Resources feature problem

Is there a way for me to get you a package to review at your end on your server? The package is 31 MB. I don't think it will upload due to it's size.

Let me know what you think or make a suggestion.

Bill

I created a smaller package to see if I can attach it. I am not sure it attached since the open window just closed where the larger file produced an error. I will send and if not file is attached I will try to reduce the test file again to a smaller file.

Bill

I just sent a package "Int103_ModONE_package_v2.zip" that appears to have been successful. Please review and let me know what you find. Again, I am looking to see that the short video clip works (which I think will) and that the attached file is appearing in the Resources feature (top right of slide) and when you click on "Resources" that the dropdown looks like it should and that the workbook is displayed along with the respective title "Workbook103" to the right of the word doc icon.

Thanks, and let me know if I need to provide further explanation. I think it will be clear once you click on the Resource link. The "title" will either be visible, or blank (unless you hover over it to activate it.)

Bill

Hi Bill,

Thank you very much for getting back to me and for sharing that file. After taking a look, I do see the same thing. However, I believe this may be due to the color options for the player itself. If you go into the Player options and colors, the Resources tab changes to white text, as well as the document in the list. When I hover over the document, the text is white with a dark blue "hover" background.

This is from within the color options and preview:

I was able to fix the "Resources" text by changing the "Tab >> Selected Text" to black, instead of white. Now the tab text shows up properly.

I was also able to fix the text for the attachment text by changing the "List Item >> Normal Text" to black instead of white. 

So, thankfully, the text isn't missing - it's just white :) You don't need to use blank for the font, but I would definitely recommend using a darker color, so learners can see the text of the tab title and attachment. 

I've attached the modified version of the file for you here as well, just in case you'd like to take a look.

Let me know if this helps!

Christine

Christine: Thank you! I was able to go in and make the same changes at my end. Very helpful!!

With your guidance, I went in and made some nice "cosmetic" changes to the slide and love it.

Now, here's another problem. I published the same Module that I sent you to "WEB" and sent it, uploaded via FTP, to our web developer who placed it on our Online Training site called www.365Trainer.com. I went there to launch it (test it) and it was not formatted at all like I created it in Articulate Presenter. Also, the videos did not play. I have attached a sample slide (in graphic form)  in a word doc using some screen captures (slide 2 as the example in the Module that you looked at) I was wondering if you can offer advice as to how I can publish it so that it plays back the same on our site as it does when I preview it locally.

I have attached a file for your review.

I think you'll see what I am talking about when you look at the "good" slide vs. the "bad" slide. Somehow, the published version lost it's formatting as far as how objects go through transitions (fade, etc.) how the text appears (some lost bullets as well as color). The videos don't play and the graphics seem to remain on as "layers" so some slides have all the graphics displayed rather than have them fade out and then others fade in.

This works great in the Preview as well as when I publish it then view it locally.

Did the videos play for you?

I tried viewing the sample Module in both IE 9 and in Fire Fox. Both rendered ill-formatted versions of the Module.

Thanks for all your help.

P.S. We have one course in 365Trainer built using Articuate Presenter '09 and that one works just fine.

Bill

Christine:

When I publish the Module to be loaded on our site for others to view, what boxes should be checked or not checked on this window? Under "Properties" does it matter what the Presenter selection is? Another question is, is there a way to allow a Student to view the Module offline where it can only be viewed once? I don't want them to be able to "retain" a copy forever. They are taking this course (6 Modules in total) as Continuing Education and pay for it. It is not meant as a "Purchase" of the course to keep and share with others. If I cannot get it to work on our training site, I am looking for a safe alternative to allow them access, but not retention of the material.

Thanks again for all your help! You are making my life easier.

Bill

Christine: I figured out what was wrong with the published Module. I unchecked the HTML5 and Mobil device boxes and published it again. It worked perfect on our online server. The only issue is the videos. They are showing blank screens. I am not sure what is going on.

Can you suggest the best format for the videos to be rendered it that will work best in Articulate '13?

Thanks, Bill

Christine: The videos we are using are in MP4 format. They work when I publish and view it on my local machine. Is there a better format to create the videos in, or does MP4 work well with Art '13?

Bill

Hi Bill,

I sincerely apologize for the delay - I did take a look at the file earlier, but it's been a busy day.

MP4s are supported in '13 yes - there are some quality issues, but that shouldn't make them disappear when you upload to that server. Have you tried testing that particular project on another server, by any chance?

You could try Tempshare or SCORM Cloud, possibly, just to see if they play properly. 

