Forum Discussion
Having trouble with a trigger in a course
Hi all. i'm building a course with a lot of text & i'm trying to make a portion of it more interesting by making it into an accordion-style interaction, so there's a column of buttons for a number of items & when the user clicks one, all the ones below it move downward then a rectangle shape with appropriate text animates in below. i haven't set all the triggers yet b/c I'm getting stuck on the second button down, first trigger.
What's supposed to happen, from a trigger perspective, is a user clicks on a button, then the first thing it does is move the other buttons when necessary. they should always be in the same order, so the top one doesn't ever move, & the next button down will only move up if the previously accessed button was the top one (which would have pushed the second one down), & so on. after all the Motion Paths are complete, a new layer is open to change a variable, which 1) is used to guide the behaviour of button movements & 2) changes the state of the description text box associated with a given button.
However, the second button's first trigger is supposed to move that button upward only if the first button was already selected, but it's moving upwards indiscriminately. i haven't set most of my triggers yet b/c i need to figure out why this one is misfiring & fix it before moving any further. i would really appreciate if anyone were able to have a peak at this & see if there's anything obviously wrong with it. i may have to rethink the design, though, this is already really complicated...
in any case, if anyone feels like sleuthing, i have attached a portion of the slide below. normally i'd ask co-workers to help me puzzle this sort of thing out, but some ill-timed vacations have made this difficult.
Thanks all.
For a foolproof method of making that button move only if the other buttons have moved, you need a way to know if the others have moved. For that, you need to use variables or states. (Move 1 down when 2 is clicked if 1 is not down, etc.) My personal experience leads me to believe variables are always reliable, and states sometimes are.
This discussion contains some examples to get you started: https://community.articulate.com/articles/examples-of-accordion-interactions-in-elearning
that's a great idea, thanks Walt! I can use the Selected states i'd already set up combined with the variable; I may need to add others, we'll see, but that should work. i'm also thinking i'll scrap the variable as it is & create a new one that uses numbers instead of text, it's a lot simpler to avoid errors that way.
Thanks again!
- You're welcome. PIAWYC (Pass it along when you can).
