Forum Discussion
Back button returns me to the last visited slide and not to the previous direct slide
From purely a programming perspective: considering that one can create adaptive paths and triggers from any slide, it makes sense that previous means going back to the previously viewed slide. It doesn't make sense that previous is a slide from which the user has not visited.
For example, if you are on Slide 10 and click something that goes to slide 20 and then click previous, the expected user behavior is to go back to the previous location slide 10 and not slide 19.
If you want the previous slide to mean the slide in sequential order, then it's probably best to create a linear series of slides and not allow the user to jump out of order thus previous would always represent the previous slide in order.
Is this how everyone is thinking over at Articulate, explaining why the feature hasn't even been added to the roadmap yet? From purely a programming perspective, you introduced the sidebar menu, which allows the author to efficiently enable learners to track their progress and return to a previous viewed slide. Including this as a "toggle on feature" for the author and then forcing them to manually link every previous slide makes the sidebar menu NOT a "toggle on feature."
From purely a learner perspective: "Hmm, where was that thing I just read?" [Learner clicks on slide 1.6 in the sidebar menu.] "Nope... Maybe it was the slide just before this one?" [Learner clicks back button because they intuitively understand that the next button moved them forward one slide and so the back button should move them backward in the sequence one slide as it has up until this point]. "Wait, where am I? Why am I back in Chapter 3? Bleh, I hate eLearning. It's so broken."
No learner ever clicked on a button to view an appendix slide, returned to the main content slide, and then clicked the previous button on the main content slide and thought, "Oh thank god, I'm back on the appendix slide like I wanted to be."
Back to our programming perspective, Articulate is obviously already considering sequence in how they load NEXT slides into the DOM. Just add an option for the author to toggle their preference and then load previous sequence slides into memory instead of storing the previously viewed slide in memory.
You'll also note that in Rise, from purely a programming perspective, when the learner scrolls to the top of the lesson and clicks the PREVIOUS button, they return to the lesson previously in SEQUENCE, not to whatever lesson they were previously on despite that "one can create adaptive paths and triggers from any slide."
