Closing the launch page

Nov 10, 2017

Hi!

Is there a way to get the player to close the launch page when finishing and closing the player window?

We publish courses in Moodle, using the setting "display package in new window" .

For the course to look good  in mobile divices we also publish with the setting "launch player i new window".
A lanch page is then created as the users intends to start a course.

The issue, is that when closing the course, the launch page is still open.

We would like the launch page to automacally close as the player is closed.

 

Does anybody have an idea?

 

Regards 
Pär

32 Replies
Pär Brink

Hi Dan!
Sorry for not being as clear as I should.
I'll do my best to clarify my issue.

We're using Moodle 3.1.7.
The moodle launch page, works just fine, but as we publish from Storyline with the setting "launch player in new window", there's an extra launch page created.
In other words, the Moodle launch page, launches another launch page.

The reason for using this "extra launch page" is for mobile devices.
The content and player controls are not displayed properly when not using the "extra launch page". The player does not fill the screen and the player controls are placed in the bottom of the screen. (regardless of portrait or landscape view)

The process of starting our scorm courses therefor looks like this:

1. Click the Scorm activity on the Moodle course page.
2. Start an attempt for the scorm activity from the moodle launch page
3. A pop up launch page from the Scorm package/storyline is opened and launches the player. (this launch page must not be closed until the course is completed, since this page reports the course data from the scorm course)
4. The player starts displaying the course content.

To end a Scorm course:

1. Close the player window
2. Close the scorm package/storyline launch page. (results and data is then reported to Moodle)
3. The moodle launchpage automatically redirects back to the Moodle course page.

What we would like to achieve, is to launch the "extra launch page" hidden and automatically close it as the player is closed, or better yet, get the same appearance without the "extra launch page" as we do with it.

 

Hope this was understandable! :-)

 

Regards

Pär Brink

Walt Hamilton

In the worst case scenario, you can change the orange icon.  It is found here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Articulate\Storyline X\Content\orange_launch_normal.gif

 

Whatever GIF you put there is put in your project every time you publish. If you can't get rid of the extra launch page, you might be able to put something more desirable here.

Dan Marsden

yeah - that's a window "controlled" by the authoring tool rather than Moodle - There is probably a way for that to be improved by the articulate dev team - allowing for it to be redirected automatically or at least for the content to be changed from showing the launch button.

Part of the issue (reason Articulate does this) is that Moodle presents the SCORM package within an iframe and that doesn't always display nicely on mobile devices. Lots of other discussion around the reasons Moodle displays it in an iframe are in the moodle forums too. 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Thanks Par for sharing the image - that launch page is generated by Articulate, and as Dan mentioned it's connected to the use of mobile devices where content is launched in an iframe.

It's not something that can be removed as a part of our publishing process but there are lots of folks who have looked at removing it entirely within this community. 

Pär Brink

Thank you for your replies.

I'm aware of what generates the launch page and why it's generated.

When starting an attempt in Moodle, the storyline launch page auto launches the scorm player and is visible to our only for a brief moment, so I'm not primarily looking to remove the launch page.
The problem really is closing or ending an attempt, as the launch page still is open when the user closes the player window.
As the launch page is visible only for a shot time when launching, I've replaced the orange launch button with an instruction telling the users to close the window when finished with the course.
There is how ever a risk that some users close the launch page before finishing the course and then the results will not be reported to the lms.

  • My main goal is first of all to find a solution to launch the scorm player from moodle the same way the storyline launch page does.
  • If this is not possible I'm secondly looking for a way to close the launch page automatically as the player window is closed.
    It would of course be nice with a way for the launch page to be hidden to the users.

I'm probably not making any sense, :-) but this seem to be a fairly common issue when scouting different forums and community's.



Michael Anderson

I was working on this but hit a roadblock, as only the browser window that opened the launch page can close the launch page. Because of this, I was not able to have the launch page close itself when the course window was closed. I believe the only way would be to have Moodle close this window.

Would it work for you if the user received a warning message if they tried to closed the launch page before exiting the course? It might be possible to prevent them from closing it unless they exit the course first.

