Changing state directly from JavaScript?

PLEASE add this capability to the development roadmap!

Yup, this would be an amazing add. It would make SL much more of a go-to tool if more could be accomplished via scripting.

I'd say the ability to target an object is even more important with the removal of jQuery. We need some way to get access to certain objects. I get where "ID" would be problematic, but it could be as easy as allowing us to add a "class" to an object (and as long as that doesn't match up 1:1 with a class declared in the CSS it's ignored by any of the Articulate-generated code) so that we can search for the class name we create, then script to that class.

Actually in SL360 its now quite easy to access any object onscreen by using the 'accessibility' names. You either can set the name on an element and target that... or go for the default names Storyline uses.

Code for accessing any page-element in SL360  would be something like this...

var femaleImg = $("[data-acc-text='female@3x.png']");
gsap.to(femaleImg, {duration:2,x:"-=25"});

This code selects an image with jQuery on my SL-slide which has a filename of female@3x.png and moves that then with Greensocks gsap Tweenmax 3.

At the moment working on some approaches on getting things done in SL with Javascript. Will show more of that later on...

Yes! Thanks so much!

In fact if you keep a close eye on your browser inspector when changing state on a SL-button you will see that the SVG gets edited. So in principle you should be able to call that change with Javascript. I already tried to access it with Gsap, managed to change basic shapes in Storyline with that...but didnot figure out ( yet ) why i cant call a state-change in the SVG...

Just figured out how to trigger states from Javascript. First of all you have to realize that Storyline use SVG to create inline SVG images from any element you import. When inspecting the output you will notice that when you create a new state ( for hover or whatever ) SL actually creates a new image for that state. With some completely absurd names like '6mCzuc95iTc_80_RFFBC7C_DX820_DY820_CX410_CY318.png' ...based upon your original name..and then some... 

with
setAttribute('xlink:href',2ndStateImg); 
you then can activate a state..in fact you are not activating a state but doing exactly the same Storyline does, you are replacing a source image.

I have this working in a sample. However as is, this is still hard to use, due to the way Storyline publishes images with those tough names. Im working on a setup that at start gets all names of the images in your Storyline and then its easy to work with.

Will share that when i got it working...

Although by using the above to change an image, you can somewhat simulate state-changes, its too much trouble as is. You have to detect what images are published in SL's mobile folder... for that you need some php or other server side script. Then you can use the detected file-names to simulate state-changes and replace any given image's src. The biggest issue remains that in complex SL-files you will be clueless what filename belongs to which element in Storyline
So reusing state-images that way is too complicated.

However its easy enough to build some state-behaviour from scratch.
Import images you want to use and write code for any behaviour you need.

Will be creating a sample to show some basics for that..

Any progress on this?   I could really benefit from it.  I have a main menu that needs to change button states based on answers to questions on other pages and it'd be much better to use an

'If <answer> then <change all of these buttons> '

Than having to do a trigger for each one which has gotten very slow and produced some flashing artifacts.  

@Sharon Goza When you want to use states... well it is hard. You however can hide/show images with Javascript. If that suffices for you i can easily mock it up...