Category Archives: Articulate

I got an enquiry the other day about Storyline Question Banks and it occurred to me that I had never really used a large set of randomized questions in a project. As a test case, I decided to create a bank of questions about flags, an idea I got from the Big Bang Theory (one of the few tv shows I actually watch).

I didn’t want to spend much time on layout and design, so I decided to reuses a neat template created by Articulate Community Manager David Anderson. You can get info about this template here and download it here.

I adapted template slightly to work for my example. For one thing, I added a question bank that randomly displays a set of quiz questions, including True/False, Multiple Choice and Drag-and-Drop questions.

I also added a simple logic that allowed me to specify the number of questions that should be included in any given set. To make this work, I set the Question bank properties to include all questions (not just a fixed subset).

Then on the master slide, I added two triggers, one that counts up a pagecounter. Another trigger ‘breaks’ out of the question bank and jumps directly to the results slide when the pagecounter equals the specified number of questions. That also required some rework on the Results slide to account for the variable number of questions that contribute to the score.

Here is the finished example. Have fun with flags, you may learn something new!

Edit Sept.2016: I was just doing some housekeeping on my blog, re-read this post and thought someone might be interested in the .story file for this little project. Here it is for download.

Edit Mar.2019: For Articulate’s weekly eLearning challenge #224, I updated the old SL2 file to Storyline 360, and added a progress indicator. That doesn’t sound like much of a challenge, but there were some considerations. First, the number of questions included in the quiz was variable and therefore the progress indicator needed to reflect that. Also, I wanted to indicate how if a question was answered correctly or not. The issue was that I used a question bank to randomly draw from and had to map the current (random) question to the current question indicator. See the published example here.

In addition to developing eLearning projects for various clients, I occasionally conduct training courses and workshops for Storyline. One of my clients asked me to run a 1-day workshop that, after a brief overview of Storyline 2’s new features, focused on the type of eLearning courses they build most often: Software simulations for their ERP system. In the initial discussion about which topics should be covered in the workshop, the client also mentioned they have doubts Storyline 2 could be used to build complex software simulations that go way beyond the usual, linear Step-by-Step demoes and exercises.

So I thought I’d start the session by showing off the new Storyline 2 UI, including the various tabs and some selected new features. At the end of this demo, I casually mentioned that “Oh and by the way, what I just showed you was NOT the actual Storyline application, but a SIMULATION of the application”. That got everyone’s attention and right from the beginning removed any doubts that Storyline can be used to develop complex simulations.

Here is an early version of the simulation that I used to work out the overall navigation scheme and confirm the setup for tabbed navigation, disabling/enabling menu items, slide view, story view, preview, etc.

The various tabs, and tab-specific triggers are all set up on layers of the master slide. There are two master slides; one for story view/slide view and the other for the Preview slides.

This initial version was really only my first attempt and is still a bit buggy, but it already lets you:

1. Select SimFileToRecord from the opening screen (also, all the tutorial links on this screen are enabled)
2. Navigate between slides in StoryView
3. Double-click on a slide thumbnail to go to SlideView
4. Browse all tabs on the main toolbar
5. Select/unselect objects on a slide and view the object-specific Format tab
6. With slide 1.2 selected, go to Insert> Video > Video from File and select video_1
7. In the VideoTools tab, select Video Controls (either select None or Below Video)
8. Select Preview (either This Slide, This Scene or Entire Project). Preview can be selected from any tab.
9. Navigate through slides in Preview
10. Close Preview
11. To restart (in case you get stuck), press q on your keyboard.

There are some neat little details already in this version. For example, if an object on a slide is selected, the object is highlighted in the timeline. In Preview, the video on slide 1.2 actually plays and shows controls based on the selection. On slide 1.3, the slider works. And once a video is added to slide 1.2, the slide’s thumbnail is updated to show the video with or without playback controls. In the completed simulation, all menu items on the Insert tab were functional. In the classroom, I ran this final version in Fullscreen mode on a 1024*768 projector. It completely filled the screen and looked like the real software. This type of simulation can be adapted to provide feedback for guided exercises, used as a demo/”ice breaker” tool (like I did during the workshop) or turned into scoreable ‘hands-on’ tests.

Software simulations – yet another great way to use Storyline! 

Edit 06/2018: To just tie similar posts together, here is another post about software simulations. This sim was done in Storyline 360.

In addition to Entrance and Exit Animations, Storyline 2 now provides options to create motion path animations. Similar to what you are used to from PowerPoint, Storyline 2 provides a list of motion paths options.

Each motion path option can be customized by specifying the duration, direction, speed, etc.