Dan Marsden

good point. I wonder if it's worth writing some code in Moodle that detects an LMSFinish inside the window and then closes/redirects back like it does when you close the Moodle "new window" option.

Could be a new setting in Moodle to control this - you might be able to find a Moodle Partner to write some code for you to do this.

Pär Brink

A warning message would absolutely be a good thing at this point.
We have had a few cases were the user has completed attempts that have not been tracked.

Unconfirmed, but I suspect that they have closed the launch window immediately after the player has been launched. 

Pär Brink

If there is a way to get Moodle to do what you are suggesting Dan, it would be really great!

I've never worked with any Moodle partner before, so I'm clueless to how to find a Moodle partner to do this.

Would really appreciate some guidance finding an appopriate  Moodle partner Dan, or better yet, if this is something you would be interested in doing for us! ;-)

Michael Anderson
Pär Brink

A warning message would absolutely be a good thing at this point.
We have had a few cases were the user has completed attempts that have not been tracked.

Unconfirmed, but I suspect that they have closed the launch window immediately after the player has been launched. 

 

Well, it appears that there isn't even a consistent way to make a warning message appear before the window is closed. I would change the launcher.html file so that it displays a large warning that the page should not be closed until the course itself has been exited.

Cindy Pandke`

Hoping someone can give us some direction on this.  We have the same issue with Saba 7.3 and having to use 'launch in new window'.  We will watch this thread in hopes that a fix is available that will provide a way to open/close the launch window seamlessly.

IN ADDITION (this is where we need additional help) - when we use the 'launch in new window' with Saba 7.3 and a learner launches the module, but then exits by closing the 'launch window' first and then the module window - Saba marks the status as 'Unsuccessful'.   Does anyone have a fix for this?

Module has been published for SCORM 2004 3rd Edition, tracked on results slide, HTML Only, Passed/Incomplete.

Thank you for any information/direction you can provide.

Peter Harwood

Hi Par,

I work at a college in the UK and we are having exactly the same problem.

We enabled the 'launch new window' in Storyline (SL3) to improve the display in mobile devices, but this obviously leaves behind the launch window, which the students find confusing (often closing it down or launching the same course again after they've finished!)

I'm afraid I don't have a solution, but ir would be nice if this window automatically closed on completion.

Did you get any further with it?

Regards,

Pete

Cindy Pandke`

Hi Peter - thanks for your reply.
No further updates. We need to launch in a new window to communicate properly with Saba 7.3 but closing that window before the window that launches the module causes an unsuccessful status being sent to our LMS. We were able to remove the orange launch button and replace it with instructions to our learners (thanks to instructions provided by the community - replacing the gif file) but we still need to fix this glitch.

Fingers crossed someone will have a solution for this.

Walt Hamilton

I used Notepad, but you can use any app that saves in a pure text only format.

Use this command

xcopy "S:\Art\orange_launch_normal.gif" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Articulate\360\Storyline\Content\orange_launch_normal.gif" /Y/R

Don't change the bold part, because SL looks for that file when it publishes.

Replace the S:\Art\orange_launch_normal.gif part with the location of your .gif (mine includes instructions). Be sure the C: part matches your installation location.

Save, then find and change the .txt extension to  .bat.

Double clicking executes the copy command to replace the original  with the custom.

Cindy Pandke`

Ashley, Just trying to determine what other options are available to us to see if we can get this issue resolved so we can publish using SCORM 2004 3rd edition for our larger modules.  Currently the only thing stopping us from using this publish setting is this issue.

Is the page that "launches in a new window" controlled through Articulate programming?  Can a support request be submitted to help determine why an status is being sent from that window when the module is in another window?  Or can we see if programming can be added to close the child window if the parent window is being requested to be closed first. 

Hope I'm explaining properly ... where do I go next?  We have limited resources here.

 

Cindy Pandke`

Yes - it is replicated in SCORM cloud.  If you close the launch window before you complete the module the status is marked 'failed'

It would be great if the launch window was closed that it looked to see if the module window was open and if it was then close it and then send the status from the module window.  

Story file attached