Forum Discussion
Pause button doesn't function if there are slide layers??
I am working on a course that has three layers. Based on what the user declares at the beginning of the course, a variable is set and they are shown the appropriate material. Most of the slides have three layers for this. A number of slides are also single layer meaning the content for all three types of users is idential so layering isn't needed.
After the course is published, on the slides that have layers, the pause button does not functionally pause the slide's progress. You can see the pause button change to a play button. You can also see the scrub bar stop. However, the audio and animations continue to play. On the slides where there is only the main layer, the pause/play works just fine.
Any ideas why this doesn't work? Is it a bug or am I completely missing a setting? I've been looking and looking and just can't seem to figure this out.
20 Replies
Good Afternoon, Sandra.
Have you seen David's Knowledge Base Article on How to pause the timeline of a slide? You'll also find some variations on this theme within the following Forum Threads and Screenrs:
- Dennis demonstrates an example
- Gerry echoes David's method, and additional discussion ensues
- Mike comes through with some cool ideas on pausing and resuming a video
- Another awesome Screenr from Mike on interactive video
Good luck with your project!
All good examples. My situation is slightly different. The base layers on my slides do not hold the course content. The layers do. Each layer has its own audio. I don't want to pause the base layer, I need users to be able to pause they layer they are viewing. Do you think David's method would work in this situation? Just add additional pause layers for each layer of the course? I'd still love to explore and play with this idea as I think/wish the pause/play button should function no matter what layer is being viewed by the user.
In the meantime, in order to continue getting this course ready for my client, my work around is to remove the pause/play/scrubbar and change the properties of the previous button to a replay button. Users won't be able to actually pause the course but they will have the option to replay the slide after it stops at the end of the timeline. My client seems to be ok with this for now.
Hello again, Sandra!
I'm glad you found an effective workaround, and I believe Dennis's second example in this thread addresses your need. Michael's post here is another creative alternative.
Good luck and have fun with it!
what about using javascript to activate the Storyline Player Pause button??
Hi Randy,
I did a quick look through the forums to see if there was some similar discussion on using Javascript to use the built in play/pause button and didn't find anything. There are a number of community members who are well versed in Javascript who I hope will chime in here to let you know if they've set up something similar.
Hi Community - Any chance there has been an enhancement in the last two years that easily allows the learner to access the play/pause button when they are on a slide layer?
Hi Kim,
If you are referring to the seekbar play/pause button - the seekbar is on a slide level, but you can enable seeking on the slide layers as detailed here. If you do that, the seekbar elements will be accessible and referring to that layer - but the overall play pause won't have an impact on the base layer as well. You can set up slide layers to pause the base layer as a default.
Hi Ashley, the pause button is a page object and should be able to pause all media on a page. When layers are used for subtitles (I have a lesson with 7 optional languages), the pause button does not pause the page, it only pauses that layer.
If I'd known I'd have to build custom functionality, I would have done this from the start. This must affect everyone who uses layers and must appear as a regular feature request going back years:
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/pause-layer-timeline
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/pause-play-button-question
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/slide-pause-problems
The community have fantastic solutions, without which I would be stuck on many occasions, but please can we either get seek bar functionality working properly or provide easy to implement custom navigation tools so authors can build their own?
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for linking all those other discussions here too. I know there are a few things our team is looking at in terms of the seekbar/timeline functionality. The built-in pause button on the seekbar should work to pause the slide timeline and items on there such as audio or animation. As for any media, items such as web objects will be externally linked and not something you'd be able to pause from within Storyline.
Happy to pass this all along as a feature idea to our team, and please also feel free to share your own ideas as feature requests here to send directly to our product team!
Hello, I have created a short course. Many of the slides have multiple layers. The way the course works, the course proceeds from slide to slide, layer to layer. So, at the moment, if a person gets interrupted while on a layer, there's no way to pause. This morning, every time I want to pause but can't, I'm closing the browser, then resuming when I want to continue. We can't expect LMS users to do that -- they'll just let it run and miss some of the course. The pause button needs to be standard, always available functionality. The developer shouldn't have to program around it. Thanks.
