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.

To get around this for now, I created a plain starting slide and set a trigger to jump to next slide when timeline ends on slide 1.1. The timeline is less than 1 second so the slide isn't even seen. Doing this removed the play button and gray overlay when published. :)

I don't understand why ends users always have to apply some sort of work around when an update is not well tested. I loaded three courses before the latest 360 update with Chrome 66 and they are deployed as designed. The last two courses I upload to our LMS with the latest 360 update, are giving me the "PLAY" button. What I am saying is, if it was a Chrome issue, then why are my first three course work without the play button? All of the course has an audio file on the first slide.

I understand why this was added, but that play button looks pretty bad. The triangle could at least be centered on the button.

It's worth noting that the play button is not showing keyboard focus, is not detected by JAWS and does not appear responsive to any keyboard commands I've tried, so it essentially renders projects inaccessible.

In my experience, adding a blank slide doesn't 100% solve the problem... because I find that Chrome (or also Firefox) needs an action (e.g. a click) before the audio can start, so if I put the slide with a duration of 0.25 and then a transition "when timeline ends" to the "real" starting slide, it stays stuck until I click or do something... or am I doing something wrong here?

IMPORTANT! - a fix if you have a PLAY button appearing at start of courses

FionaWilliams-6
Community Member
6 years ago
I've just applied this fix to one of my courses for testing.

It does work, but for some reason the audio on the original slide (was the first slide, now the 2nd slide) won't play at all unless I click the mouse somewhere on the screen. Has anyone else had this???
PhilMayor
Super Hero
6 years ago
You can get round the play button by ensuring the first screen has no media and requires the user to click to move to the next screen, jumping on timeline start end, cue point will not work.
Will_Findlay
Community Member
6 years ago
Just make sure not to use the On Restart: Always Resume option with courses. This bypasses showing the screen that gives the user the option to resume or restart the course when they come back into the course. Instead it takes them directly to the last slide they were on. If the last slide they were on included audio or video, it won't play.
AlexNevels-1f2b
Community Member
5 years ago
Totally get the rationale behind this. However, I wish it wouldn't throw up the grey box when audio is on a tab, since it requires a click. Having to reprogram some 'classic' tabbed interactions with VO on the tabs...
BarbaraGold-59e
Community Member
5 years ago
going to try this. thank you. been driving me nuts.
NicholasChua
Community Member
5 years ago
I tried to remove any audio or video from the first slide of the course, just like what you said just put the Start button and go to next slide. However, i still can see the play button screen. Did i miss out something ? Hope someone can help me to get the answer.
- JeffForrer
  Community Member
  5 years ago
  Try this file and see what your results are.
  
  If you publish, you should not see the Play button as the click sound is on slide 2.
  
  However, if you copy the click sound on the timeline from slide 2 to slide 1, then republish, you should see the Play button.
  Start.story119 KB
ChrisRoetzer-46
Community Member
5 years ago
So I tripped over this annoying play button issue today as I have an audio music track play on my title slide (as well as slides 2 and 3); I see the grey screen/play media button when looking at the course in Review 360 for the title slide (slide 1).

I haven't poured thru the preceding 97 comments but I need a clickable button on the first slide that contains audio or video to start/begin and that should resolve? or is the answer both a 1/4 sec slide with a start button (no audio) followed by slide 2 that does have audio, but slide 2 also needs a start/play media triggered button too?

So annoying and confusing, thanks Chrome.
MichelleFred507
Community Member
5 years ago
Hummm, that's super weird. I have all my courses set up this way and it just skips right over the first slide and the audio starts on the second. I have the first slide set to automatically advance. Not sure why it wouldn't work that way for you. My first slide is also set up with the timeline at .25 of a second. I have a trigger on my first slide "Jump to next slide when timeline ends on this slide.

Not sure why that doesn't work for you guys.
AyeshaNaseer
Community Member
4 years ago
Hi everyone,

I am using the scorm packages in an app and my client doesn't want the play button to appear (make the package autoplay). Is there a way that it can be removed using some code to change the scorm package within articulate? since the scorm code is unreachable from the app api.
MariaCS
Staff
4 years ago
Hi, everyone.

We appreciate your patience while our team investigated this.

I am happy to share some great news! We fixed the issue you reported where:
Engage Interactions Overlaid with Play Button in Chrome

Be sure to install the latest Storyline 360 update (Build 3.50.24668.0) to take advantage of all the recent features and fixes.

If the problem happens again, please let us know, or you can always work directly with our support engineers here.