Studio 360 Courses Crashing on Apple Devices

Jan 12, 2018

Hello, Articulate community! I have a bit of a doozy for everyone today.

My team is noticing that a fairly substantial percentage of our courses built in Studio 360 are crashing specifically on Apple devices. I realize this is probably difficult to diagnose and offer remedies for, but I wanted to see if anyone has experience with this problem and can identify some likely causes for the crashes. From what I can tell, we aren't doing anything out of the ordinary with our courses; it's mostly just fading icons in and out, synced along with narration. The Flash and HTML5 output plays just fine on PCs, and generally plays ok on Android. However the course crashes at the same spot every time on an iPad Mini -- and not just my own.

I've already attempted the most aggressive fix I can think of: starting from a new PPT, pasting all objects in slide-by-slide, and re-importing/re-syncing audio. Even this approach does not correct the problem.

The error is: "This webpage was reloaded because a problem occurred."

I've published the course to 360 Review. You should be able to replicate this problem on an iPad. It crashes immediately following the Course Summary slide. 

https://360.articulate.com/review/content/f445ae80-8efa-4ab4-81a4-305608056927/review

Does anyone have any advice? It seems unlikely that I'm the only person who is experiencing this problem, given how popular iPads are. Thank you!

9 Replies
Andrew Lowe

I have a follow-up on this, and it's good news. I've been experimenting with all sorts of things, and I think I've stumbled upon a possible cause. As soon as I stopped applying a custom player to my projects, the crashes stopped. I had previously built and saved a custom player with all of the settings we use (player skin colors, menus, controls, etc.) Upon creating a new course, I would simply apply this custom player so that I wouldn't have to specify all of these things over and over again. Well, as it turns out, by keeping the default 'Presenter Player' selected, the crashing stopped on iPads.

I can't really say I understand why, and honestly it seems like this could be a problem worth investigating, but I'm just thankful I have a solution in the interim. By keeping the default player and just specifying the options I want, the crashing on Apple devices seems to have ceased. The only downside is that unfortunately this means applying the same settings manually for every individual course I want to make.

I'm leaving this thread up in case anyone else ever has this problem, and also for the Articulate Staff, in case you'd like to pass this discovery on your QA team for further consideration.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for that additional info and coming back to share! I was in the middle of replying to you here when I saw this update. 😀

We've seen some of the crashing on mobile devices as well and it's been more associated with a custom font used in the course, so did you apply something similar to your Presenter player? If you'd like to share a copy of your course (prior to publish) with our team they'd be happy to test it out! 

I'll also keep you posted on any other information our team determines as we're still keeping an eye on this issue. 

Andrew Lowe

Hi Ashley! Nice to see you. I've been using Studio since 2010, and I've found many of your posts in this forum helpful over the years. =)

As far as fonts go, the only non-standard fonts I've used inside the actual course (the PPTX) are Segoe UI and Segoe UI Light, although I'm not sure I would consider these custom fonts. As far as the custom player goes in the PPTA, I used Segoe UI. However, given that the crashing version (in my custom player) used Segoe UI as the player font, and the working version (in the default player) is also using Segoe UI, one would imagine that both versions would crash on Apple devices if this were the issue.

Anyway, Id be happy to help you if I can! I have a couple of smaller courses that I've yet to apply this fix to. What would help you the most? A package of the PPTX, PPTA, and all Quizzes? A zip of the output? Let me know and I'll provide it for you.

Andrew Lowe

Hi guys, I haven't forgotten about you both... other priorities surfaced and pulled me away. I finally have some time to pop back in about this.

I'm afraid I did something inexcusable -- I fixed my courses! I was so thrilled to have accidentally discovered a remedy (not using a custom player), that I went ahead and corrected my other courses to keep things moving along on my end. I completely forgot I was supposed to save a busted one for your analysis. :( I'm really sorry! However, the good news is that there are likely to be more courses that have this same problem, and it's just a matter of time until we discover which ones are affected. So, as soon as we come across another course that shows these same symptoms, I'll come back to you and provide it.

I apologize for absent-mindedly throwing out the petri dish, ha! I'll circle back at some point.

Andrew Lowe

Hi Ashley and Alyssa! I'm happy to report that we finally identified two more courses with this problem! In both courses, the HTML5 output plays through just fine on PC, but crashes on Apple devices. Since they are both small courses, I'll attach both packages and then you can do whatever you like with them!

I also uploaded freshly published files to 360 for you.

MCP333 (Keyboard Parameter Application Rules): Crashes immediately following Course Summary.

https://360.articulate.com/review/content/92926742-ad7a-4673-b2ae-07dabbd61281/review

MCP334 (Keypad Parameter Application Rules): Crashes when you attempt to play the first video on the Slide, "Video Examples of Data and Digits"

https://360.articulate.com/review/content/17b4afc4-17f7-478d-9bd2-12c488e5eab0/review

I'll be applying the fix to both of these courses locally (switching from a custom player to the default player), but I'll save a copy of the problematic files somewhere just in case.

Hope this helps!

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