Eye Yoga: A Black-and-White Break for Your Screen-Tired Eyes
For my first-ever entry in this week’s black-and-white challenge, I stepped far outside my comfort zone, because I love colour! Embracing the monochrome theme, I created a lighthearted, collage-style interaction called "Eye Yoga". Built in Articulate Storyline 360, the visuals were crafted in Canva using a mix of halftones, shadows, and paper cut-out effects to give the piece a tactile, layered feel. The final design features three simple animations and guides learners through three quick exercises to ease digital eye strain. This project was a fun exploration of how texture, balance, and movement can still bring energy to a design—even without colour. Let me know what you think! I hope you will like it. Click here to explore the 'Eye Yoga' projectStoryline 360: Setting Storyline Options
Here’s how to change your Storyline 360 settings, including auto-recovery, spell-checking, and more. Opening the Storyline Options Window Setting General Options Setting Spelling Options Setting Dictionary Options Managing Custom Dictionaries Setting AutoCorrect Options Changing the Interface Language Turning Optional Features On and Off Opening the Storyline Options Window Go to the File tab on the Storyline ribbon and click Storyline Options. The following window displays, allowing you to adjust the options described below. Setting General Options Use the General tab of the Storyline Options window to adjust these settings: Save AutoRecovery information every ___ minutes Mark this box to recover your work if you experience a power outage or the app shuts down unexpectedly. Storyline 360 automatically saves a copy of your project at the specified interval (after you’ve saved it at least once). The default interval is every 10 minutes, but you can enter any whole number between 1 and 120. If Storyline 360 closes unexpectedly, you’ll be prompted to recover your project the next time you open it. Disable hardware graphics acceleration Hardware graphics acceleration is enabled by default to give authors a better experience when creating 360° image interactions. You can deactivate it by marking this box. Enable screen reader support during preview Screen reader support during preview is turned off by default to improve stability. You can enable it by marking this box. Reset "Don't show again” prompts For some actions, such as deleting audio, Storyline 360 displays a confirmation prompt with an option to "Don’t show again" or "Don’t ask again." If you mark the box, Storyline 360 will no longer display the confirmation prompt when you perform the same action later. To turn all the confirmation prompts back on, click Reset "Don’t show again” prompts. Setting Spelling Options On the General tab, click Spelling Options to set your preferences for the spell checker and dictionary. Keep in mind that the preferences you set here will also impact other Articulate products that are installed on the same computer. Hide spelling errors This hides the wavy red lines that appear under misspelled words. (When you run a spell check, the misspelled words will still be caught.) If you choose to make the wavy red lines visible, you can right-click any misspelled word for a list of suggested spellings. Ignore words in UPPERCASE Words with all capital letters won’t get spell checked. Ignore words with numbers Words that contain numbers won’t get spell checked. Ignore Internet and file addresses Website URLs, email addresses, and file paths won’t get spell checked. Ignore capitalized words Words with initial capital letters won’t get spell checked. Ignore words with mixed case Words that contain both uppercase and lowercase letters won’t get spell checked. Ignore HTML markups Words with HTML tags won’t get spell checked. Allow accented words Words with accented letters won’t get spell checked. Report doubled words Instances of the same word appearing one after the other will get flagged during spell check. Suggest split words If a misspelled word appears to be two separate words, Storyline 360 will suggest splitting them apart. Phonetic suggestions If a misspelled word resembles the phonetic spelling of an actual word, Storyline 360 will provide suggested corrections. Typographical suggestions During spell check, Storyline 360 will provide suggested corrections that are typographically similar to the misspelled word. For example, if you type "potatoe" the words "potatoes" and "potato" will be suggested. Case sensitive This enables Storyline 360 to distinguish words based on the case patterns of their letters. Auto correct This enables Storyline 360 to dynamically correct misspellings as you type. If you mark this box, you can also click the corresponding Options button to customize your autocorrect dictionary. View the section below on Setting AutoCorrect Options for details. If you change your mind about your choices on this window, you can switch back to the default settings by clicking Restore Defaults at the bottom of the window. Setting Dictionary Options Use the dictionary options at the bottom of the Spelling Options window to switch the spell checker to a different language and to manage your custom dictionaries. Use the Main Dictionary Language drop-down to choose the dictionary you want to use for spell checking. Click Custom Dictionaries to add, modify, or remove a custom dictionary. Custom dictionaries supplement your main dictionary with additional words that you don’t want Storyline 360 to flag during spell checks, such as names, industry-specific words, technical terms, and alternate spellings. Managing Custom Dictionaries When you click Custom Dictionaries on the Spelling Options window (see above), the following window appears. Modify a dictionary Select a dictionary from the list and click Modify. A window appears where you can add or remove words for your custom dictionary. To add a word, type it in the Word field and click Add. To remove a word, select it and click Delete. Click OK when you’re done. Change the default dictionary To set a custom dictionary as the default, choose a dictionary from the list and click Change Default. Create a new dictionary Click New. Type a name for your new dictionary and click Save. The new dictionary will appear in your dictionary list, and you can add words to it as needed. Import a custom dictionary Import a custom dictionary you receive from someone else. Click Add, browse to the *.dic file, and click Open. The dictionary will appear in your dictionary list, and you can modify it as needed. Remove a dictionary Select the dictionary you want to remove and click Remove. This doesn’t remove the *.dic file from your hard drive, but it does remove it from your dictionary list in Storyline 360 and other Articulate apps. Setting AutoCorrect Options The autocorrect options let you choose