Perpetual Notepad for Storyline

***UPDATE***

Hi everyone, there has been some fantastic feedback which I really appreciated. I've taken many of the suggestions and woven them into a new version of the notepad. It can now do much more and can be fully configured to your requirements directly from the top of the JavaScript. Make sure that if you change the Storyline player size, that you also adjust the size of the notepad UI in the JavaScript.

I have added loads of functions / features and made it as accessibility compliant as I could. I have designed the UI and the Storyline setup to be used either in Rise (as it is) as a Storyline Interactive Block, or in Storyline itself via a Lightbox triggered from the Player (or any other trigger). I have removed the slots function as it was causing more issues than they were worth. 

The notepad is perpetual in both Storyline (on the LMS), and in Rise. It achieves this in a combination of ways:

1. Saving notes to localStorage immediately after the user pauses typing
2. Saving notes to SCORM suspendData (using LZ compression) (automated and manual saves)
3. Saving notes to Storyline variables via the snapShot functions  

This means that ideally the learner will use the same device to complete their learning, in which case localStorage on that device maintains a copy of the notes. The JavaScript automatically populates the UI with these notes by retrieving them from the cache on every revisit. However, what if the device's cache or memory is purged?

Well, in that scenario, we have the fallback that the notes are also saved automatically in Storyline variables, using the Snap feature. The JavaScript will check the notes on every revisit and if they are found to be empty it will automatically repopulate the notes from these snapshots. The user can also do this themselves via a button, though hopefully they probably won't ever have to.

This means the learner can use pretty much any device and still see their previous notes in their Rise course every time they open it up. It should also self-recover the notes where the device cache / history was cleared.

This project was developed as a fun activity using AI.

That's the principle of it all anyway. If you would like to see if it actually works here is the file. Let me know how you get on by dropping a note here. If you develop it further, please share it with us on this page.  

This version has been converted to be compatible with the production version. (27/11/25)