Storyline 360: Using Content Library 360 Templates
Your Articulate 360 subscription includes full access to Content Library 360, a collection of professionally-designed slide templates and course assets that dramatically speeds up development and wows your audience. Storyline 360 is tied directly into Content Library 360, so you can browse templates and add them to your e-learning courses with the click of a button. All you need is an internet connection. Be sure to check Content Library 360 often. We're constantly adding new templates to inspire you and keep your designs fresh. Browsing Content Library 360 Adding a Template to Your Project Browsing Content Library 360 First, do any of the following to open the Content Library 360 browser in Storyline: Press Ctrl+Shift+M. Go to the Home tab on the ribbon, click theNew Slidedrop-down arrow, and choose Content Library 360. Go to the Slides tab on the ribbon and click Content Library 360. In Story View, right-click anywhere in the workspace, scroll to New Slide, and choose Content Library 360. In Slide View or Form View, right-click anywhere in the Scenes panel, scroll to New Slide, and choose Content Library 360. Then use the search features at the top of the window and the filters along the left edge to find a template that fits your content and style needs. (Click a filter to enable it. Click it again to clear it.) When you click a slide thumbnail image, its title and description will appear on the right side of the window. Adding a Template to Your Project To add a Content Library 360 template to your project, just browse to it as described above, select it, then click Insert Slide in the lower right corner. It’s that easy! Tip: Import multiple templates at the same time by holding down the Ctrl key or the Shift key and clicking additional thumbnail images. When you add a template from Content Library 360 to your Storyline project: The slide you chose will be automatically added to the current scene. You can use theme colors and theme fonts to quickly customize the template to match your brand requirements or style guide. The theme of the template will be added to the themes gallery on the Design tab of the Storyline ribbon, so you can easily reuse it later. All the layouts for the template will be added to your slide masters, and you may customize them as you’d like. All the layouts for the template will appear in the basic-layouts gallery, making it easier to add new slides from the same template later—even when you’re offline.All About Lightboxes in Storyline 360
Whether you’ve designed a website or simply done your fair share of web surfing, you’ve probably run across lightboxes. They’re often used to display content (particularly images or video on photography websites) while dimming out the web page background. The lightbox feature in Storyline 360 works similarly. Triggering content to be displayed in a lightbox allows the slide of your choice to appear in a pop-up window over the current slide, which is dimmed. Here’s an example: Click here to explore the interactive version and here to download the template. A lightbox allows you to show learners additional content without navigating away from the current slide, which could cause them to lose their spot in the course. This can be especially helpful for stuff like bibliographical references or links to external resources. It’s also great for navigation instructions, a table of contents, or any other supporting assets that need to be available throughout the course. Let’s walk through how to add lightboxes to your Storyline 360 course so your learners can start reaping the benefits of this powerful feature. How Do Lightboxes Work in Storyline 360? In Storyline 360, you can trigger any slide (or series of consecutive slides) to open in a lightbox. The size, placement, and appearance of the lightbox is prebuilt for you, to make it super simple. This includes a red X button that closes the lightbox window automatically when learners click. These features make it quick and easy for you to create a consistent user experience. However, the trade-off is that you can’t customize these lightbox settings. If you’re looking for more control over the size, placement, or appearance of your lightbox content, you can always create your own pseudo lightbox effect using slide layers. To read more about how to do this as well as the pros and cons of this approach, check out this forum discussion: Lightbox Change Size? Pro Tip: When designing content for use in a lightbox, keep scale in mind. The scale of objects on your content screens (e.g., text, buttons, images) will be about 75% of the original slide size. Triggering the Lightbox Once you’ve