Unable to get rid of padding and set background color to "none" on Storyline Block

May 23, 2019

The Storyline Block in Rise has a peculiar behaviour. Looks like bugs.

There seems to be no way to set the background or canvas color to "none":

But the bigger problem, is that I can't get rid of padding on top and bottom of block.

Anyone else have these issues?

20 Replies
Ned Whiteley

Hi JC,

Light grey is the default background for a Storyline block in Rise.

However, if you click on the chequerboard next to the word Hex in the Settings, you should then get the option to select a background colour for your Storyline block. If your Storyline file has a white background and you select the white option, you won't see any padding margin around the outside even if your padding is greater than zero.

JC Blanchard

Hi Ned,

It's not a question of making the padding the same color as the background. It's a question on getting rid of the padding altogether so that there is no space between blocks. Sometimes you need to do this for design purposes where you want to make 2 consecutive blocks seem like one block. We can do this with all other blocks, why not the Storyline Block? 

As for the background color, why should the Storyline Block behave in a different way than the other blocks? And if the default color for this block is light grey, why does the background color thumbnail show a checkerboard for transparency? 

Yes, I can change the color, but what bugs me is the time lost trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. If padding cannot be zero, why show it at zero in settings? If the background cannot be transparent, then why show the checkerboard pattern? This all leads to confusion and time lost posting messages on forums. Consistency should be part of a good software.

Ned Whiteley

Hi JC,

I must admit that it is strange why the Storyline block should act differently to the other blocks, particularly as it appears to be the only one that doesn't have a clear (effectively white) background by default.

The even stranger thing about the padding is that it does reduce each time you select a lower number and yet "no padding" would appear to be about +50px at the top and +70px at the bottom!!

It will be interesting to see staff comments on this one.

Crystal Horn

Hi JC. I wanted to follow up about the color around the Storyline block. The gray you're seeing is a container in the block to hold a place for differently sized Storyline interactions. The container is actually behind the transparent block background of the Storyline block, which is why you can see the gray.

I hope that helps answer some of the confusion with the settings color and what you're seeing. If you are having trouble changing the block background color, please let us know and we'll have a closer look at your project!

Ian Monk

Has there been any explanation or workaround regarding the additional padding on Storyline blocks. I've been trying to remove it by tinkering with the SL player settings, but I haven't had much luck. Like JC, I also combine multiple blocks to look like a single block, but it's difficult to achieve using SL blocks due to the excess padding. There's definitely some design potential that is being lost here.

Crystal Horn

Hi there, James. I'm definitely a human! 🙂 But, I'm sorry that you haven't found the answers you need yet.

We don't have immediate plans to make changes to the padding of any blocks at this point. I understand that the way the Storyline block padding behaves is particularly challenging for some of your design goals. We take customer impact into account for feature requests, so I appreciate you adding your voice.

We'll let you know here if we make changes that will help!

Alyssa Gomez

Hi Leanna! Since Rise is responsive, the Storyline Block will have a different amount of padding depending on the size of the viewer's browser window. Another community member recommends using a 16:9 ratio in a 'small' width setting in this similar discussion. I'll open the floor for other community recommendations, too!

Roman Mario Babirad

+1 the inconsistency with some blocks is really annoying, an update is really needed not only for this storyline block but some others too (background color of process block). I really don't understand why this takes so much time to update, just a small update with only these quality of life changes would make rise so much better.