I am currently developing my first course in Storyline. I have made the navigation to my many layers inconsistent in how to:
View the page
Move to the next page or slide.
Has anyone any great ideas on how I can fix this? The users need to see each layer, as they include annotated screen captures of the computer system that they are learning about. One thought I had was to get rid of the layers altogether and just make them slides.
I recently developed my first course as well (a 'rough draft' of a series my organization is producing for our clients). I had to work out a navigation system for a large .story - 82 slides spread over 4 scenes, with branching options.
As you proposed, I ended up ditching layers and just moving the learner from slide to slide. That way, learners can use this fancy-pants nav panel I created (see below) to make 'big' jumps from one major section to another, plus I still have the flexibility of putting buttons onto my slides to target specific locations, as well as using the baked in Next/Back buttons on the player.
What I ended up with was a slide-out navigation panel that includes buttons to jump the user to the 'splash screen' for each of my 4 major scenes. I made a rectangle shape, and dropped 4 buttons onto it; I positioned the rectangle just off the slide on the left-hand edge. Another, smaller rectangle attaches to one edge, making a 'handle' that protrudes into the slide. This handle has an arrow button on it, to let the user know that it's a clickable control.
In the timeline, all of these elements are added to a single Group.
Next, I created a variable called "ShowNav," and tied that to the arrow button on the handle. I also gave this button a flipped state, so that it points to the right (toward the middle of the slide) when the nav panel is hidden off the left-hand edge of the slide, and points to the left (back out toward the edge) when the nav panel is visible.
I created two Motion Paths to 'slide' the navigation panel in and out; one goes to the right, the other to the left.
Finally, I tied everything together using my "ShowNav" variable.
I pasted all of these Triggers onto each slide (which I DO NOT recommend - if there's a way to create this FIRST as part of a 'template' slide, do THAT!)
When each slide is loaded:
The value of "ShowNav" is set to "False," meaning the navigation panel is/remains hidden
Whenever "Button 6" (the arrow on my nav handle) is clicked, 2 things happen: first, the state of Button 6 itself is toggled (if it's pointing right, it flips to point left, and vice-versa). Next, the value of the "ShowNav" variable is toggled: if it's "False" it becomes "True," and vice-versa.
When "ShowNav" is set to "True," the nav panel group (the container shape and all of the buttons, as well as the handle) slides along Motion Path 1, which brings it in from off-screen. When "ShowNav" is set to "False," the nav panel group slides along Motion Path 2, pushing it back off-screen. I set this trigger to fire whenever "ShowNav" is changed, and I used conditionals to make sure that each trigger is only 'active' when the variable is set to one value or the other.
Here's how it looks in action:
I don't know if this counts as "easy," but it's what I stumbled on. I did this all pretty much on my own, so there could very well be a better way to do it!
The benefit for me is that there are no additional layers. Everything lives on the base layer of my slide. Since all of the nav elements are contained in a single Group, there's minimal clutter on the Timeline. Working with multiple triggers is somewhat unwieldy: you cannot copy/paste more than one of them at a time from slide to slide, and when you do c&p them the triggers do not retain their conditional settings, so each one has to be manually adjusted for every slide. (That's why I recommend that you build the nav into a master template slide.)
2 Replies
Hi, Jane.
I recently developed my first course as well (a 'rough draft' of a series my organization is producing for our clients). I had to work out a navigation system for a large .story - 82 slides spread over 4 scenes, with branching options.
As you proposed, I ended up ditching layers and just moving the learner from slide to slide. That way, learners can use this fancy-pants nav panel I created (see below) to make 'big' jumps from one major section to another, plus I still have the flexibility of putting buttons onto my slides to target specific locations, as well as using the baked in Next/Back buttons on the player.
What I ended up with was a slide-out navigation panel that includes buttons to jump the user to the 'splash screen' for each of my 4 major scenes. I made a rectangle shape, and dropped 4 buttons onto it; I positioned the rectangle just off the slide on the left-hand edge. Another, smaller rectangle attaches to one edge, making a 'handle' that protrudes into the slide. This handle has an arrow button on it, to let the user know that it's a clickable control.
In the timeline, all of these elements are added to a single Group.
Next, I created a variable called "ShowNav," and tied that to the arrow button on the handle. I also gave this button a flipped state, so that it points to the right (toward the middle of the slide) when the nav panel is hidden off the left-hand edge of the slide, and points to the left (back out toward the edge) when the nav panel is visible.
I created two Motion Paths to 'slide' the navigation panel in and out; one goes to the right, the other to the left.
Finally, I tied everything together using my "ShowNav" variable.
I pasted all of these Triggers onto each slide (which I DO NOT recommend - if there's a way to create this FIRST as part of a 'template' slide, do THAT!)
When each slide is loaded:
Here's how it looks in action:
I don't know if this counts as "easy," but it's what I stumbled on. I did this all pretty much on my own, so there could very well be a better way to do it!
The benefit for me is that there are no additional layers. Everything lives on the base layer of my slide. Since all of the nav elements are contained in a single Group, there's minimal clutter on the Timeline. Working with multiple triggers is somewhat unwieldy: you cannot copy/paste more than one of them at a time from slide to slide, and when you do c&p them the triggers do not retain their conditional settings, so each one has to be manually adjusted for every slide. (That's why I recommend that you build the nav into a master template slide.)
I hope this helps.
Hi Justin.
Thanks so much for this - you are my hero!
Will save my sanity and weekend.
Many thanks.
Jane
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