created content slides for your lightbox, what’s next? To get your content into a lightbox, you’ll need to add a trigger. You’ll find the Lightbox Slide option under the action menu in the Trigger Wizard. Once you’ve selected Lightbox Slide, you’ll need to tell Storyline 360 which slide(s) to open. From the Slide drop-down menu, select the slide you want to appear inside your lightbox. If you’d like a series of slides to be lightboxed (e.g., for a media gallery), you’ll find it’s easier to place those slides into their own scene. That way you can simply select the first slide in that scene from the Slide drop-down and check the Navigation Controls box to allow learners to move forward and backward within that scene of lightboxed slides. You can also use your own navigation buttons, but your learners may find the size of Storyline’s default navigation controls a little easier to see and use. Pro Tip: To keep learners from getting confused, be sure to remove any custom on-slide Forward/Backward navigation buttons or arrows from your lightboxed slides if you’ll be using the default player navigation controls. Once you’ve selected the slides you want to appear in the lightbox, it’s time to tell Storyline 360 when to trigger this effect. From the When drop-down menu, simply select the option that fits your needs. For example, when the user clicks. Next, select the associated object. For example, in the screenshot below, the action to open the lightbox should happen on Slide 1.3 when the user clicks on the Previous button. If you’re using the built-in navigation buttons in Storyline 360, you can also trigger the lightbox to open when the user clicks on buttons built into the player, like Next, Previous, or Submit. Lightboxes can also be triggered to open from a slide or slide layer. Finally, you need to decide whether there are any specific conditions or criteria for launching the lightbox. For instance, what if you only want the learner to be able to access the lightbox after they’ve clicked on all the buttons on a slide, like in the example below: You can specify any conditions to be met by adding conditions to the trigger in the Trigger Wizard, as shown above. For more details on trigger conditions, check out this tutorial: Adding Conditions. Adding a Lightbox to the Course Player It’s one thing to make a lightbox available on a single slide, but what if you want lightboxed content to be accessible throughout your course? No problem! Storyline also gives you the ability to add a lightbox to the course player as an additional tab. Here’s how. From the player properties, select the Features tab. Under the Player Tabs section, click Add New (the blank paper icon): In the Trigger Wizard panel, enter a name for your new tab in the name field—for example, “Contact” for a slide with contact information. This name is what learners will see in the player, so be sure to choose something that makes it obvious what kind of information learners will find there. In the action field of the Trigger Wizard panel, select the lightbox trigger and then choose the content slide(s) you’d like to open up. Just like adding a lightbox to a slide, you can specify conditions for triggering this lightbox effect from the course player. When you’ve finished entering the information for your new tab, click OK. In the adjacent Storyline player preview, you should see your newly added tab. To make sure that your lightbox is functioning properly, simply preview your project and click the newly added tab on the course player. Resources Hopefully this comprehensive look at lightboxes has given you some new ideas for using them in your courses. For even more lightbox design inspiration, check out these helpful resources: How Are You Using Lightbox Slides in E-Learning? 3 Subtle Ways to Integrate Navigation Instructions Storyline Template: Lightbox Tabs Storyline Template: Integrated Navigation Instructions What creative uses have you discovered for lightboxes? Leave your ideas in the comments below or share them with the E-Learning Heroes community. Want to try lightboxes out for yourself, but don’t have Storyline 360? Start a free 30-day trial of Articulate 360, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.3 Steps for Creating Your First Rise 360 Course