Also new in Storyline 2 is the ability to trigger animations based on a condition, for example an animation starts when a button is clicked or an animation starts only when another one is finished.

I`m sure there are much more creative ways to use these new animation options, but here are some examples of motion path animations that I built for testing purposes. For future Storyline releases, I would like to see the options to precisely control start/end points, speed, easing of these motion paths. Also, the ability to name animations would go a long way to improve usability. If you want to learn more about motion path animations, check out this tutorial.

Edit 09/10/2014: I thought I translate the motion path examples into German. Für die deutschsprachige Version, klicken Sie hier.

Edit 10/2016: Here is the .story file for download.

One of the new features in Storyline 2 is the addition of slider controls. It has always been possible to create slider interactions in Storyline (as shown here and here), using hotspots, drag object and LOTS of triggers. With the new slider controls in Storyline 2, this often time-consuming process has been greatly simplified. Now, creating sliders is as simple as 1-2-3.

1. Insert a slider control

To add a slider to a Storyline project, select Insert >> Controls >> Slider

There are some standard styles available, which can be customized to look as required.

2. Specify slider parameters

To make a slider work, you need to set a few simple parameters, such as the start and end value, the slider’s initial position and the variable that contains the slider value.

3. Format the slider elements

Now you are ready to format both the slider track (the ‘background’) and the slider thumb. From the Format tab, you can select from predefined styles…

…or completely change the look&feel of the slider by applying gradients, or using images or textures to fill the background and/or thumb.

That’s it, you’re done! You can use the variable that is attached to each slider in triggers and conditions to perform state changes or even ‘move’ other sliders. Here are some examples of slider interactions that I built for testing purposes. I also added some of the new slide transitions that come with Storyline 2. If you want to learn more about slider controls, check out this tutorial. Happy sliding!

Edit 08/10/2014: I thought I translate the slider examples into German. Für die deutschsprachige Version, klicken Sie hier.

I have been experimenting with QGroundControl, an open-source software that allows me to program waypoints into a drone and have it fly autonomously along a preplanned route. Using this software, I can also follow the drone’s progress along the various waypoints. While airborne, the drone itself records a video from its built-in camera. I wanted to show both videos, the recorded application window AND the drone’s First-Person-View (FPV) video in one Storyline screen AND control both videos with one set of playback controls AND be able to move the FPV window around to reveal the application window underneath AND have the video continue to play while it is being dragged.

To control both videos, I simply put a custom button over top the application video’s playback controls. Clicking the button toggles a variable. Based on the variable’s value, triggers play and pause both videos. This way the two videos stay in synch.

To make the FPV video movable, I grouped the video with a fake window frame and a transparent object and made that a drag object.

It would have perfect if somehow I could restrain the area within which the video can be dragged to avoid the video being dragged off screen, but what I came up with was sufficient for demo purposes. Here is the published Storyline output of this ‘Picture-in-Picture’ effect.

A few weeks ago, I had done an example for Articulate’s E-Learning Challenge #42: Smartphone Video Training. The point of the challenge was to use a Smartphone to record some tutorial, which was easy enough to do.

But what if I needed to screen record an app, rather than using a phone as the recording device? For iOS devices there are some neat tools available that let users mirror the phone screen onto a desktop screen, which can then be recorded with tools like Camtasia, Storyline or ScreenFlow. For Android devices, the choices are much more limited. Sure, you can take static screenshots or use an Android emulator, like BlueStacks to run apps on a Windows desktop and then record them. Also, newer Samsung devices can use SlideSync to display a phone’s screen on a desktop. For older devices, like my ancient Galaxy SII the only real choice is to ‘fake’ the app interface and make it look like an app is running on an actual device. As an example, consider the Freeflight app for a Parrot ARDrone. This app not only lets you control a drone from a Smartphone or tablet, it also displays a video stream from the drone’s camera.

Since the video stream is also recorded on the drone’s onboard FlashDrive, I thought it should be possible to import the video in Storyline, overlay a ‘fake’ app UI and synch user actions to the video. The phone image I used for this Storyline project has a transparent cutout to show the video and UI elements underneath The semi-transparent UI elements are Storyline objects, which I styled to look like the real app UI.

Offstage objects are used to change the state of the controller buttons in synch with the video.

Here is a portion of the finished tutorial. I hope you don’t get dizzy watching the rather shaky video, it was a windy day (not ideal for a novice drone operator)! This portion of the demo was done in one slide without any layers. It’s a pretty accurate simulation of the actual Android app (including the fullmotion video) and another example of how versatile Storyline is when it comes to building real-world eLearning and simulations.