Since you've updated (and thankfully fixed some of the issues) the file you shared earlier, are you able to share the newer version? I can test it out on our servers if you'd like. 

One thing comes to mind, as well - the other projects that you've successfully loaded in your server, do they contain MP4 videos? If not, it could be an issue of MIME types. 

MP4 videos require a MIME type on your server to play properly

Thanks, Bill!

Christine: I have attached the Module that works on our server but the videos do not appear. Can you open it and see if it works for you? I think everything else will be fine, with the exception of the videos.

Bill

Hi Bill,

I couldn't upload to my own server, because those are the output files. However, I was able to upload that ZIP file to Tempshare.

You can take a look a the project here:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/tempshare-stage.studio.articulate.com/prp18c8qp37h11841lkh1un0kbq15rv4/presentation.html

Yes, the videos are playing quite well for me from this server - I particularly enjoyed the "Whodunnit" video :)

Can you take a look and see if that works for you as well, please?

Thanks!

Yes. It worked perfectly. I am going to send your other email to my guy to review. The one above pertaining to MP4 videos (MIME) and see what he says.

Thanks again.

You are making life easier for me!!

You're so welcome, Bill! :)

I hope that does the trick!

Have an awesome weekend and happy holiday!

Another issue. I have all our Course Modules created. All the transitions are working. Now, when I go to add audio with the slide, the slide stops as soon as the audio is completed and the remainder of the slide content is cut off or stopped right at the same time as the audio.

Is there a way to keep the slide moving along once the audio has stopped?

Bill

Hi William!

You may notice that animations suddenly stop playing if the duration of the animations is longer than the slide audio. In Articulate Presenter '13, audio takes precedence over animations when determining the duration of a slide. If you need animations to continue playing after the slide audio has finished, open the audio editor, and add silence to the end of the slide to accommodate the animation timings.

Hi Leslie:

I actually figured that out during some trial and error runs. I initially just allowed the audio to continue without saying anything to allow the animations to play out. There was a lot of "noise" while this was occurring so I went into the audio editor, played around a little, figured out how to use the silent feature and it worked perfectly. I am glad to return to see that you suggested the same thing and that I was correct and that there wasn't another way.

Thanks for your reply. It confirms that I am heading in the right direction with my understanding of Art '13.

Bill

Great! Thanks for the update William

Hi Leslie:

We successfully uploaded our Modules but I have one other item that came up. I opened one of our Modules and copied one slide from it (slide instructions) to add to a new course we are working on. This was to simply save time. I then returned to that Module and for whatever reason literally all the audio is missing from all the slides as well as the videos. I opened the audio editor to see if the wave file appeared in any of the slides and all the slides were blank. So, the slides were missing the audio that was once there. Is there anyway to recover the audio portion? More to the point, is there a reason it would simply self-delete? The other Modules retained their formatting (video and audio) so I am leaving those alone and not going to copy (and paste) any slide from one course into another in order to save time. Has anyone reported such issues as this where audio has suddenly disappeared? The published product works fine. It's the working files or the unpublished slides where the audio and video is now gone. Again, what I did was to copy a slide, not cut, and pasted the copied slide into a new Module.

It appears that it lost some of the animation and transition formatting as well when you copy from one presentation and paste it into a new one.

Thanks for any help you can provide. For now, it appears that Articulate is very sensitive and once you are done with a presentation it appears best to start from scratch to avoid ruining the original presentation.

Bill

One other question:

Can you unpublish or unpackage a presentation and change or alter any files or slides? If I could reverse the process I could retain the audio I lost in the Module. It's a wild card question in case there's no way to recover lost audio. Fortunately, I didn't go past the first Module so the worst of it is that I'd have to replace the audio and video in one of six modules.

Are there any reports that the new Articulate '13 is sensitive (only word I can use to describe my experience) to any changes. Are audio files that you create within the presentation saved anywhere? Or, do you have to create audio files outside of Articulate and import them into your presentation in order to retain them for future insertion into other slides?

Make sense?

Bill

Hi Bill!

It's strongly recommended that you avoid copying an pasting from one project to another. You can copy and paste within the same presentation - that should be fine. But copying a slide, especially one with media tied to it, can cause some issues for the project where it's pasted. 

If you need to use a lot of elements from one course, you could simply use the "Save As" feature in PowerPoint. Save the file under a new name, then remove the content you don't need. At that point, you can add new content. 

Or you could import the slides:

Import PowerPoint Slides - E-Learning Heroes

There is an article on '09 that may help with recovering the media that you lost. Check out the following article - you may want to read all of it, but I recommend trying out the step under "There is an -old.ppta file in the same folder where your presentation is stored":

Articulate Support - Audio is missing or lost in published Presenter 

Ok. Here's another question...