Everything you need to create modern, engaging e-learning is at your fingertips with Rise 360. Not sure where to start? This handy guide will help you create your very first microlearning or full-length course in three easy steps. Let’s get started! 1. Choose the type of learning experience you want to create: microlearning or a full-length course Start by choosing whether you want microlearning or a full-length course. Your choice will depend on the content you want to share with learners. Microlearning courses aren’t just short courses. They’re bite-size pieces of content focused on a single learning objective. They’re approachable, bingeable, and easy for users to review and apply. Microlearning courses are also great for learners on the go because they’re easy to consume on phones or tablets. Full-length courses give you the opportunity to go in-depth on a certain topic. Made up of multiple lessons and knowledge checks, courses may include multiple learning objectives and, as a result, take longer for the learner to experience. Learners almost always use a computer to access full-length courses. So how do you know which format to use for your course? When choosing between the two, ask yourself: How many learning objectives do I have? If you only have one, a microlearning course is the clear option. If you have more than one, could each one stand alone or are they interdependent? If they could be split up, you could create a series of microlearning courses. If they’re interdependent, then a full-length course is the best option. Once you’ve made your decision, go to your Rise 360 dashboard. Click Create New and choose Course or Microlearning. 2. Search for a template or start from scratch It's always a good idea to look at templates and see if there’s already material you can use or adapt to your learning objectives. Articulate offers two types of templates: placeholder and real content: Placeholder templates include guidance and ideas to help you create a fully customized course. Real content templates have pre-written content you can adapt to fit your learning objectives. After choosing the type of e-learning you’d like to develop, you’ll see all available templates. Select Preview to explore a template before you choose it. You can use the search bar to find templates by keyword. And for full-length courses, you can use the left-hand panel to explore templates by category. When you’re ready to use a template, click Select This Course. If you don’t find exactly what you need, don’t worry: You can always customize a template or even start from scratch. Just click +Blank Course/Microlearning to begin. 3. Add your content Once you’ve chosen a template or started from scratch, you can add in your content using blocks. Blocks give you different ways of formatting your content in a lesson or microlesson. There are many types of blocks: text blocks, image blocks, interactive blocks, knowledge check blocks, and more. You can use different block types to make your content unique and engaging. Clicking All Blocks or the + sign in your lesson or microlesson will open a list of block types in a left-hand panel. If you change your mind about the type of block, you can easily choose a different block from the same category by clicking the dropdown menu in the top-left corner of the block. For example, the paragraph block gives you the option of reformatting your content into different types of paragraphs, headings, statements, and a note. Not sure how to pick the right block? Think about what your learner needs. For example, if you have a lot of content that may be overwhelming as a text block, consider using a tabs block to break up the text. Or, if you want learners to compare and contrast different chunks of information, consider using an accordion or flashcard block. As the course author, this is your opportunity to get creative! Here are some articles for inspiration: 6 Rise 360 Blocks to Use Instead of Bullet Points 7 Creative Ways to Use Images in Rise 360 Courses 6 Rise 360 Block Types to Use to Compare and Contrast Concepts 5 Different Ways to Create Scenarios in Rise 360 3 Creative Ways to Incorporate Your Logo into a Rise 360 Course More Resources Creating microlearning or full-length courses in Rise 360 is superfast and easy. In just three steps, you’ve already started putting together an elegant course customized for your learners. And when you’re done drafting your course, you can share and review your content with stakeholders easily thanks to Review 360. Here’s more information on how to use Review 360: Getting Started with Review 360 Rise 360: Publish Content to Review 360 Your Most Asked Review 360 Questions Once they’ve been approved, you can easily publish from your Articulate 360 dashboard. Here are some guides to get you started: Rise 360: Share Content with Learners How to Share E-Learning Courses with Learners Want to try creating your first course in Rise 360, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial. And subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest e-learning examples.Storyline 360: What Are Triggers?
