Mobile Play button Storyline 360 block in Rise
Mar 12, 2020
By
Sam Hill
I have a simple, single slide Storyline 360 block inserted into rise.
The Storyline block does not have any media in it (Video/Audio).
On mobile, the Storyline block appears with a play button which must be clicked before the block is initialised.
Why does this play button appear when the Storyline 360 content does not contain any media. I understand the need if there is media to get around the issue of autoplay media for mobile, but the play button is completely redundant in this case.
Is there a JavaScript API I can access in SL to get around this issue. I've been looking through the code, the best I could find was this.onStart(), but I don't think this is a public method.
41 Replies
I'll add another current voice to requesting this. Can't believe the 'expected behaviour' has not been added to in 4+ years with this. At the very least, let us theme the colours of the background and play button and perhaps a text prompt within the feature (everyone's thumbnail idea would be nice too).
I wish it wasn't becoming so common for me to look up how to work around something by Articulate, find a post from someone else 4+ years ago, a positive word from an Articulate staffer and zero action.
Hi Larry!
In the July 2021 update of Storyline 360, we added a cover photo feature that allows you to choose your own image that will appear when you view the Storyline content on a mobile device, including in Storyline Blocks! Read more about that feature in the article below:
Thanks Alyssa - so you did! Just had a play, and it works well. Great job team, keep it up!
Another user who would like to remove the play button from mobile devices to keep the thread going. I built a calculator (only could using SL) and would like my users to be able to just interact with it when pulling up the page without hitting play. Thank you.
I use the cover photo and now I get the play button on the cover photo. This is on desktop. I haven't been able to get around the Play button, even though adding a trigger to jump to next slide would do it, but that doesn't work
This is crazy that removing this "Play" arrow on a Storyline Block is not a priority. SL Blocks are not needed for "Media" in Rise, and I do not know a single developer who thinks these play arrows are useful in any way. They are a poor user experience in almost every way we utilize SL blocks. This is actually hindering us from creatively enhancing our Rise courses with SL Blocks. PLEASE reconsider the urgency in correcting this issue on Mobile devices. Thank you.
I jumped ship bc of stuff like this. Now I create the courses in Wordpress. And the export the classes as html. So much better.
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Enough is enough; after paying a hefty amount for this package, there is no resolution to this problem. I would not buy this the next time. Can anybody please suggest some good alternatives for Rise 360?
I used Wordpress with Learndash. My client was super happy after mounting frustration with Rise.
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Hi Chema,
I have successfully been using a Button block which triggers exiting the course. More obvious than the additional exit button at the top.
Hi Sam. I know, it's been a few years since this was written, but sadly the issue still remains.
I wonder, what exactly do you mean by "making a post publish/export edit"? What kind of edit would that be? I'm curious to try. Thank you.
Hi Felix,
Can you clarify what you mean about a button block? Are you talking about the button block that is in Rise? Are you talking about adding a button to the storyline block? I'd love to see an example - I'm currently trying to trouble shoot this big black play button issue on Rise mobile.
Thanks in advance
Nicole, if you are trying to problem solve the big play arrow, I am re-pasting my post from a year ago (sorry for the long post). Until this is fixed, you can select a thumb nail image when you publish your SL Block that will at least replace the black box.
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This is crazy that removing this "Play" arrow on a Storyline Block is not a priority. SL Blocks are not needed for "Media" in Rise, and I do not know a single developer who thinks these play arrows are useful in any way. They are a poor user experience in almost every way we utilize SL blocks. This is actually hindering us from creatively enhancing our Rise courses with SL Blocks. PLEASE reconsider the urgency in correcting this issue on Mobile devices. Thank you.
I can't believe that this is still an issue.
We have several customers complaining about the SL blocks showing up with a black box and a play button on mobile, so NO - this is not expected behaviour. It's not expected behaviour that your course looks completely different when viewed on mobile instead of a PC.
Another problem is that once you've pressed play and finished your SL block exercise, users will intuitively press the continue button underneath the SL block. But unfortunately, you can't access the continue button underneath because you need to first close the SL block by pressing the tiny x in the upper right (or left) corner. This is if you have player controls turned off in SL.
If you have player controls on in SL, you can "hide" the continue button underneath until the user realises that he/she needs to close the SL block before they can continue. The problem with this is that if you turn player controls on, the spacing between the x at the top and the exercise gets too wide (when viewing in an LMS), so the user needs to scroll all the way down to the exercise (if he/she even realises that there is an exercise there). It's just not possible to make a proper working user experience when using SL blocks in Rise and viewing on a mobile. It's very frustrating. At this point - we just can't use SL and Rise together. Because in this day and age, everyone wants to be able to view their e-learning on a mobile device...
It is very disappointing to read that the original post was 4 years ago and there has still been no solution rolled out to make Rise fully responsive when using storyline blocks due to the big black play button screen. Can this kindly be prioritised please?
Here to echo the other comments, the thumbnail is nice but it's extremely unfortunate that you still can't have blocks auto-playing on mobile without the horrible button.
As others have highlighted it ruins the user experience and limits creativity for designers. It's very disappointing when it could be an excellent tool to help create better visuals and interactions. With so many users now viewing content on mobile or tablet, and so many articulate customers requesting this feature, it would be great to see this become a priority.
Additionally, it would be great to be able to toggle on and off the full-screen mode for storyline blocks on mobiles or tablets. Some elements will likely never need the user to zoom in e.g. just for enhanced visuals or a small animation, and as others have pointed out it can limit course navigation if the user doesn't see the very faint controls to exit the zoom state.