How do I allow the Student or User to resize their browser window themselves once they launch the Presentation? I created several short courses by changing my options in the Player Properties, but what I am wanting the actual slide material to also enlarge at the same time they resize their browser window. I don't want them to simply have more white space around the slide, but I want the slide material itself to also "magnify" as they enlarge their window.

I also went into PPT 10 (version I am using) and selected the "Design" tab and changed the page size but it still looks the same. Do I have to "render" all the slide material from the beginning in order for a larger image to be displayed?

I have a smaller screen I am using (13") and one of our Students has a 23". He right clicked on the presentation and it allowed him to Zoom in, then he had to right click again and it resized the Player or Slide view to a size in between. In other words, the initial launch was smaller, the Zoom in was too big, but the second click reduced it just right. Sounds like Goldilocks and the 3 bears.

I have some graphics (court transcripts) on some of the slides where the image is hard to read due to the window size of the player. I would like to allow the User to be able to enlarge the presentation window so what they see on their screen is larger. In other words, can the user scale it to their viewing screen, or do I have to go back to the drawing board and make all the graphics larger? The problem is that if I try to make the graphics larger it won't fit in the window where I am doing the "creation" part prior to publishing the Course.

Any suggestions, or am I making sense enough for you to help?

Bill 

Hi Bill,

I hope you had a great weekend! :)

It might help to change the options for the presentation size - but keep in mind that there is a known issue with Studio '13 with custom sizing. Here's the thread on that topic. 

Here's information on customizing the project - this may help your users that have larger displays and need the browser to adjust to the content:

Choosing a Presentation Size

*Changing the Browser Settings and Player Size in Articulate Presenter

Thanks Christine:

Do you know what settings in the Player Properties I would select that would allow the "Viewer" or "End User Student" the option of increasing the size of the presentation on their respective screen? I am trying to allow the student to be able to resize the viewing area (slide or player size) so they can view some of the smaller text in the slide that may be difficult to read.

If you go to Player Properties and select "Other" (settings icon) you see the "Browser Settings." (not telling you something you don't know) Then under "Browser Size" what option do I select?

1. Display at user's current browser size

2. Resize browser to optimal size

3. Resize browser to fill screen

Then under "Player size" what option do I select?

1. Lock player at optimal size

2. Scale player to fill browser window

And, do I leave the box unchecked for "Launch player in new window (creates launch page).  I actually tried this after publishing and it didn't work for me. It displayed a 'launch button" but nothing would appear.

I am not so concerned about the new window option unless that works better than the other options, however I had a problem with it.

My main point or question deals with what selections do I make as described above?

If I want the Student who has activated the presentation in his or her browser to see the material where they have control over the size of the browser window would I select the following Player properties or do you have another suggestion?

3. Resize browser to fill screen

Then under "Player size" what option do I select?

2. Scale player to fill browser window

I guess my main questions boils down to asking what Player properties do I select that will let the Student be able to read smaller content in one Published version vs. another using different settings?

Thank you for all your help!

Bill

Hi Bill!

1. Display at user's current browser size

> This will adjust the entire project to whatever size the user has for their browser. If they adjust the browser size, the project should scale with it. However, as I mentioned earlier, if the slide size is custom, there's an issue with how that's currently being displayed and it may not work properly.

2. Resize browser to optimal size

> This will adjust the player to the size that you designated for the project. For example, say the project you created is larger than that of the user's web browser window. This will adjust it so that the window itself fits the project, but if the learner's screen is much smaller this means that they may have to scroll. 

3. Resize browser to fill screen

I haven't seen too many projects use this option. It might be a good idea for you, if you want the browser window to be the main focus and you want it to take up the majority of the screen. However, personally I prefer to allow users to take advantage of the F11 (varies on some browsers) function that will actually force the browser into full screen mode. This changes the browser, however, not the player size.

___________________________________

1. Lock player at optimal size

This is actually going to retain your specified size for your project. If you're wanting to allow the learner to adjust the window, that's fine, but if you want them to be able to scale your project, I would recommend not using this option. 

2. Scale player to fill browser window

 This is the option you'll want to use. This will scale the project up or down (if you're not using a custom size - as I mentioned, this is currently an issue in some cases and may not work properly) when the user adjusts the size of their browser window. 

Launching a new window won't work properly if the project isn't hosted in a web server and it may also depend on how that server handles the launch page option.

Thanks! Hope you're having a great day so far :)