Want to build interactivity into your e-learning course—things like jumping to a slide, clicking tabs to show different information, playing media, submitting a quiz answer, and more? With Storyline 360 you have an easy no-code solution to help you build the exact interactivity you want: triggers. Triggers tell your course what actions to perform at specific times. And what makes them so simple to work with is they’re essentially just the answers to two basic questions: What action do you want to happen? When do you want it to take place? Let’s say you want to create a Home Button that takes learners to the main menu of my course. To decide what trigger to use you need to know: What action doyou want to happen: The course jumps to the main menu When do you want it to take place: When the user clicks the Home Button Or maybe you want some narration to start when a slide opens. For that, you need to know: What action do you want to happen: The narration audio file plays When do you want it to take place: When the timeline starts on the slide Once you have the answers to those two questions, you’re ready to create your trigger in Storyline 360! Now that you know how they work, let’s look at just how simple it is to set up any trigger you need for your courses. Creating a New Trigger There are two ways to get started: click Trigger in the Insert tab or select the Create New Trigger icon in the triggers panel. Either option opens the Trigger Wizard, which will guide you through the entire trigger creation process. When that Trigger Wizard pops up, you’ll probably notice that the first two sections in it feel pretty familiar. That’s because they’re essentially asking you the two questions we discussed earlier: Question 1: Action You’ve got 25 actions to choose from in Storyline 360, which means a lot of possibilities. And thankfully, they’re labeled with clear, conversational names that make it easy to browse the drop-down menu in the Trigger Wizard to find the exact action you want. Once you’ve picked your main action, additional drop-down menus appear, which allow you to further refine what you want to happen. For example: if you select Jump to Slide, the next dropdown will ask you which slide you want to go to. if you choose Play Media, the dropdown will list the media files on the slide you can pick from. Question 2: When Once you’ve identified what action should take place, then it’s time to specify when you want it to happen. Again, you’ll make your choice from a straightforward drop-down list. Just as you saw with the Action section, once you’ve picked an option from that list the Trigger Wizard will show you any additional fields you need to fill out to ensure your trigger works. This feature is a huge help for making sure important information isn’t accidentally left out. For instance, if you choose User Presses a Key, a new field will ask you to identify which key. Or, if you select Object Dropped On, you’ll then be asked to choose one of the available objects on the slide or layer. Conditions There’s also an optional section in the Trigger Wizard: Conditions. Conditions are a powerful feature for enabling actions to happen ONLY IF something else in the course has already occurred. For example, if you want your course to show a slide with remedial content only to learners who got an earlier quiz question wrong, a conditional trigger can help you do that. The possibilities and combinations are endless when it comes to conditional interactivity! Find out more about how to work with conditions in this article. Does Storyline 360 Build Any Triggers for Me Automatically? Absolutely! To save you time, some Storyline 360 slides and objects have common triggers included with them by default. Here are a few places you can expect to regularly see these automatic triggers. Previous and Next Buttons There’s no need to set up triggers for the Previous Button and Next Button every time you add a new slide. That’s taken care of for you—automatically! Quiz Slides You’ll notice quiz slides have a Submit Button by default instead of a Previous and Next Button. That button has a trigger automatically attached to it that submits the interaction when it’s clicked. Quiz Results Slides When it comes to the Graded Results slide, the prebuilt triggers do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. They check the quiz passing score and automatically show either the Failure or Success layer based on the learner’s performance. They also give learners the option to use the Review Button to revisit the quiz slides and answers. Of course, even though all the triggers listed here are prebuilt for you, you can always edit or delete them to customize your course as needed. Wrap-Up As you can see, triggers are as powerful as they are easy to use, making creating a wide variety of interactivity in Storyline 360 a snap. Looking for even more ways to work with triggers effectively? Give these articles a try: Storyline 360: Working with Triggers 4 Things You’ll Want to Know About the Triggers Panel in Storyline 360 Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.7 Pro Tips for Working with Motion Path Animations in Storyline 360
