skin.
Clients complain that the NEXT button shouldn't allow a learner to proceed until timeline end. Learners can skip through a course with restricted navigation by clicking NEXT. Fortunately, NEXT can be restricted by adding a trigger condition to disable NEXT until timeline end. This workaround is cumbersome, but it is available.
More problematic is the seek bar which is bundled with the PLAY/PAUSE button. Storyline provides an option to include both PLAY/PAUSE and SEEKBAR or neither on the course skin. I'll hazard a blunt statement that most courses are published with PLAY/PAUSE so learners can handle workplace interruptions.
The seek bar is unavoidable... unfortunately... that's because the seek bar allows learners to skip content in restricted mode as easily as if the NEXT button were clicked. Should it? Wouldn't it be more in line with restricted navigation if the seek bar allowed learners to skip back, but not over content?
Sam
4 Replies
Hi Sam,
The restricted navigation refers only to the menu and is described here - as you mentioned you'd need to set up additional elements on the next button and/or disable the seekbar to have a fully restricted course. If you need the seekbar for the purposes of letting the user know where they are in a slide you may want to look at creating a custom progress bar or a custom pause/play method for a slide's timeline.
Hi Ashley,
Well, it is good that there are workarounds, but this is a tremendous amount of work to achieve restricted navigation behavior.
Sam
Ashley,
Since the Restricted Navigation option restricts only the menu and allows the learner to skip through the course using player controls, does Articulate recognize this as a shortcoming and plan to address this in a future release?
Sam
Hi Sam,
I don't believe that our team sees this as a bug or a shortcoming in the functioning as there are ways around it, and if you wanted to fully restrict navigation you could also remove the seekbar, previous/next buttons all together. If you'd like to see a different behavior, I'd suggest sharing your thoughts in the form of a feature request.
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