The Scenes editor: slides, objects and layers

Scenes is the slide editor: every slide has a fixed size and every object sits where you put it, the way it did in Storyline or Captivate. Courses land in it when they are imported from a source that is laid out on slides: a Storyline publish, a Captivate Classic .cptx, a Captivate Classic publish whose actions keep state, or an all-new Captivate (12/13) publish whose actions keep state and whose slides are all free-positioned (see Import a Captivate course). Everything else imports into the block editor, where lessons reflow on any screen.

A Scenes course opens straight into the editor at /courses/<id>/scenes when you open it from the Courses dashboard. New courses made with New course use the block editor; there is no way to start an empty Scenes course from the dashboard.

Slides are listed on the left under Slides, numbered in order. Click one to edit it.

• Add Slide adds a slide after the others, the same size as the slide you are on, with a white background and one layer called Base Layer.
• Right-click a slide for Duplicate, Rename and Delete. A duplicate copies the slide's layers and objects. The last slide cannot be deleted.
• Double-click a slide's name, or press F2, to rename it.
• Drag a slide to reorder it, or press Alt+↑ / Alt+↓. The arrow keys move between slides and Delete deletes the current one.

Pick a tool from the toolbar above the canvas, then click the slide where the object should go; the tool goes back to Select afterwards. The tools, with their keys:

• Select (V), Text (T), Image (I), Button (B), Hotspot (H).
• Shape, which opens a picker: Rectangle, Rounded Rect, Circle, Triangle, Diamond and Arrow.
• Video and Audio. Audio opens Record Voiceover, so you can record narration in the browser.
• Quiz Question (Q), which asks for the type: Multiple Choice, True / False, Fill in the Blank, Matching, Sequence or Hotspot. Questions on a slide are graded the same way in the preview and in the exported package.
• Drag Item and Drop Zone, for ungraded drag-and-drop. Learners can drag, or select an item and then a zone, so it works without a mouse.
• Interactive Video.

You can also drop an image or video file onto the canvas to upload it and place it. The rest of the toolbar holds the Media Library, alignment and distribution, Toggle Grid and Snap to Grid, Variables, zoom, and a responsive preview that shows the slide at Desktop (1280×720), Tablet (768×600) or Mobile (390×700) size, read-only.

Click an object to select it; Shift+click adds to the selection, and dragging a box on an empty part of the slide selects everything inside it. Drag to move, drag a handle to resize (Shift keeps the proportions on a corner).

With one object selected the Properties panel has four tabs:

• Style: its name, position and size, rotation, stacking order, Locked and Hidden, and its look (fill, border, corner radius, text color and size, opacity). Quiz objects show their question editor here instead.
• States: the looks the object can switch between. See Triggers, variables and states.
• Triggers: what happens when the learner does something.
• Animation: an entrance and an exit (Fade, Fly, Zoom, Bounce, Wipe or Spin) with duration, delay and easing, and when the object appears on the timeline.

With nothing selected the panel shows Slide Properties: the slide's name, its background (color, gradient or image), its transition, its size (shown, not changed here) and Random draw (see Question pools and slide draws). With several objects selected you can lock, unlock, hide or show them all at once.

Every slide has a Base Layer, and can have more: a layer is a set of objects that triggers show and hide together, such as a feedback panel or a pop-up. The Layers tab under the canvas lists them, top of the stack first.

• Add Layer adds one and makes it the layer new objects go onto.
• The eye button hides a layer in the editor only, so you can work on what is underneath; it does not change what learners see.
• Double-click or press F2 to rename; Alt+↑ / Alt+↓ reorder; Delete layer removes a layer and its objects (undo brings both back). The last layer cannot be deleted.
• Starts shown / Starts hidden sets what learners see when the slide opens. Layers you add start shown; click the button on a layer's row to make it start hidden, so it appears only when a trigger shows it (a feedback panel, say). A layer that starts hidden keeps a Starts hidden tag on its row, and you can still see and edit it in the editor. Imported layers keep whether they started visible in the original.

The same panel has a Notes tab for the slide's speaker notes.

Undo and Redo are in the top bar (⌘Z and ⌘⇧Z, or Ctrl on Windows), and their tooltips say what will be undone. Undo covers slides, objects, layers and variables, up to 200 steps, and it is saved: undoing really changes the course, not just the screen.

Press ? or use the toolbar's keyboard button for the full list of shortcuts. The ones used most: the tool keys above; Tab to move between objects and Enter to select one; ⌘D to duplicate; the arrow keys to nudge by 1px (Shift for 10px, Alt to resize); F2 to edit an object's text; ⌘F to find in slides.

⌘K opens the command palette ("What do you want to do?"), which reaches every command in the editor by name, and says why one cannot run right now. The Tools menu holds the rest: slide masters, the scene map, the question bank, branching, the component library, the Player theme, design tokens, Accessibility, Alt text triage, Version history and the analytics heatmap.

Tools → Player theme styles the player around your slides: the accent (Next button), progress bar, navigation bar and its text, the background, a logo you upload (top left, top right or hidden), the navigation font, and rounded corners and a drop shadow on slides. Text on slides keeps its own font and colors.

The preview and every exported package (SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, cmi5 and xAPI) look the same, and a package carries its own copy of the logo, so nothing loads from Scormbusters. Anything you leave unchanged follows Settings → Branding (brand color and logo); the course's own choices win. If navigation text or the progress bar would be hard to read on your navigation bar, the dialog says so and learners see a readable shade instead. There is no custom CSS for Scenes. See Theming and branding.

• Preflight, in the top bar, checks the whole course as you work and says whether it will work in an LMS. Click a finding to jump to the slide or object. See Preflight.
• Accessibility (in Tools) checks the current slide: keyboard tab order, each object's alt text, label, language and role, and a WCAG audit. Alt text triage works through every picture in the course; see Accessibility triage after an import.
• Preview opens the course in a new tab in the real learner player, with triggers, variables and slide draws working. Progress you make there is saved like a learner's.
• Export downloads a package: SCORM 1.2 (works in every LMS), SCORM 2004 (more room for resume data), cmi5, or xAPI (Tin Can). If preflight has found something that will not work in an LMS, the export stops and the problems are listed. If the only problems left are accessibility ones, you can still export, and the audit log records that the course shipped with known issues. PDF opens a print view of the slides.