Animations can be a powerful way to explain a concept, tell a story, or make your content memorable. Storyline 360 has a variety of animation options—including entrance, exit, and motion paths. With motion path animations, you can control how your objects move and bring your ideas to life. Here are some time-saving tips to help propel you forward when working with motion path animations. 1. Rename Motion Paths When you add a motion path animation to an object in Storyline 360, a name is automatically assigned. If you plan on adding multiple motion paths, it’s a good idea to rename each one. This will make it easier to identify which motion path you’re working on when editing triggers. 2. Copy Animations If you plan on using the same motion path animation on several objects, save time by copying the animation from one object to another using the Animation Painter. By double-clicking the Animation Painter, you can apply the same animation to multiple objects one after the other without having to click the Animation Painter over and over again. To turn it off, click it one last time or press the ESC key on your keyboard. Did you know? When you copy and paste an object, any animations you’ve added to the object are also copied over. So if you’re using the same object multiple times, add any animations you want to include before you copy it to save time. 3. Sync Using Cue Points As you build content, you might change your mind about when you want your motion path animation to start. Syncing your motion path to a cue point gives you the flexibility to change the motion path timing without having to edit the trigger each time. All you have to do is drag the cue point along the timeline until the timing feels right, and the motion path will start at the new time. 4. Select the Object Path to Edit To edit a motion path, you can select the start or end point individually using your mouse and drag the point to the desired location. If you have multiple start or end points overlapping each other, you can easily select and edit them without having to hide objects from your timeline. Simply select the line of the object path you want to edit. It will turn bright blue while the other objects and their paths will fade. Then, move the start or end point as needed. Did you know? Another way to fine-tune a motion path is to select the start or end point of one or all of the objects and edit the X and Y coordinates. This is great for times when you need to be super-precise. 5. Change the Easing Option By default, Storyline 360 automatically assigns an ease-in and ease-out effect to your motion paths. This controls the acceleration and deceleration of an animation. If your animation needs to move at the same pace across the screen, then you’ll want to edit the easing direction to none. 6. Orient Shape to Path There might be times when you need to include an object that faces a certain direction as it follows a path—for example, a car making a right turn. By selecting Orient Shape to Path, the object will always face the direction it’s moving, even when it travels on a nonlinear path. 7. Use a Relative Start Point Perhaps you want to create an interaction where the object can move multiple times depending on the learner’s choice. For example, let’s say you created a racetrack and want the learner’s car to move forward whenever they answer a question correctly. Instead of duplicating the object and creating motion paths for each possible outcome, you can select Relative Start Point to move the object along the motion path starting from its current position. For more ideas on how to use this feature, check out this tutorial. Did you know? You can add more than one motion path to the same object and have each begin at the new location of the object based on previous movements. For more ideas on how to use this feature, check out this free Storyline 360 download by Samuel Apata. Motion path animations give you the flexibility to quickly create content that’ll move your learners. What tips do you have for working with motion paths? Share your ideas in the comments below. Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.How to Create a Shareable Template in Storyline 360
Have you ever downloaded an e-learning template to repurpose for a project? Was it easy to use and adapt? Or did you find it challenging and confusing to customize? While using templates should make developing easier, if they’re not carefully created they can unintentionally slow you down. That’s why it’s so important to design templates with the user experience in mind. Thoughtfully designed templates help provide consistency across projects, speed up development time, and let you focus on what’s important—your content. Let’s take a look at how to create a shareable template that’s easy to customize in Storyline 360. 