What's your Story Size?

Hi, everyone!

Does anyone else have an issue where when you use the 1000 X 750 screen size, your quizzes look really odd? I included an image here, when reviewing the quiz, the correct answers are HUGE. The official answer I got from Articulate was to either:

a) Lower than 760x570 for 4:3 aspect ratio.

b) Lower than 970x546 for 16:9 aspect ratio.

Any one in the community come up with other workarounds?

Thanks!
-Rachel

Thanks for mentioning that you worked with support on this Rachel. Hopefully someone in the community will be able to assist you.

Thanks, Steve! I've been using these dimensions for my courses now. It looks great on the iPad, and it's decently sized for the desktop!

"Your dimensions are wrong and way to [sic] small" isn't something you could possibly tell from where you are, Will.

The dimensions you gave above are OK for some contexts and not OK for others, right? If most of your audience is stuck with older hardware / laptops with a set resolution of 1024x768, how will 1280x720 work out? Half of your audience running a slower internet connection? That 1280x720 layout will look beautiful if they can get it to load. 

Too many factors at play to make a "best choice" because there is no one single best choice. Every design choice is (should be) driven by constraints.

Design professionals rarely post without backing up their assertions with a portfolio. Real pro's don't snipe anonymously on the net.  That's a challenge worth solving, eh?

My thoughts exactly Steve, completely agree.  In addition to the points you made above, many of our users have laptops with a 720P resolution, meaning that a 1280x720 sized course would still not fit properly on their screen.

As far as images not looking great when the course is sized up for larger monitors, I always prefer to lock the course size at the dimensions I design to, so that my images, videos and other assets always display the way they were intended to.

Locking my screen has made a world of difference in relation to how my pictures look. I didn't do that for my first course, and it was so pixelated. I had to go back and republish my course. It's so nice!
My courses are being designed mobile (specifically iPad Air) first, but I wanted to leave the option for users to access the course via desktop, and 1000 X 750 works wonderfully!

Situations definitely drive what size your courses will be. I've seen so many different sizes online, and it all depends on what you and your client want. One of the great things about Storyline (and probably Studio, but I use Storyline) is no matter what size you make your courses, it's so easy to design and make them look fantastic.

Also, this size scales nicely for an iPhone 4! You just need a magnifying glass to see everything on such a small screen :P 

Super helpful thread, thanks Ryan. 

I have been experiencing this issue today, using the most up to date Storyline 2. Not sure how long it will last but the fix was pretty simple. Start a new upload in SABA, don't upload over the one that's already there because it just displays the original one anyway and will never work.

Do a completely new upload, make sure scaling is chosen in the options in the player settings, and it will work. Took an hour and a half of publishing and uploading with someone else before this simple fix was found.

I believe I've read somewhere here where SABA keeps a 24 hour cache and if you load a course, then update the course, you won't be able to see the updated changes until the following day.

Can anyone tell me...with the current version of SL2 does this option by Ryan still seem feasible for getting optimal size on desktop and ipad/android?...

Ryan Martin AUTHOR

I think I may have an option.

What would be the problem with having a Story Size of 1024 X 768 ... plus... Browser size: Display at user's current browser size ... plus... Player size: Scale player to fill browser window

1024X768 is the same ratio as 720X540 (4:3). Meaning this scales to fit nicely in the iOS App.

Hi Sylvia!

This article explains How to Determine the Optimal Slide Size for Mobile Devices for Storyline 2. Like you mentioned, 4:3 is a great ratio for iPads, but you might find it too narrow for desktop computers. The setting Scale player to fill browser window will increase the width or the height of the player to fill the browser, but not both. What you might see in this case is the height fills the browser window, but the width does not, and you'll notice white space on either side of the player. That is because Storyline will never stretch the width of your slide to distort your design. It will always maintain the same aspect ratio. I hope that helps!

Hi Alyssa. Thanks for the help.  I'm still bound by having to create for both laptop/desktop and mobile and was hoping that perhaps Ryan's settings might help.  I also just found eLearningchips on designing your own player in SL2 and am facinated and thinking this might solve some other challenges (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrN281Y1luCAHWSTdfdrAZg).  I guess I'll have to try it on something small and see what happens - ugh - more time.

I'd give Ryan's settings a try on a test project, just to see if you like the way it looks before designing your own player. Good luck on your project, and be sure to let us know if you encounter any roadblocks along the way!

Thanks Alyssa! You "guys" are definitely my "go to" place!

I'm playing around with future-proof templates here. God, I see this is 6 years old. What's stopping me going straight for 1600 x 900 ? It'll make the maths easy!

Am I getting my authoring tools mixed up? I thought there was an option to select to select "iPad" and it would give you the default settings. Perhaps I am wrong.

I am also wanting to find this out, as there are a bunch of new iPads arriving in to the office soon (just not sure which iPad version it is yet!).

Hi Michael,

We don't have a setting to publish specifically for an iPad sizing, but perhaps you were thinking about the responsive player and preview using the icons here:

Let me know if that's not what you were thinking! 

Hey Adam,

Be sure to take a look at our article here for publishing your Storyline 360 course for mobile devices.

With improved HTML5 support and the responsive mobile player, your learners should have a great mobile experience.

Check out the preview option Ashley shared with Michael as well :)

Bumping this because i want to know what size everyone is creating at right now this second.

I am building at 1280 x 720 at the moment.  Seems a reasonable compromise.

1200 x 675 - because it fits on a 1280 wide laptop screen, mainly, allowing for the frame

1260 x 770 seems to fit nice with new modern player on iPad.

wow I'm finding all these ratios so interesting. I always try to stick to 16:9 aspect ratio but also take into account +/- the player features. 

do you utilise any of the player features? If you were to utilise, say the Player frame (20px), topbar tabs (24px) and navigation buttons (51px) would you modify your story to accomodate the extra pixels (e.g. 1260 x 625)