Forum Discussion
How to Make Topmost Layer Always Showing in Storyline
Hi Everyone
I have two buttons in the topmost layer in Storyline. There are two layers below the topmost layer. Each button will show a layer and hide the others.
The problem is the topmost layer will be hidden if a button gets clicked. I don't see any checkbox to prevent a layer from being hidden when another layer shows up.
Is there a way to prevent the topmost layer from getting hidden? (JavaScript would also be fine)
I added a second trigger to each button, after the existing 'show layer' trigger, that shows your 'Always on Top Layer' again. The hide fires first, then the next trigger puts the top layer straight back, so it looks like it never went away. Just had to make sure the top layer itself didn't have 'Hide other slide layers' ticked in its properties also. Seems to work fine...
9 Replies
I added a second trigger to each button, after the existing 'show layer' trigger, that shows your 'Always on Top Layer' again. The hide fires first, then the next trigger puts the top layer straight back, so it looks like it never went away. Just had to make sure the top layer itself didn't have 'Hide other slide layers' ticked in its properties also. Seems to work fine...
Thanks! I guess that's the workaround, although the top layer's timeline gets reset on each button click.
It would be better if there was a checkbox to prevent the top layer from being hidden, but that would be the Storyline developer's choice....
I would love more manual control over when and how layers show. l actually just posted something in the Suggestions section about us being allowed to control layers hiding and showing with JavaScript. Give it an upvote if you agree.
I'd also like to add that you don't need a trigger to hide the Always-on-Top-Layer in order to reshow it. You're right that does restart the timeline. If you simply add another Show trigger, Storyline will redraw the existing Top Layer at a higher z-order without resetting the timeline of the top layer:
The layers "show" sequentially from top to bottom.
You could set the layer properties to not hide other layers and also set the top layer to resume state
Thanks! I didn't know we could make layer timeline resume
Here's another option for consideration leveraging Master Slides and variables. This option affords you the ability to make changes to the format of the contents within the "Top Layer" one time in lieu of having to update each instance of that layer across the slides of your project.
Thank you! Your solution is more complicated to set up than DShaw 's, but it also works