1. Set Your Slide Size When creating a template, start by opening up a new project and editing the story size. The slide size defaults to 720 pixels wide by 540 pixels high, but you can easily edit the slide size to fit your needs. To change the size or the aspect ratio, go to the Design tab and select Slide Size. I generally use a 16:9 ratio since it’s the most common aspect ratio for computer monitors and videos. If the majority of the courses you or your team create use a different size, be sure to make those changes here. And remember to click Set as Default Size so when you open a new project, it defaults to those dimensions. By setting up the slide size at the start, you or whoever uses your template won’t have to worry about reworking your slide designs later. For more information on choosing your slide size, check out this article: Storyline 360: Setting Your Slide Size. 2. Create Custom Theme Colors After setting the slide size, it’s time to edit the theme colors. This determines the default color choices for text, shapes, captions, outlines, buttons, and more. To edit the theme colors, go to the Design tab, select the Colors drop-down, and click Create New Theme Colors. Whether your organization uses specific branding colors or course designers need to create custom palettes for every course they design, making use of the theme color feature can save your team a lot of time. How? It makes it so that if someone using your template wants to apply a different color palette, all they have to do is select it to automatically update all the colors in the template. Want to learn more about theme colors? Check out these helpful resources: Storyline 360: Theme Colors Job Aid Storyline 360: Working with Theme Colors 3. Create a Custom Theme Font E-learning courses generally include a lot of text, which is why selecting theme fonts is so important. Theme fonts control headings, body text, questions, and answer choices. To edit the theme fonts, go to the Design tab, select the Fonts drop-down, and then click Create New Theme Fonts. This completely eliminates the time-wasting task of editing fonts slide by slide when you need to make a change. By setting up and using theme fonts in your template, you or anyone using your template can easily update the heading and body font throughout a course by simply selecting a different theme font. For more information on how to work with fonts, check out this article: Storyline 360: Working with Theme Fonts. 4. Design the Slides With theme fonts and theme colors all set up, it’s time to design the slides. There are a few things you can do to ensure your slide designs are easy to customize. Let’s take a look. Include a variety of slide types Be sure to include a variety of slide types so there are several options to choose from. Content Library 360 is a great resource to see what slide types are commonly used in templates. Use the slide master and feedback master Creating custom layouts and placeholders on your slide masters and feedback (layer) masters can significantly reduce development time for you and anyone using the template. That’s because when you make a change to your master layouts, Storyline applies that change to every related slide or layer in your project. For example, if you included a company logo on the slide master so it’s always visible, but later get a request to change its placement—such as move it from the top right to the top left corner—all you would need to do is move it once and all the slides in your project will automatically update to reflect the new change. Apply text styles throughout Text styles give you a faster, easier way to control the visual appearance of slide text in your Storyline 360 projects. And they also provide valuable contextual information to screen readers—like whether a piece of text is a heading or a link—which makes using them an easy way to create more accessible courses. When setting up the first slide of your template, once you’ve got your text looking the way you want it—font, size, formatting, etc.—use text styles to save the formatting of each type of text—body (normal) or heading—so you can instantly apply it to the rest of your course. To apply text styles to your template, navigate to the Home tab, click the Text Styles button, mouse over the style you want to update, then click Update Style from Selection on the sub-menu that appears. That way if the person using your template wants to change the heading style—for example, maybe they want to increase the font size—they can edit the text and then simply update the style to reflect those changes throughout the template. Want more information on working with Text Styles? Check out these resources: Save Time & Make Your Courses More Accessible with Text Styles in Storyline 360 Storyline 360: Using Text Styles Name your slide elements Don’t make the person using your template guess what “Rectangle 45” is or what slide layer “Untitled 1” is for. Take the time to go through and rename objects, layers, and other slide elements so they’re easy to find when you or someone else needs to make changes. Using simple and consistent naming conventions—such as Tab 1, Tab 2, etc.—makes it easier to edit the template and see what items are associated with which actions in the trigger panel. Before: Without Custom Names After: With Custom Names See what a difference that makes? 5. Customize the Player Last, but certainly not least, customize the Player settings to what you generally use across projects. To access the player properties, navigate to the Home tab and click Player. From there, you can edit and customize the player properties. Since each person and organization has different needs, there are a few things you should consider. For example: Do you want to display the menu and controls? Are there player tabs you need to include for all your projects? Which accent or accessibility colors do you or your organization want to use? Does the company you work for generally include a logo in their courses? Go through each of the player settings and make any necessary changes. Since the player settings are saved in the project file, this helps ensure everyone’s using the same options. Check out this article to learn how to customize the player: Storyline 360: Working with the Player. 