Showstopping bugs and hassle-laden rework upgrading to Studio '13
Oct 14, 2013
I was excited to upgrade to the new suite, mainly for HTML5 support. However, within an hour or two after upgrading and trying to convert a project done in Studio '09, I uncovered several bugs, which were all later reproduced by Articulate Support.
1. When uploading to an LMS, the personalized logo added does not show up. At all. This happens in Saba, and Support replicated the issue using the SCORM Cloud test site. I am baffled as to how this got by QA, as product branding and LMS use is a pretty big deal, isn't it? I was told by support that the workaround is to disable HTML5 output. So the biggest reason I upgraded is now invalid?
2. If you use a custom player tab interaction in the topbar right area of your player, you cannot properly reorder the items you have in there. For example, I have an Engage interaction as HELP, then RESOURCES and EXIT. We always have EXIT as the last link (on the right). As long as the Engage interaction is there, it will not let me put EXIT on the right, but instead, puts RESOURCES there. The only fix is to remove the Engage interaction, thereby changing the layout/interaction of every project we do.
3. Notes text in the first few slides of a presentation gets resized for a few slides until it finally displays correctly. For example, out notes text is always Arial 11pt. font. Yet the second slide in a project renders at 9pt., then the next slide at 10pt., then the third slide finally is correct. I can resize those other 2 slides at other font sizes (which display correctly), but not the correct 11pt. Minor, and not the end of the world, but still noticeable.
4. Not a bug, but a hassle: custom templates. Why is there not a converter from old templates in '09 to the new XML format in '13? There is also almost a 1:1 match between the Storyline custom template color schemes and Presenter '13. Why not at least make those interchangeable for customers using both? Instead, I had to do a side-by-side recreation of our entire color scheme for the player template, 1 field at a time (and there are, it seems, about 100 individual custom color fields to modify, and it's not the easiest interface to use, either).
While issues 3 and 4 are not showstoppers, items 1 and 2 are, and I am now stuck with the '13 suite and unable to work because of the bugs. I've been a big supporter of the software, but this has been a big letdown, in all honesty..
I was told it's up to the developers what issues they choose to fix. Studio '09 had a lot of known issues that never got fixed, so I really can't guess with any confidence if these will get fixed or not (and neither could Support). I also don't think crippling your projects to get something to work without bugs is a reasonable request or expectation for a software developer to make.
Anyone out there that can save the day and know of actual workarounds for those issues without disabling a major feature of the software? Or am I going to have to wait until I can downgrade back to '09 and hope these issues get fixed?
7 Replies
Hi Chris.
I apologize for the difficulty here. I have reviewed your issues and I can tell you that issues 1 and 2 will be addressed in an update to Presenter. The issues are similar in that the issues are due to inaccuracies in the frame.xml file in the presentation_content folder of the published output.
1. The problem is a backslash used in place of a forward slash in the frame.xml file:
[code]<option name="logo_url" value="presentation_content\logo.swf">
<properties>
<property name="width" value="219" />
<property name="height" value="152" />
</properties>
</option>[code]
By changing to this, it works as expected:
presentation_content/logo.swf
2. This section here appears in the wrong order of the frame.xml file:
-<listitem name="customlink" value="true" group="linkright">-<properties><property name="title" value="Exit"/><property name="data" value="6nnjOlYkrcY"/><property name="ignoreSlideLock" value="true"/></properties></listitem>
If you manually change the order, the tabs display correctly.
3. The Notes information should be coming from the notes as formatted in PowerPoint. I would check the formatting under View -> Notes Page. If the published output does not reflect what is in the Notes Page, it is possible the PowerPoint file has some corruption causing this. Here's how to fix a corrupt PowerPoint file.
4. The player templates were completely rebuilt from the ground up for this release of Presenter. Unfortunately you cannot upgrade a legacy template to a new template. It is just not technically possible to do so.
I can assure you that we will be addressing the logo and tab order issues in a point release as these are clearly not working as intended. If you nee to share your files regarding your notes issue you can initiate a chat session or contact us using the PMP contact form.
Hi Justin,
I appreciate the quick investigation on this.
Are you saying every time a project is published, that frame.xml file has to be fixed? Or is it in the source files of the software that can be fixed once?
My problem is that I'm now back on '09. If I reinstall '13 and cannot fix this issue, I'll be stuck again.
Perhaps I can wait until i have a break in Presenter projects to try again.
Hi Chris.
The frame.xml file is presentation specific so it would need to be modified every time. I personally wouldn't recommend doing this as this could be very prone to error, though possible.
We do need to address those first two issues programmatically though.
Hi Justin:
I have just had a bug confirmed by support staff with no work around:
Playlists do not suspend when a tab interaction is launched (i.e. an interaction that is accessed through the top menu, not one that is placed within the slide deck). What this means is that if you have any video or audio within that interaction, the playlist will continue to play right through it.
Any ideas on whether or not this is slated to be fixed in a patch? It is annoyingly restrictive in some cases the way things are now.
Thanks!
Brant
Hi Brant! We have reported this issue to our Quality Assurance team and it is in their hands. As Vevette mentioned in your case, we have no time frames to offer for when this issue will be addressed.
I had this issue arise with earlier versions--I added an instruction to users asking them to pause the slide prior to clicking a tab. Not as nice as having the slide pause automatically, but I never got any complaints from users.
Thanks Karin for sharing that idea here.
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