Forum Discussion
New in Rise 360: Enhanced Block Settings and Block Contrast Controls
Get ready to do even more with the block settings menu—that little menu that appears when you hover over a block. You can still move, duplicate, or delete your block and edit block content, but now you can also adjust the design and apply new contrast settings!
Move, Duplicate, Delete, and Design!
Eagle-eyed Rise 360 users will notice a new design icon that looks like a painter's palette on the right-hand side toolbar. Click that to open the all-new format and background tabs.
Similar to the previous format tab, the new format tab has options such as padding and color selection for block items, such as button colors. But now, instead of having to guess how many pixels you need between blocks, you can quickly apply small, medium, or large padding options. If you speak pixels, that's cool, too. You can still dial in exact pixel-widths by clicking the more icon.
The background tab is where you can make your content really stand out. Select an option here to fill all the white space around your block content with your color of choice. It's like course theme header background colors—but at the individual block level.
In addition to standard light and dark options, you can add your theme color (or a lighter tint of it) as well as a custom color or an image.
Constant Contrast
When you apply a custom color background, you also get access to block-level contrast options: Auto, Light, and Dark.
With Auto selected, text and graphic elements conform to an accessible 4.5:1 ratio. Even if you select a different color, text and graphic elements change from light to dark as needed to preserve contrast. And if you don't want your content elements changing automatically, you can select Light or Dark.
We've got contrast on the brain when it comes to image backgrounds as well. When you select an image background, you can now adjust the overlay just like you can on a course cover photo). This option makes your background image lighter or darker by adjusting its opacity by percentage. Your content will really pop!
If you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber, you can access this new feature immediately in Rise 360. And if you don’t have Articulate 360 but want to try out this feature, you can start a free 30-day trial. For more detailed information about this feature, check out our user guide: Rise 360: Enhanced Block Settings.
We're excited to bring you even more options for customizing your content. Let us know if this hits the mark—or if we can do even more to make your content shine! Share your experience in the comments below. We love to hear your feedback.
I am waiting for the articulate developers to realize they are just playing catch-up and are far from bringing any type of innovation.
Accessibility hasn't been considered in these updates. Turning off white background on cards for some reason removes play button colour on audio which means people with visual impairment that need audio TTS, can't see the play button in order to listen to text.
Accessibility in general across the platform such as making components WACG compliant would be more useful than an different UI in the editor. If you are going to improve the editor, at least a brand tool kit to allow custom swatches so we can apply brand without needing to add the hex for everything and change default body font size of every component.
Also why oh why is Storyline still only available on windows operating system? All the modern authoring tools work across systems for Windows or iOS Apple ? But not Storyline, nope, windows only - crazy - and no please don't suggest Parallels etc - have been there and done that and it is not great.
Whilst this 'cosmetic' update is nice I wish Articulate would listen more to their customers as there are far more pressing things that need fixing yet we continue to wait - like being able to add your whole team as 'course managers' to a course in one click - at the moment this is a very long and painful time consuming process - we build out about 180 courses a quarter and there are a team of 18 - we have to MANUALLY input each person one at a time to each course so we can all see them - the current process is so archaic and out of date - other authoring tools I have used allow you to put people into 'teams' or workgroups' and you then simply assign that workgroup/team to the course - but not with Rise, you have to do every person individually - COME ON ARTICULATE!! listen please!!
Hi there, Lee. We may have some good news on this front very soon. 🙂
Great stuff!!!
The format and edit bar is now over the top of the text, particularly noticable when the comments bar is also enabled. Is there any way to make the buttons less obtrusive?
Not a problem when I'm on my 4k monitor, but when just on the laptop screen it's all a bit squeezy.
Thank you for the screenshot, Tim! We'll see how we can make those controls behave better when screen space is tight.
Did this new update also remove the other functions such as resizing images and choosing the left or right side? All I can see in this update are padding and colours.
Hi there, Sara! For the Image & text block, the Image position and size controls are now under the Format tab in the new design icon on the right of the block.
Agree with previous statements that this is disappointing.
There are so many other enhancements that would have a significant impact not only on user satisfaction but efficiency in creating and managing courses on this platform.
Key examples include:
- Indicating settings at the top level for block types so they could remain for the entire course (examples include font color for Headings, Subheadings, Paragraph, or setting images as centered for all Process or Accordion blocks)
- Click & dragging blocks to adjust (vs. the repeated clicking of arrows)
- Giving users the ability to click multiple blocks and move them all up together.
- Not having "share with team" as the default when you create block templates. This contributes to clutter in block libraries.
- Let the author stick in the search field (when searching for a block template) and allow multiple selections for blocks to simultaneously delete multiple old blocks (vs. having to reselect author each time, click to delete, then do again for each. individual. block). This process is cumbersome and infuriating.
- Dashboard Organization! Being able to set a default view (like courses I own being first in view), being able to filter by authors, and a working search field with a more comprehensive search (like search authors, lessons, etc.)
This is a disappointing update. There are so many more improvements that should have been prioritized. Was this that high of a priority?
Being able to drag and sections/blocks instead of using those ridiculously small arrows to move them around one click at a time (being able to group sections together to move them at one time instead of separately), better organizing of the Rise course list so that the course I am working on is always at the top (can't they be pinned?), setting styles that can be repeated instead of having to adjust each and every time etc.Hi Rebecca,
On your list of Rise courses page, you can change the default display option from display list according to Title to display according to most Recent edited course.
That will put the course you are currently working on at the top.
Yes, I know that is an option but when someone else, who shared a course with me, edits their course my course gets kicked down because their course is the "most recent" to get edited. I work on a huge team with many shared courses. If we are all working on those different courses at the same time (which happens frequently), I have to constantly look for my course.
As the other user said, the default view should be MY COURSES or make the folders more useful by selecting a folder to be the default view, not ALL courses.
There are now way too many clicks to change a block's background color or specify the padding number. These were easy to pick or paste a hex code when the settings were on the left side under edit. Why the opposite side of the screen?!!? Unnecessary mouse movement. Disappointing UI update.
Just gonna echo, more clicks, wrong side and I always use Hex codes.....if enough users are not happy, is it possible to roll back and then perhaps tweak a few of those ideas....just a thought...
I agree that the new Icon belongs on the left side as it is related to the appearance of the block contents.
Functionally, the block appearance settings (Design icon) do not belong on the right with Move block up/down, copy block and delete block.
