Forum Discussion
In Storyline, how can I prevent the Player Next button from working until all layers are visited?
I am using Storyline.
I have a large course with many slides. One slide has four layers in it. I want the player's next button to remain inactive until all of the layers are viewed. Each layer has several icons to be viewed, as well as a close button to go back to the main layer.
How can I prevent the player's next button from being active UNTIL each layer has been viewed?
I added a Storyline file to help with this solution.
6 Replies
There are a few ways to control the Next button in that situation. They start with disabling Next when the timeline starts on the slide.
- To prevent that from happening if the user revisits the slide, the trigger should include the necessary conditions.
When using Dialog layers (which prevent interacting with the Player options), a trigger could enable Next when all the buttons on the base reach the Visited state.
Otherwise, use T/F variables to track that each layer has been viewed. Trigger each variable to change to True when the user completes the layer (e.g., they click all the icons, or the timeline ends). Then, on each layer, also add a trigger that enables Next when the timeline on the layer ends with the conditions that all the variables = True.
You can find a file that demonstrates this here:
One thing I'd add to Judy's answer: locking Next doesn't lock the other exits. The player menu is the big one — if your menu lists slides, learners can click ahead and skip the gated slide entirely. Set the menu to Restricted in Player settings, or turn it off for a fully linear course. Same with the seekbar: scrubbing the base timeline never opens your layers, so if your player shows one, treat it as another bypass route to test.
My hand-test checklist for this pattern, in the published output (not just preview):
1. Visit all four layers in any order → Next enables.
2. Return to the slide → Next is still enabled (this is the one that catches most builds — the conditional trigger Judy described handles it).
3. Try the menu and the seekbar → no bypass.
If step 3 fails your requirements, that's when the dialog-layer version Judy mentioned earns its keep — dialog layers block the player chrome entirely.
You can restrict the menu and the seekbar if needed as well
I tried the tutorial linked above. I GIVE UP!!! I can't get it to work!
If you were to upload a .story file here with just that slide in it (and the content obfuscated), someone could tell you what the issue is, probably within hours.
After you double-check that the player settings for the slide are not going to override this slide (as others have suggested), put something on the last layer to force the "Next" button to appear.
A simple way that I have done this is to look at the timeline for the layer, then add a cue point near the end (maybe 3-4 seconds before the end). Then add a trigger: Change state of Next button to Active when timeline reaches Cue Point #1.
The "next" button should then become enabled when the timeline reaches that point. You can also set the trigger to just force the state change at the end of the timeline and ignore the suggestion about a cue point.
Also - check the placement of the trigger in the trigger panel (I would show a screenshot but I am not able to capture one at the moment). Triggers are executed in the order they are listed, so if the "change state of Next button" trigger is way down the list, then it's not going to happen until all the other triggers have been tripped. So move that trigger to the top of the list (or as near as you can) and then see whether that solves the problem.
And as CarlFink1 suggested - share a copy of the slide and you're likely to get a rapid response.