This weeks challenge in the Articulate e-Learning Heroes Community was to create an instructional video using only a smartphone. I had done video shoots before, but they involved a green screen, lighting rigs and all sorts of other professional tools.  I have been using the camera function on my Samsung Galaxy SII, but never really considered it for videos. So, I was curious to see how the video quality would turn out. First, I looked for a location that had some halfway decent natural light, without a lot of shadows. Shooting outside wasn’t a good option. It was just too bright (and too noisy). I ended up using a work table in my garage of all places. The lighting could have been better, but at least I had some control over the scene. Unfortunately, I couldn’t control the outside noise, and decided against including an audio track in the recording. Since I was both ‘actor’ and camera operator, I had to improvise and fashion a tripod out of a ladder and some clamps. Not a pretty setup but it did the trick and made a big difference compared to a shaky handheld recording.

For the subject of the video, I picked a quick demonstration of the required steps to prepare a Parrot ArDrone for flight. My phone’s recording software doesn’t have any editing functions beyond a handful of lighting options. Once the video was shot, I did some very basic editing with ScreenFlow, a neat screen recording and editing tool for Mac and PC. Finally, I imported the video into Storyline and added some captions to it. The whole project took about an hour to complete.; not too shabby considering I used a four-year old phone with a scratched lens!

The key ingredients for a decent smartphone video are:

• sufficient, even lighting
• some sort of tripod or at least video capture software with a stabilization function
• if you do use audio, low background noise.

Here is the end result of my attempt.

Need to display a user’s location on a Google Map inside Storyline? This will be my shortest blog post ever, because it is so simple to do 🙂

1. Create a simple HTML page and insert a code snippet from JQueryMobile that displays both latitude/longitude values of your current location and drops a pin onto a Google map.
2. Add a web object to your Storyline project and link it to the HTML page
3. Publish your project
4. Go for coffee and later tell your boss that you slaved on this ‘map thing’ all day.

Once published, you can view info on your current location as either longitude/latitude values or see your location indicated as a pin on a map.

You can even toggle the map between default map and satellite views.

For my test, I just grabbed a sample script and used it as is. With a bit of HTML editing, you can style the look&feel of the map as required.

I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m sure it is possible to pass the longitude/latitude values into Storyline variables and show different content based on the user’s location. Imagine a New Employee Orientation course that shows information only relevant to a learner’s location at one of the company’s branch offices. The possibilities are endless!

To learn more about JQueryMobile, check out their demos.

A while ago I had created an interactive screen demo that used a slider to zoom in/out of a map image. I got a question from a Storyline user who, in addition to ‘sliding’ an image, also wanted to simulate a typical Windows scroll bar, with Up/Down buttons to move the window content. Using a Storyline scrolling panel didn’t work in this case, because the user wanted it to look like standard Windows scrollbar. And to add to the challenge, the user wanted to:

• simulate clicking anywhere in the scroll area should jump to the corresponding position in the window
• scroll a very long image (3800 pixels high)

So I thought I’d do a basic example, showing how to ‘fake’ a scrolling window; all in one slide. Starting on the slide’s baselayer, I added a custom button that when clicked shows a layer.

On the layer, I started with the frame for the scrolling window, using an image with a transparent area, that shows the image underneath. The Up and Down buttons on the scrollbar are custom buttons that change a variable. Based on the value of this variable, the state of both the scroll indicator and the image is changed. Since the image was very tall and Storyline only allows images up to 2048*2048 pixels (see here for info), I had to tile the image and use triggers to display the correct tile and its correct state, based on the ScrollCount variable.

Finally, I added transparent shapes that allow user to click anywhere in the scroll bar area to jump to a portion of the report image.

The completed sample file is here.

This “fake” scrolling functionality adds a lot more realism to a software simulation and is well worth the additional development effort. Storyline to the rescue (again)!

Another week, another great challenge in the Articulate e-Learning community. This time, the task was to create an interactive step graphic that could be used in training or as a job aid. I had just read through a quick start guide for a prosumer drone and thought I could use this as a baseline for a quick example. Also, this quick start guide comes in three language versions, which made for an extra little challenge.

Here is the basic setup of the English-language version. There are nine step graphics and a basic navigation setup to view them.

For the navigation, I wanted to provide different left-to-right or right-to-left transitions between steps. To accomplish that, I set up layers for each type of transition and applied FlyIn/FlyOut animations to the bitmaps.

Along the top is the language selector that branches to slides in both German and French.

Note: For this sample, I just set up the first step graphic for the German and French language versions. Also, I wanted to focus on the navigation, layer transitions and branching and didn’t spent a lot of time on “making it look pretty”.

Here is the completed example. There you go, interactive step graphics can easily be created in Storyline; just let your imagination run wild!

Edit 10/2016: Here is the .story file for download.