6. Test Your Template When you’re done, preview everything to make sure it works as expected. See if a coworker can test, review, and try using it. Their feedback can help improve the design or ensure its accuracy and ease of use. After all, your goal is to make a shareable template that anyone can easily customize. 7. Share Your Template Once everything looks good, it’s time to share your template. Oftentimes, people will simply share the STORY file with their team. But did you know there’s a better way to share and manage your custom templates so you and your team can easily access and use them? Check out this article to learn some best practices about sharing your template: 2 Ways to Share a Custom Storyline 360 Template. In Summary That’s all there is to it! Following these steps will help you create Storyline 360 templates that are easy for everyone to use. Do you have any time-saving tips you turn to when building templates in Storyline 360? Please share your ideas in the comment below. Ready to start building a course in Storyline 360? Check out these articles to help you work even faster: Set Yourself Up for Success with These 5 Storyline 360 Project Time-Savers Crush Your To-Do List with These 6 Storyline 360 Slide-Building Tips 10 Storyline Secrets You Need to Know Want to try creating your own custom template, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.10 Storyline Secrets You Need to Know
Articulate Storyline is a powerful e-learning authoring tool, packed full of brilliant features. But Storyline has a ton of super-smart, below-the-radar shortcuts up its sleeve. Here, I’ve picked my ten favorite hidden features, tips, and tricks to help you work smarter and faster. 1. The Lorem Ipsum / Random Text Shortcut Next time you’re throwing together a quick prototype, don’t worry about cutting and pasting lorem ipsum or placeholder text into your project screens. Save time by using this nifty little Windows shortcut: Insert a text box on your slide. Type =Lorem() Hit Enter. Boom! Instant filler text. Here’s a super-quick video (no audio) to demonstrate these steps. Pro Tip: Using the =Lorem command auto-generates lorem ipsum text. Following the same steps but typing the =Rand command generates standard “the quick brown fox …” filler text. 2. Add Animation to an Object's State Object states aren’t exactly a big secret, but many folks are surprised when I tell them that they can easily add animation effects to an object’s state. In fact, using animation on an object’s state is one of my favorite ways to add emphasis. For example, I like to add a little checkmark that wipes or fades in on topic buttons when the learner completes all of the activities within that topic. This gives learners a nice, clear visual that they’ve completed this part of my course. Adding animation to an object’s state is easy. Here’s how: Select the object state to which you want to add animation. Apply animations to your object from the “Animate” menu. Click “Done” and preview your slide or scene to see how the effect is working. And here’s a super-quick video (no audio) to demonstrate these steps, too. 3. Add Cinematic Flair Want your course to be a little more dramatic? Well then you’ll love how easily you can add some cinematic flair to your screens just by placing a few zoom regions over your onscreen images. The basic formula is as follows: Zoom Out: Place a zoom region at the beginning of the timeline so the opening shot is a close-up that zooms out to reveal the bigger picture. Zoom In: Insert a zoom region and drag it to the point on your timeline when you want the zoom effect to appear. Pan and Zoom: Insert multiple zoom regions next to each other on the timeline. This creates a panning effect that seamlessly shifts from one area of focus to the next. Here’s avideo to walk you through these steps. And to learn more about how to use Storyline’s zoom regions, check out this detailed article and example. 4. Press "C" On Your Keyboard to Add a Cue Point to the Timeline Use a lot of audio in your courses? If so, you’re probably familiar with how to drag objects on your timeline to sync up with your audio. But did you know there’s an even easier way? Here’s how: While playing the audio, hit the C key on your keyboard to add a numbered cue point to the timeline. Right-click and select “Align to Cue Point” ormanually slide objects on the timeline to align them to the cue points. Here’s a short and sweet video of these steps. For a step-by-step tutorial and practice with cue points, check out Syncing Animations with Audio in Storyline 2. 