Forum Discussion

MicheleBuddie's avatar
MicheleBuddie
Community Member
6 days ago

Storyline 360: Variables in the built-in player Menu

I like to use master slide title placeholders for my slides, which, when populated on a slide, will automatically name the slide the same title, and in turn automatically be used in the built-in Table of Contents Menu in the player. 

I also like to use variables in my slide titles. However, these variables do not show up in the Menu - they render as %my_variable%.

I don't need this variable to adjust while people interact with the slide (the variable doesn't change while on the slide), I just need the variable to render the text value.

Example: I have a 200 slide file, and slides 51-150 have titles of "Step 1," "Step 2," "Step 3" etc. all the way to Step 100.

I don't want to have to manually type that out, especially if we end up inserting a new slide/step on slide 52. That would mean I'd have to manually update slide titles for slides 52-151.

Instead, I create a variable that represents the step and insert it into the slide title (%current_step_number%). I set current_step_number to Project.slideNumber - 50 to represent the current step number. The slide title renders nicely on the slide, but not in the Menu. In the Menu, slides 51-150 all say "Step %current_step_number%" which is not helpful to learners.

Is there a way around this, or is there something I'm missing that I could use instead? 

  • No this isn't possible, and as you are using the same variable then it would just display one value each time you hit the slide.

    • MicheleBuddie's avatar
      MicheleBuddie
      Community Member

      Thanks for the confirmation it isn't possible! It works so nicely on the slide itself (the number increments/decrements and shows correctly). I'm not sure if my request to change this would be logged as a bug fix or a feature request. I'm leaning toward bug fix but if any Staff want to point me in the correct direction to get this change implemented, I will follow whichever approach is recommended.

  • I would be nice for variables to show in the menu. Even if this was fixed it, I don't think it would work for you, as the current step number must change on each slide, so you would have 100 slides in the menu that said 'Slide 1', and then when you change to step 2 all slides would change to 'Step 2' 

  • Nedim's avatar
    Nedim
    Community Member

    I absolutely agree with Phil. He has clearly explained what would happen when using a custom "currentStepVariable" to change something that is dynamically predefined within Storyline. This isn't a bug; it's a result of modifying the default Storyline settings. However, I do support the feature request.

    If you carefully examine the HTML menu structure, you'll notice that the title items in the menu (including the Scene title) are each a span element with a class of 'linkText'. The title text inside a span element is what actually needs to be updated dynamically, ensuring that the title text does not change to the same value when the menu is loaded and that Scene title names are not affected. You can achieve this only with JavaScript executed on the master slide.

    Example:
    All my slides are named "Untitled." I executed JavaScript on the master slide to ensure that only slides 3, 4, 5, and 6 are renamed to Step 3, Step 4, Step 5, and Step 6, respectively. This solution does not require any custom Storyline variables or built-in Project.SlideNumber variable.