Slides vs Layers, what's your preference?

Hi Diarmaid, 

 Really appreciate the feedback and am glad this conversation topic resonated with you! I agree, I think a lot of content delivery depends on the material, audience and preference of the creator. Few answers/clarifications: 

Item 1: under the publish menu / LMS-LRS tab / if you click the 3 dots next to the Title field you are taken to the Project Info tab. There under Duration, Storyline will automatically total your project's length, but only for the timelines on your base layer slides (not your individual layers). I submitted an enhancement request to add layer timeline durations to this calculation but no feedback yet other than it was received. 

Item 2: we are the same way, users need to view all of our content. If you enable the seeker on layers users see the seekbar and can pause the content. This has helped our users who feel "lost" and not in control of content on multiple layers where the instruction continues and they cannot stop it to take notes. Under your player controls if you set your seeker as "Allow drag after completion" users cannot drag the seekbar themselves. When they revisit a slide/layer they can manipulate the seeker bar but only after the slide/layer has fully completed first. I use the default prev/next buttons on slides (layers don't have them). You could get the same result with your variable, the enable seekbar is just a faster "fix" that I use. 

Item 3: that is correct that all slide/layer accessible text/instructions appear in a slide/layer focus order but they need to be reset (default is layers first and base layer last). Additionally, it can cause some confusion if a screenreader advances to the layer accessible text before clicking the variable to advance to the layer. The following forum discussion is very helpful in explaining the nuances and I almost commented there instead of starting this new post: https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/focus-order-question. 

Item 4: absolutely agree, a default application would save time on this one!

Item 5: so we offer technical training for accounting software and most of our users are accountants or have a finance-focus. We've received feedback that they would prefer to just repeat a slide for note-taking/if they missed something but with layers when you repeat a section it kicks you back to the base layer and you have to them advance to the layer in question. My thought was that if instead of layers I used a series of slides that are indented on the side menu users would more easily be able to replay the slide in question rather than hunting for it within layers. You can indent your menu items from the player window / menu option and indented slides would imply they are "sub-chapters" to the "parent" slide. 

I've found both these forums and linkedIn Learning extremely helpful in 1. learning this application and 2. keeping up on the latest and greatest enhancements. 

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Will