5. Create a Seamless Scrolling Effect Ever see a website or use an app where the screens just seamlessly transition from one to the next? Ever wonder how you could create a similar effect in one of your Storyline projects? I’ve got good news! Nicole Legault spilled the beans on this Storyline secret with this free template download, Storyline 2: Seamless Scrolling Effect. The secret to this technique lies in lining up your shapes in Storyline and then using push transitions (under the transitions menu) to make it all come to life. See a quick version of how it’s done, below. 6. Add Video to Markers When you think about using video in e-learning, you probably think of it as a primary screen element. But sometimes videos aren’t the real star of the show, although they may still offer some nice-to-know info or context for learners. For instance, new product training often uses sleekly produced marketing videos to demonstrate products in use, but those videos don’t always offer much in the way of instructional value on their own. So how can you include such video in a way that makes sense and doesn’t clutter up your course? Add it to a marker! Here’s how: With the marker selected, go to the format tab on the ribbon and click “Media.” Choose from one of the video options, either: video from file, video from website, or record webcam. To see how this is done, don’t miss this quick video. Andfor more creative ideas for using markers in Storyline, don’t miss this helpful article. 7. Scale the Course Player to Fill the Browser Window Setting aside mobile devices, there’s a lot of variation in screen sizes for desktop monitors these days. Storyline gives you the ability to control the response of the course player when it’s launched on various browser screens by choosing the “Scale player to fill browser window” option in the Player Properties menu. Selecting this optionallows your course to fill the web browser window while maintaining its original aspect ratio. This means your course can be scaled up or down from its optimal size. Check out this recent Storyline download to see how this option looks and feels. And here’s how it’s done: Under the Player Properties menu, click on “Other.” Use the player size drop-down menu to select “scale player to fill browser window.” When you view your published output, you’ll be able to see how this change was applied to your project. Keep in mind that there is no one perfect solution for this challenge. And while this type of scaling can help you avoid having your course cut off on smaller screens, the trade-off may be a loss of clarity on larger monitors. You can watch the above steps in action in this quick video. 8. Add a Lightbox to the Course Player One of my favorite things about Storyline is how much you can customize the course player (more on that in a moment). And one of my favorite hidden gems is the ability to add a custom tab to the course player and then trigger that tab to launch a slide or slides in a lightbox. This trick is super-handy for making ancillary course resources, navigation help, or other tips and instructions available to learners right on the course player, while freeing up valuable screen real estate for critical content. Here’s how to set it up: Go to the features tab in the player properties window. Add a new custom tab to the top-bar right, which displays an existing slide as a lightbox when the user clicks it. And here’s avideo to demo these steps. 9. Make the Course Player Invisible As I mentioned, Storyline’s course player gives you a lot of flexibility to customize features, but did you know that you can effectively turn the course player off altogether? Here’s a very quick overview: From the player properties menu, features tab, uncheck the default-selected player features to remove them. Click “Colors & Effects” in the custom tab. From here you can access the “Show Advanced Color Editing Link” to customize both the color and transparency of every element of the course player—most of which can be found under “Base.” Boost the transparency for items on the base to 100 percent to make them effectively disappear. That’s just a quick overview; but you can find a more detailed step-by-step tutorial from Nicole Legault in this article. 10. Get an Estimate of Your Course's Duration If you’ve ever tried to calculate how long a course is, you may have resorted to the “counting the slides and multiplying by X number of minutes” method—or you may just be using gut-instinct based on how long other similar courses have taken your learners to complete. Either of those methods is fine, but did you know that Storyline actually provides you with an estimate of your course’s length? Here’s how to find it: In the publish options, click the ellipsis to the right of your project title. Next to “Duration” you’ll see a drop-down menu with the default selection “Calculate Automatically” and Storyline’s estimated duration in the box to the right of that menu. Here’s a final quick demo to help you find this hidden Storyline treasure. Just keep in mind that Storyline’s estimated duration is just that: an estimate. The duration of a specific slide or an entire course can vary depending on the amount of interactivity, layers, branching scenarios, and other features you’ve added. Those are just ten of my favorite semi-secret Storyline features and tips. There are so many more! I love learning and sharing tricks and time-savers, so tell me all about your favorite hidden features or shortcuts in a comment below. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.
