Chrome/Firefox: index_lms.html loads html source

Mar 21, 2013

Joël Brandes
By Joël Brandes

Dear Community

Me again

Due to limitations of our LMS I have to link to index_lms.html instead of story.html, otherwise the tracking doesn't work (but thats a different story). This creates another problem though: Firefox 14.0.1 and Chrome 27.0.1444.3 loads index_lms.html's source, only Internet Explorer (I tested 8 and 9) loads the flash content. When linking to story.html, the content loads just fine but the tracking doesn't work, so I have to stick to index_lms.html.

Who is most likely faulty here? Server? Browser(s)? LMS?

A screenshot always looks nice, so here you get one:

Thanks in advance for your participation!

8 Replies
Steve Flowers
11 years ago03/21/13 at 9:10 am (UTC)

Referring to index_lms.html is normal for LMS tracking. By default, the imsmanifest points to this file as the launched file.

That's really strange. Since I've been able to successfully run SCO's through other browsers using http://cloud.scorm.com, I would point in the direction of the server. It could be that the server is processing the contents of the file before it serves it up. One difference between this file and the story.html is the presence of doctype at the beginning of the file.Try this to see if it makes a difference.

Add <!DOCTYPE HTML> above the Copyright statement.

Joël Brandes
11 years ago03/21/13 at 9:47 am (UTC)

Interesting development.

The above proposed edit still makes Chrome and Firefox load the source, after a couple seconds the flash content gets loaded in though. Weird.

Note the "?" from before after the copyright line gets replaced with an unknown character, hints at codepage issues. Are here several issues at work simultaneously?

 

Edit note: I have removed the images from this message. Of the two images in the message, one was not from me but has been pulled in from elsewehere. It showed somebodies Android phone screenshot instead of a screenshot of a browser window, running on my system, indicating the problem

Joël Brandes
11 years ago03/21/13 at 11:08 am (UTC)

<!DOCTYPE HTML>

<!--/* Copyright ? 2003-2011 Rustici Software, LLC  All Rights Reserved. www.scorm.com - See LICENSE.txt for usage restrictions */-->

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

<TITLE>Dangerous Goods Regulations Test 2013</TITLE>

*snip*
^^ same behaviour. Loads the html code, then resizes the window (set the player to do so), then loads the flash content. I noticed that by default, index_lms.html seems to be encoded as ANSI. I converted it to UTF-8 for the sake of this experiment.
I recorded a screencast which you can check out on YouTube. I hope this will help to resolve the issue.
By the way, really appreciate you trying to help! Thanks a bunch!
Joël Brandes
11 years ago04/11/13 at 6:21 am (UTC)

I cannot confirm or refute what my server and LMS provider claims: Articulate Storyline output does not hand over a correct document type. Depending on the browser as well as server combination, this could lead to the html file being loaded as a text file instead of being rendered as a html file.

I could get the issue resolved by adding the aforementioned <!DOCTYPE HTML> as the first line of the document to index_lms.html as well as blank.html which can be found in the "lms" subfolder of the exported content. I also edited the templates, Storyline uses to generate those html files, they can be found in Program Files\Articulate\Articulate Storyline\Content\lms

Since I did not know which files are used for which type of publish, I simply added <!DOCTYPE HTML> to all html files I could find in \Content as well as \Content\lms.

All browsers tested (IE8, IE9, Firefox 14, Chrome 28) loaded the content fine.

Joël Brandes
9 years ago02/19/15 at 12:50 pm (UTC)

Hi there, me again!

I'm updating this thread as I intend to forward it to articulate support.

The issue still exists after two years. It also still exists with Storyline 2. I have found a manual workaround to make published content work in our LMS, the solution is cumbersome though and not satisfactory. Whenever I forget to manually update and replace the files (eg. "apply the fix") I get an angry call.

Let me wrap up:

  • Storyline/Storyline2 content published for LMS use gets loaded as a text file, showing the raw html/js code instead of being rendered in the browser.
  • When adding <!DOCTYPE HTML> to some files header, the content is rendered correctly, no html/js code is shown in browser

The aforementioned workaround involves editing the headers of the exported html files. I found that for publishing content, Storyline relies on a handful of html files as a template. I edit those files, laying in the storyline installation folder, to get the "fixed" output directly upon publishing. As these files get overwritten with every program update or installation, I more often than I like to end up with unfixed output which in the LMS loads as text.

The following files have been manually edited in the Storyline installation directory to achieve correct functionality in our LMS (all part of SL1|SL2 installation folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\Articulate\Articulate Storyline|Storyline 2\Content\):

engage_comm.html
index_lms.html
launcher.html
objectembed.html
report.html
swf.html
VideoPlayer.html
VideoPreview.html
VideoPreviewAs3.html
lms\AICCComm.html
lms\blank.html
lms\goodbye.html

As pointed out, these files get overwritten when updating or freshly installing Storyline. After every update, I have to remember to re-edit/replace those files to get a smooth experience. It would be great, if this could be incorporated into the standard build of Storyline (or all Articulate products for that matter), as the added markup does at best work but at worst does simply nothing.

Thanks for consideration.

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