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ZsoltOlah's avatar
ZsoltOlah
Super Hero
23 days ago

Mysterious problem with overlay: getting stuck with dots

To support learning designers combining Rise and Storyline I've built an engine that they can use to track any activity from the embedded Storylines and even communicate information between embedded Storylines. So, imagine something like gaining a key in one and opening the door in another. Or, do an assessment in one Storyline and adapt your content in another within the same Rise. 

But, it took me 10 hours to figure out this mysterious problem with the overlay. So, I figured someone might find this useful. Randomly, when I switched slides the slide loaded but the overlay with "waiting" dots got stuck. It didn't happen all the time. 

After all the troubleshooting it came down to a single thing that seemingly has nothing to do with slide transitions: when you set a variable to null. 

Those of you who are not programmers, null is a valid JavaScript value that represents intentional absence. Let's say you have a text variable. The value null means that it is not yet given any value. Not even a blank or empty string. Or, if you have a number and 0 means something for you but originally it should not have any value, it's null. 

But, apparently, when you set a Storyline variable to null, somehow messes up the system. Just an FYI. Again, only affects those using JavaScript. 

On the bright side, once I fixed that, the logic worked, so now people can embed multiple Storyline modules that communicate with each other through the LMS. 

  • This is good to know. I think this is worth reporting as a bug, a null is definitely a valid value. As Articulate start to expand the JavaScript capabilities in Storyline too, this issue might rear it's head for a few more people. I'd rather see this fixed than have to remember it.

    The work you are doing sounds interesting. I made some experiments myself with Storyline blocks sharing data, e.g text input, and then showing a summary in an output Storyline block. Fortunately, I wasn't using any null values, but I've definitely lost multiples of 10 hours on SL bugs before!

  • blockbench's avatar
    blockbench
    Community Member

    you uncovered a tricky issue with the overlay and the use of the "waiting" dots in your engine, especially when working with embedded Storyline modules in Rise. The problem was related to setting a variable to null, which caused unexpected behavior, even though null is a valid value in JavaScript to represent an empty or undefined state. This can be tricky, as it seemed unrelated to slide transitions but was actually interfering with the system's functionality. The good news is that by resolving this, you've made it possible for multiple Storyline modules to communicate with each other seamlessly, which is a great solution for learning designers. It's helpful that you shared this discovery, as it can save others a lot of time in troubleshooting similar issues!