Image if you master trigges and states in Articulate Storyline you could build the coolest interactions. In this video I’ll teach you step by step how you can use triggers and states in Articulate storyline.
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Let’s start
So let’s start with states in Articulate Storyline. A state in Articulate Storyline is a certain state of an object, and the easiest way to explain this is a button in Storyline. So let’s add one, and to add a button, I go to the insert tab. I go to button, select one of them, for instance, this one, and I draw it on my slide. If my button is selected, I can type text in it, for instance, “Button.” And I can also add an icon here, an arrow key.
So if you have selected your button and you’re clicking here on the state step, you’ll see that Storyline has several built-in states for the button. You’ll see a hover state, a down state, a visited state, and a disabled state. For example, Storyline shows the hover state when a user hovers with his mouse over the button, and the down state becomes visible when a user presses the button. Storyline shows the visited state when a button is clicked, and the disabled state is used when a button is not clickable, for instance, a button that does not work if a user had not yet answered a question on a slide.
Changing different states
You can change the different states by clicking on the Edit States button. Now you can select the state, for instance, the visited state, and you can change the icon or the color of the button. So when I want to change the color, I can choose here orange, and you see that my visited state becomes orange. And I could also change the icon if I select my disabled state and I change another icon. So now you see that the disabled state has another icon than the other states of my button.
Now, almost every object in Storyline can have states. And we’ve seen that a button already has a set of predefined states by default. But if we, for instance, make a shape, then you can see that Storyline only gives this a standard or normal shape. So let’s make a shape. I will go to my Insert tab and I’ll draw a shape. So now it’s selected and you’ll see on my state step that that only has a normal state. But you can give objects in Storyline also custom states, and this can you do by clicking on the Edit States button and clicking on New here, New State. And now you see here that you can choose from several predefined states for this object, or you can also create your own states, for instance, completed. And you can click on Add, and now there is a custom state completed for this object.
And if you create a new state, for instance, this completed state, what Storyline does, it copies the normal state to the new state. And now if you select this, you can adjust the state that we’ve just made, for example, by adding and changing the color of the state or adding extra elements in the state. And this can be different Storyline objects, even videos. So if I click on Caption, for instance, and I draw a caption here, then you will see that my completed state has a blue rectangle and also a caption in it. So this I can also do for, for instance, a hover state. It is I hover with my mouse over an object that the hover state contains a video, contains an extra image or a text object.
And one last thing about states that I want to tell you. If you select an object, you can set the initial state for this object. Now it’s on normal. You can select the completed state. But what you also can do is set it to hidden. Now, the state is on your slide, but is not visible for the user. And you can use triggers to set the other state. So let’s move on to triggers to see what you can do with triggers and states to build cool interactions in Storyline.
Triggers in Articulate Storyline
You can use triggers in Articulate Storyline to perform actions at a specific moment. To create a new trigger, go your triggers panel and click on New. And now the Triggers Wizard will open. In Storyline, triggers are always made up of three components.
The first component is what happens in the trigger. So in this example, there’s an action that says Jump to Slide. So what happens is that the user jumps to another slide. Now, which slide it is, can you see here? It’s the next slide.
But you can also pick one of the other slides in your project.
The second thing is when does it happen? This happens in this example when the timeline starts. And
where will it happen? This is the object, and for this example is it the untitled slide. That’s the name of this slide. Now, you can also say, when does this happen? If a user clicks a button.
Speaker 1:
We have a rectangle that has a hidden state. So now let’s create a trigger on this button that shows the rectangle when we click on the button. So the first thing that I do is I select the button and now I’ll go to New Trigger. The first question that I ask myself creating a new trigger is what want I do to happen here? It is I want to change the state of an object. So I choose Trigger, Change State Of. Now on which object? It’s here, the rectangle. To state completed or normal? So let’s say normal. When has to be this executed? When a user clicks on button two. So now let’s click Okay. And if you now preview this slide, you can see that if I click this button, the rectangle appears on my slide and this button now shows the clicked state.
Speaker 1:
What you also can do with triggers and states is to change the state of a menu item. So let’s go to the first slide in this project. I have here four menu items, and let’s select the first menu item. And I click on States. You’ll see that there are different objects in my state. And this menu item has only one state. So let’s create a new menu item. I click on Edit States, click on New, and give this the name Completed, and click on Add. Now let’s add a check-mark to the state. So I’ll go to Insert a Shape, and here’s check-mark. So I can show the check-mark here and can make it green, for instance.
So now the completed state has a check-mark on it. So what we now can do with triggers is to add a trigger that is executed when the timeline starts, that checks if a certain value is true, for instance, a variable. And when this value is true, the trigger will be executed and the state of this object will be set to completed. Now, if you want to know more about variables and how you can use them in Storyline, I’ve put a card to my video about variables here at your right, so you can click it, and again, watch my video about variables or how you can use variables in Articulate Storyline. Now let’s add our Trigger.
Trigger panel
So I’ll go to my Trigger panel, I will choose Changing State Of. The object here is this icon. I want to change it to completed, and not when the user clicks, but when my timeline starts. And it’s not the timeline of icon one, but a timeline of my slide. And now you can also choose a condition, for instance. So if you click on the blue plus sign here, you can choose a condition or a variable. For instance, that you can create a variable that’s called completed chapter one. You set it to completed chapter one to true on your last slide.
And when you now come to your menu slide, this trigger will be [crosstalk 00:08:01] check. And if the variable is true, the state of this object we will change to completed. And you’ll see the check mark, so you know that you completed your first chapter.
Now, we’ve seen in the example, let’s go to Slide Trigger and then Change State of Triggers. But there are many more triggers in Storyline. So let’s see which they are.
So if I go to Action, you can see my triggers. I can show layer, hide a layer, jump to slide or jump to scene, move an object, exit my course, set my course to completed. I can adjust variables, pause my timeline or resume it, jump to a URL or a specific fill. I can execute variable off of JavaScript, but I can also submit request a interaction or submit request results.
So we’ve just seen that there are many options for a user when a trigger is executed, but there are also many options when a trigger is executed. When a timeline starts, but you can also say when a state changes, when an animation completes, when an object intersects or the intersection ends, when an object leaves the slide or enters it, when a slider moves or dial turns, if one of my variable changes. So you have a lot of possibilities to use triggers in your Storyline projects.
