LMS Publish = Embedded Engage SWF files resize

Apr 05, 2011

Jessica Demasi
By Jessica Demasi

I've never had an issue with inserting engage SWF files when running courses from our intranet. However, now we've purchased an LMS and our presentations are not playing properly once uploaded. I've inserted the SWF's as flash movies, resized to fit on the slide, synced independently of the slide, and when played from my computer drive works perfectly. When I upload to my LMS, the Engage activities revert back to their full size and  overlap the other objects on the screen.

Any ideas on what may be causing this? We launch in about 2 weeks so I'm hoping it's an easy fix, or I'm just missing a step?

Thanks!

13 Replies
Jessica Demasi
13 years ago04/05/11 at 1:30 pm (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply, Justin. We have our player template set up to the no sidebar/standard view already and I tried modifying the published output as prescribed and that didn't solve the problem. I'm not having the problem with other SWF objects like captivate and/or raptivity slides that I can control the size when creating/publishing. So, the problem seems to be not being able to resize engage anywhere other than the PPT slide once inserted.

Justin Wilcox
13 years ago04/06/11 at 6:34 am (UTC)

If you add the interaction to your course following these steps, you shouldn't have this problem:

http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/products/adding-an-engage-interaction-to-your-course.aspx

If you need to blend the look of the interaction to match the look of the presentation, you can try this:

http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/products/making-your-engage-interaction-look-seamless-with-your-presenter-project.aspx

Jessica Demasi
13 years ago04/06/11 at 7:24 am (UTC)

Hi Justin, I appreciate your help. I'm actually embedding the engage files as SWF files, so not the "traditional" insertion like the two examples in the link you provided (the layout is similar to Tom's "Christina Aid" project with icon navigation at the bottom and engage SWF files resized up top). As I mentioned, I'm only having the sizing issue when I upload to my LMS. The project plays as intended from my computer drive. I'm not sure if locking the presentation size in the template will help? What's interesting is that when I play the project in the LMS the engages are "blown up", but when I hit the back button on the play bar and view the slides again, the engages are at the desired size. So, I'm not sure what gives. Also, it doesn't happen on all embedded engage SWF files so I'm even more stumped.

David Anderson
13 years ago04/06/11 at 8:43 am (UTC)

Hi Jessica,

We've seen a few cases where resized Engage .swf files will perform like you describe. How much are you resizing them? In the Christian Aid project, we didn't resize the files but rather moved them a little off the slide so we didn't have those issues.

What are your player presentation settings? We used "locked at optimal size" so that's something you could try.

David

Jessica Demasi
13 years ago04/06/11 at 12:36 pm (UTC)

Thanks for all the suggestions. I had resized the engages and not just moved them off the slide. So, I went in and did a little editing on the slide design to make it fit with just moving the title bar off the screen and that is a suitable workaround for me! And in the future, I'll know to start my slide design with that limitation in mind.

Again, I appreciate all the help!

Joe Countryman
13 years ago04/15/11 at 10:23 am (UTC)

Hi there.  I am having the same problem.  I publish my engage interactions and then embed them back into presenter as swf.  Looks great on my computer, but once published it makes it full screen and off to the right.  I cannot have it full screen as I have built in navigation I need to show at all times. 

I am willing to import it as a web object, but how do I resize the swf?  I resized the web object but it imports the swf engage as a full screen with scroll bars.  I tried to edit the engage.html but that didnt work either.

Thanks.

Joe Countryman
13 years ago04/15/11 at 10:50 am (UTC)

Hi Phil, I tried to edit the html code, but all it does is resize the html, not the swf...



http://www.articulate.com  -->

Enhancements in Word 2010


var g_bLMS = false;
var g_bAOSupport = false;
var g_strContentFolder = "engage_content";



Sub player_FSCommand(ByVal command, ByVal args)
    call player_DoFSCommand(command, args)
end sub
// -->


// Write the swf
var g_strSwfFile = "engage.swf";
var g_nWidth = "508";  // 720 | 100%
var g_nHeight = "377";  // 540 | 100%
var g_strScale = "noscale"; // noscale | show all
var g_strAlign = "middle";
var g_strQuality = "best";
var g_strBgColor = "#ffffff";
var g_strFlashVars = "";
var g_bScrollbars = true;

// Build out FlashVars string
if (g_strFlashVars != "")
{
 g_strFlashVars += "&";
}

g_strFlashVars += document.location.search.substr(1);

if (g_bScrollbars)
{
 g_nWidth = "508";
 g_nHeight = "377";

 document.write("

");
 document.write("");
 document.write("");
 document.write("");
 document.write("
");
}

 WriteSwfObject(g_strSwfFile,
         g_nWidth,
         g_nHeight,
         g_strScale,
         g_strAlign,
         g_strQuality,
         g_strBgColor,
         g_strFlashVars);

if (g_bScrollbars)
{
 document.write("

");}
Catherine Conley
almost 13 years ago06/15/11 at 3:15 pm (UTC)

Has anybody developed another solution here? I tried the FAQ option in the link that Articulate provided above - (To change the view mode and/or hack into the player.html file) however - I still can't get this to work for me.

RANTING NOW: Life would be so much simplier if articulate would just upgrade Engage to allow us to remove that awful bar at the top! My feature request has not been responded to. If you want this as well, send a feature request! Maybe, if we flood articulate with requests they will do something about this horrible oversight! DONE RANTING

Leah Hemeon
almost 13 years ago06/29/11 at 1:42 pm (UTC)

Hi folks,

I'm having a similar problem. I embedded several Engages as a swfs on different slides. They load but sometimes, at random, they go full size instead of to the size and place as I've set them on the Presenter slide. I'm on the final day for this project and this is the only issue I can't fix.

I also tried inserting as a web object but then I get a white border around the whole thing making the Engage smaller and not looking as nice (I posted on that part here). So, based on the advice on that post, I switched to embedding as SWF. I really want this to work without embedding as a regular Engage as it looks better this way IMHO.

I checked out this forum post from the old forums but didn't see an answer to this particular problem. Here are a couple of screen shots to show you what I'm seeing. Like I said, it's random and I can't replicate it regularly. This happens in IE, Chrome, and Firefox and my client sees it on their end every once in awhile too (which is why I HAVE to fix it).

Anyone have any thoughts on it? I can't share my full files because of an NDA so I'm pleading for help here!

Thanks,

Leah

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.