Forum Discussion
IMPORTANT! - a fix if you have a PLAY button appearing at start of courses
OK, Articulate rolled out an update to Storyline and it seems that now when publishing a course, instead of auto-playing (as before) it now puts a nasty big PLAY button on the first screen.
Hopefully Articulate will roll out a fix (very!) soon.
In the meantime, I have discovered that AUDIO on the opening slide will cause this. Removing the audio, removed the PLAY button and things went back to normal.
Therefore to get round the issue, try what I did - create a tiny opening slide of a flat colour (same as your project background) and set it to be your opening slide.
Worked well for me, and thankfully I can now stop hearing screaming from my clients.
It looks like the problem hasn't been fixed after 2 years. I had a video in the first slide of the project and after I published and played, the grey background and the big play button showed up. I pulled my hair out trying to figure out what had happened this project until I saw this thread.
In fairness to Articulate here, its not a problem of their own creation. The reason you are seeing this big play button is because of the browsers security settings.
Removing any audio or video from the first slide of a course, and putting some sort of interaction requirement there (like a "START" button) should eliminate the issue.
What I would have liked to see from Articulate is some acknowledgement of this, and options for working with this new browser limitation. For example, being able to design the play button which appears, or choose from different options. Even a warning when publishing could be a big help for some.
Agree with Andrew here this is not something that can be “fixed” you can work around the browser limitation and design the slide how you want it to be without media on the first slide. Some options on the default play button would be nice.
Sent from my iPhone
I’ve used the two slide option. Have it auto advance to slide two. Then from there you can pretty much do whatever you want. Just be sure the slides are identical with the first one having no media or it will look goofy.
It’s just getting past that pesky first slide. Good luck! Post again if you need any more info. Happy to help.Hey Michelle, TY for quick reply - While the media play button doesn't appear anymore, the audio on slide 2 won't play when moving to slide 2 when Slide 1 timeline ends (I set 2 sec.), nor will it play even when adding a trigger to Slide 2 to play the audio file when the timeline begins.
What does work though is a triggered "Begin" button on the title slide to jump to slide 2 when clicked; Slide 2's audio auto-played (don't need a play media trigger). So pesky! But getting past the title slide with no media works provided you use a user-triggered jump...
I adjusted shapes/animation so that when Slide 2 appears, it's identical to how the Title slide 1 appeared when its timeline ended (so as you mentioned, nothing changes in the user's view of that transition).
It has to be user initiated. Jumping on timeline end will not work.
Sent from my iPhone
Nice.
In addition, some of my clients are also seeing the big play button on Engage interactions imported into Storyline. It seems to occur whether there is audio in the Engage interaction or not.
Just adding to Ashley's comment - we've isolated it to a Chrome issue with their newest update. But since so many of our learners use Chrome, I appreciate the workaround, Andrew!
Randy Rowley
Just adding to Ashley's comment - we've isolated it to a Chrome issue with their newest update. But since so many of our learners use Chrome, I appreciate the workaround, Andrew!
Youre very welcome Randy. I hope it can be of some help.
In addition to Chrome, Safari and Firefox are about it (or already have?) rolled out similar security features so whether we like it or not (i dont!) looks like we are going to have to deal with it.
Sounds like you have already found Safari to be a culprit too.
Best of luck to you!
I have to amend my last comment - it also appears in Safari. Haven't experienced issues in IE or Edge.
Hi Randy,
Safari implemented a similar change to autoplay before Chrome did. You can read a bit more about it here.
I am getting same issue on PC (FF/Chrome)..
adding blank slide at the beginning solves the problem - but it is not a solution
Hey Dario - thats definitely not my experience (with Firefox).
Firefox just starts auto-playing through that first blank slide, and at 0.25 secs, the "jump to next slide when timeline ends" trigger fires and im on my "real" starting slide.
Its definitely set to "Advance Automatically" in the slide properties?
Hi Andrew,
for me it works in Firefox, but not in Chrome: the dreaded button disappears, but the audio just won't play on the real starting slide. The inspector reports this: "The AudioContext was not allowed to start. It must be resume (or created) after a user gesture on the page."
So it looks like Chrome is waiting for some input on the user's side to start playing the audio, like a click or a gesture. Did you manage to make it work in Chrome too?
Having the same issue and tried the workaround of adding a blank .25 second-long slide at the beginning that jumps to the next slide when the timeline ends, but now the audio on the "real" starting slide doesn't play the first time around. I have to refresh the slide to get the audio to play. I will have to stick the with big play button for now and warn reviewers it might appear.
I published the course to Web and uploaded it to Tempshare and didn't see the big play button. For me, it only seems to be happening in Articulate Review. I'm hoping it doesn't occur in the client's LMS and we're all good...