which misspellings Storyline 360 will automatically fix for you. To edit your autocorrect options, open the Storyline Options window, select the General tab, and then click AutoCorrect Options. When the AutoCorrect window appears, you can turn the entire feature on or off by marking/unmarking the Replace text as you type box. When it’s enabled, Storyline 360 will replace misspelled words from the left-hand column with the corresponding text from the right-hand column as you type. Here’s how to customize it: To add a word to the list Type the word you want to add in the Replace field. Type the word you want to replace it with in the With field. Then click Add. To remove a word from the list Select the word you want to remove and click Delete. To change the replacement text Select a word in the left-hand column, then type the text you want Storyline 360 to replace it with in the With field. Then click Replace. Click OK when you’re done managing your AutoCorrect options. Changing the Interface Language You can localize the Storyline 360 interface in English, French, German, or Spanish. The language setting is located in the Articulate 360 desktop app that runs in your computer’s system tray (next to the clock). View this article for details. Turning Optional Features On and Off When Storyline 360 has optional features, you can use the Features tab on the left side of the Storyline Options window to turn them on and off. You can switch between the enhanced Word translation workflow and the legacy Word translation workflow. Either check or uncheck the box to Use the enhanced Word translation workflow and then click OK. To enhance accessibility, use upgraded text for new projects. Upgraded text is selected by default, but you can uncheck this box if you'd prefer. In-app notifications, including pop-up notifications for background processes such as AI caption generation, are also enabled by default. Uncheck the box if you prefer not to show notifications.4 Software Simulation Examples That Show You What’s Possible in Storyline
Software simulations allow learners to work with new software in a low-pressure environment. Safely contained within your e-learning course, there’s no “messing up” your software simulations: learners can’t switch off an important process or accidentally post a private document.3 Ways to Create Drag-and-Drops with Storyline 360
Are you looking for a way to make e-learning courses more dynamic and engaging? Look no further than drag-and-drop interactions. Drag-and-drop interactions give your learners the opportunity to make decisions and engage with course content, and can be an excellent learning tool when used appropriately. That begs the question, when should drag-and-drops be used? In my experience, they can really come in handy when you want your learners to: Sort correct and incorrect items (view an example) Order the steps in a process (view an example) Match items (view an example) Place items or objects (view an example) Storyline 360 offers a variety of ways to create drag-and-drop interactions. Let’s have a closer look at three easy techniques. Graded Quiz Slides Storyline 360 offers 11 graded question types, two of which are prebuilt drag-and-drop interactions. The nice thing about Storyline’s graded question slides is that they’re superquick and easy to set up since you don’t have to create a single trigger. All you have to do is select the type of drag-and-drop question you want—matching or sequence?—and insert your content. View a Storyline 360 Matching Drag-and-Drop Quiz Slide View a Storyline 360 Sequence Drag-and-Drop Quiz Slide Matching activities are great when you want learners to make a connection between several items, for example an event and the date it occurred. Sequence is great for having learners identify the order of a process or task. Freeform Freeform slides let you convert any regular slide into a graded drag-and-drop quiz slide in a few clicks. Freeform slides are a really powerful tool because they allow you to completely customize every single aspect of your slide and drag-and-drop interaction. Freeform is perfect when you want to create a drag-and-drop that is not a matching or sequence activity, for example, to sort incorrect and correct items or to match non-text items such as shapes or images. Here are some examples of customized drag-and-drop interactions created using Freeform slides: View a Freeform Gamified Drag-and-Drop View a Freeform Placing Drag-and-Drop Activity To create a freeform drag-and-drop interaction, insert a new slide and click the “Convert to Freeform” button on the “Insert” tab of the Storyline 360 ribbon. Select the drag-and-drop option, then click Insert. Storyline will automatically create a graded drag-and-drop quiz slide, and will even add the “Submit” button and the feedback layers. You will be presented with “Form View,” where you can assign your drag items and your drop targets. Storyline 360’s Drag-and-Drop Freeform Form View When you’re in Form View, you’ll notice that there are options available to you in the ribbon. Options available in Drag-and-Drop Freeform Form View A few things you can do here: shuffle the answers, assign a results slide, and assign the number of attempts learners have. Above all, the one key feature you need to know about is the “Drag & Drop Options” button. Drag & Drop Options Knowing about these options can save you a ton of time and headaches. These options give you flexibility when you’re tweaking your drag-and-drop interaction to work just the way you want it. Need your drag items revealed one at a time? No problem! Do you want to allow multiple items onto one drop target? Just check the box. These options will let you customize your drag-and-drop interaction to behave just the way you want. Triggers There’s one more, little-known, way to create a very simple, ungraded drag-and-drop interaction by using a single trigger. You’ll need at least two objects on your slide to make this work. The “When” drop-down menu in the Trigger Wizard offers two options: These Drag Drop Events are available in the Trigger Wizard By using either of these options in a trigger with two objects from your slide, you can create a very simple drag-and-drop interaction. However, you can’t customize that interaction in any way and it can’t be graded. For that reason, it’s typically recommended to use the freeform drag-and-drop interaction, which is superpowerful, graded, and offers many options for customization. In Sum Creating drag-and-drop interactions with Storyline 360 is intuitive and easy, no matter which method you choose. Go ahead, build your own drag-and-drop interaction so you can see for yourself how quick and easy it is. Let me know how it turns out 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. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.
