Forum Discussion
Text-Entry Fields shine through Hidden Objects
Greatings to all,
I have a scrolling panel. In this I have many text-entry-fields. If user clicks them they trigger hidden rectangles (act as Dropdown-menus) to status "normal", so the rectangles become visible.
Problem is, that these hidden rectangles overlap and that if I hover over the visible rectangles (Dropdownmenus) each text entry field is valid. So if I click onto the rectangle, I click "through" it into the text entry field that lies below it. So all text entry field shine through the ractangles that have status "normal".
The effect is that the below, not visible, text entry field is triggered and opens the dropdownmenu
and this is not intended.
Anybody a clue to solve this easy?
Currently I let move the text entryfields away in 0,1 sec via motion path away and back. But this would take me to much time to set all those many fields up.
I am curious for a solution.
Thorsten
3 Replies
You're fighting a known Storyline quirk: text-entry fields get rendered as HTML inputs sitting above the slide, so they don't obey the normal show/hide stacking the way shapes do. A field in the Hidden state can still grab hover and focus — which is exactly what you're seeing.
Your motion-path workaround is actually the standard fix — park the inactive fields off the slide instead of just hiding them. Two refinements:
1. Park them on timeline start (one trigger each) rather than mid-interaction — no 0.1s shuffle while the learner is hovering.
2. If only one field is visible at a time, reuse a single text-entry field and route its value into a different variable per slot. Then there's only ever one input on the slide to manage.
One revisit check: make sure the parking triggers fire on every visit. If the slide is set to "Resume saved state," a parked field stays parked on revisit (good). If it's "Reset to initial state," the timeline-start triggers re-fire and re-park everything (also fine). The broken case is parking them on some other event that doesn't repeat.
Thank you, Ronald. That's too bad. I have over 20 text entry fields in the scroll element. As there is no proper way (teach me wrong please!) to select motion path precise and quick, except of using the "tab"-key, I am going to leave it as it is. I have shortened the dropdownmenu-images to not cover entry fields.
Fair enough — and yes, you can do better than the tab key: click the field's name in the Timeline panel to select it precisely, then click its motion path right there in the timeline and drag the endpoints on the slide. Still a pass through all 20, but much quicker than tab-cycling.
