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With the rise of tablets in the workplace, your eLearning is likely needing some freshening up to make things more accessible for touch-only input (iPads and other tablets). You may find yourself tasked with getting things up to snuff for your burgeoning mobile workforce, but the task doesn’t have to be daunting if you know what the bare minimum is for getting your catalog to be touch-friendly.
While Articulate is still in the early stages of introducing mobile responsiveness for its flagship Storyline software, Storyline Developers don’t have to wait until Articulate introduces greater functionality. Here are three areas for your consideration as you move forward to better serve your tablet-toting audience.
Bigger Hotspots
Bigger is better! Touch-friendly is the objective here, as small targets (such as buttons and linked images) can be difficult for users to touch with precision.
You must exaggerate the touchable areas on your slides by drawing larger hotspots over any object that a mouse can click.
Pro Tip: If you have a state on your image or button, add a trigger to your new hotspot to ensure a Change State function occurs. Otherwise, your new hotspots will prevent state changes for the objects underneath.
Go Easy on the Assets
Don’t overload your slides with too much audio and video. Tablet browsers are prone to crashing when the media load suddenly turns into overload, especially older hardware. More specifically, a slide that has many audio and video embeds distributed among a series of layers commonly sends Safari or Chrome crashing. Instead, distribute multiple media objects over a series of slides, perhaps in their own scene as seen here.
Pro Tip: If you have a slide with video or audio that needs to auto advance to the next slide after the clip ends, use a trigger to Jump to Next Slide when Media Completes. What qualifies a slide completion in this instance is contingent on the media duration – not the timeline’s.
Scale Your Player
You need to have your module fit precisely within the available screen space and without scrollbars for optimal tablet viewing. To make this setting change, click Player from the ribbon (under the Home tab). Next, click Other. Click the drop-down menu for Player Size and select Scale Player to Fill Browser Window.
Pro tip: In your communication to your learners, address your tablet users and instruct to use devices in landscape mode for optimal viewing. Such is the compromise for not having a proper set of responsive design options in Storyline, but it’s the least complicated ask.
There are other considerations, but those basics ones can get you started. For even more tips, be sure to book an online tutoring session with Story Ninja at www.storyninja.com. Story Ninja is highly-rated Fiverr service that has helped new and seasoned Storyline Developers alike get better acquainted with mobile courseware development for only $5 for every 10 minutes. Other services offered are general Storyline training, QA service, and course rescues – all which are a fraction of the cost when compared to a traditional eLearning studio.
Mention promo code NINJA2016 in your booking to get an additional 10 minutes included in your first session.
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