Forum Discussion
Menu and hidden/normal states
Hi everyone, I've been working on ELC#406 this week and doing a lot of fiddling to my course. Double thanks to Judy Nollet for helping me with a specific problem with hidden states and also for this YT training that I was watching today that led me to change a group of objects to a single shape using states - which was a wonderful cleanup to the project. It's mostly where I'd like it but I'm wondering if I can make the triggers any better and would appreciate any advice from seasoned Storyline users. File attached so you can see and test as needed.
As a user I'd expect to interact with the menus like this:
1. I click the main menu button and the sub-menus are revealed. I click again, they go away. That is working.
2. I click the sun menu and the signs are revealed. I click sun menu again, they go away. That is working.
3. I click the sun menu and the signs are revealed. I click the main menu button: the signs disappear and the main sub-buttons are revealed. This is working.
3A. I THEN click one of the sub-menus which takes me immediately to the other slide. This is not how it works with my setup (slide trigger fires first and reveals the signs before the user is taken to the other slide based on the trigger in the master slide)
4. I click the main menu and the sub-menus are revealed. I click the sun menu: the signs appear and the sub-menus disappear. This is not how it works with my setup because of the toggling trigger and that particular sequence of clicking - the sub-menus do disappear but the signs do not appear because they've been toggled to hidden state.
I am sure there must be a way to do this with variables plus triggers that set the states to hidden/normal (paired with the if function and based on the variable) in lieu of toggling but I've been fiddling for a while and can not figure out how to structure it - and also end up breaking one of the other use cases. Would appreciate any help on how to do what I've described or other streamlining you'd recommend.
Thank you!
Jackie
Hey Jackie. I was able to play around with your project file...and I think I have it set up to your liking (maybe? it's 11pm where I am and I'm sure I've misread what you're trying to achieve here...)
Some of the major changes I made included moving triggered animations to layers so you can take advantage of timelines and slide properties. I also overlayed a semi-transparent copy of the signs on a few of the dialog layers so as to add some visual interest.
I was only able to work on the "Sun" layer, but if the set up ends up working out for ya, it's pretty simple to replicate for the other slides (Moon and Rising).
Hope it helps!
Thank you so much, Daniel! This is wonderful and is doing exactly what I want. I truly appreciate your help.
Best,
Jackie
Daniel, I have one follow up if you're so inclined. I was able to replicate everything I could identify on the "Signs Expand" layer. When the signs are revealed and I click the duplicated moon icon, nothing happens. The behavior I would want is to hide the signs and have them re-appear if I click the moon icon again; this is how it is functioning on the sun slide that you updated so I'm clearly missing something. Updated link is attached. Thanks again!
Hey Jackie. Just looked through the slide layer properties for "SignsExpand" and noticed a few things:
- When working with layers wherein content is supposed to "reset," go ahead and switch the "When revisiting:" option to "Reset to initial state"
- When working with Pause/Resume timeline triggers on a layer, you can forgo the use of a dedicated "Hide layer..." trigger and opt for the option within the slide layer property labeled "Hide slide layer when timeline finishes". This will work in conjunction with the "Resume timeline on this layer when the user clicks Moon Duplicate" trigger you have set up
Also...if you want to keep the signs from disappearing each time the user reviews the layer containing the information tied to that sign (e.g., Aries), you can uncheck the first option "Hide other slide layers" for each sign layer. It can be a bit tedious to have to click the center icon to reveal the signs every time.
This is perfect, thank you! I have also taken your last suggestion. I really appreciate your and this community's enthusiasm to help new users :)
😊
