Embedded Videos in Firefox

I really wish I had the option of telling our customers that our company does not support Firefox (or Safari when loaded into an LMS).  Unfortunately, our customers would like to be able to use our products in any browser.  In fact, I wish that our customers were allowed to install Chrome on their systems by themselves.  Our customers are quite often limited in which browsers they are allowed to use and are not allowed (by their IT department) to install new browsers on their systems.  

Articulate Storyline 1 worked fine in Firefox.  We had to do a little tweaking to our embed code to get it to go full screen, but it worked.  When we loaded Storyline 1 SCORM files into Docebo, they just worked.  Now, after the "upgrade" to Storyline 2, I have to provide direct links to the story_html5.html files in order to get Firefox to play back the videos and when I load the SCORM files into Docebo, Safari won't load the videos at all and Firefox throws up an XML error.

I've tried manually editing the XML files in the SCORM, but I haven't found the issue yet.  I'd really appreciate some support from your team in solving these issues.

Hi Thor,

Storyline 2 still does not support HTML5 content in Firefox as detailed here, and the browsers that we support for HTML5 is based on how they perform as detailed at a site such as HTML5test.com 

If the course isn't loading in Safari when trying to view the HTML5 content, have you tested it outside your LMS to rule out that variable? You could use a site such as SCORM Cloud which is an industry standard for testing SCORM content, and if it behaves normally there you'll want to connect with your LMS team for further troubleshooting. 

Ashley,

I understand that you don't support Firefox.  The problem is that WE have to support Firefox.  We don't have the luxury of telling our customers that it's their problem.

Also, remember that all of this worked in Storyline 1 and is not working in Storyline 2.

According to our LMS provider, the reason that the videos are not loading in Firefox is that there is a string, "/story_content\6ErKncbO2aF.html" where the SCORM is calling for the html with the video embed code in it, but Storyline 2 is generating a \ instead of a / .  I was really hoping that I could just go into one of the html pages and alter the string myself, but I think (and I'm no expert) that the one of the .js files must be responsible for generating that \ and that sort of programing is out of my scope. 

My company is beginning to seriously look into Storyline 2 alternatives because of this issue.  Is there anyone at Articulate that is willing to provide technical support to help resolve this?

Sincerely,

T. Thor Leach

Hi Thor,

I wanted to clarify - we support Firefox for Flash, we don't support it for HTML5 content, and that's based on Firefox's ability to display HTML5 content compared to other browsers such as Chrome. You may find a site such as HTML5test.com helpful to see how other browsers work with HTML5 content. 

Seeing your additional description here seemed similar to an issue that was previously fixed in Studio '13 where videos were not working as expected in Firefox - so I have shared this with our QA team in regards to Storyline 2. I don't have a timeframe to offer in regards to the fix for this issue, but I'll post any additional information here once it becomes available. 

Hi,

We're seeing the same issue when uploading to an LMS with scorm. It seems Storyline 2 is writing the html incorrectly by using a backslash (\) instead of a forward slash (/), thus Firefox can't reading the file correctly. This has been confirmed on ScormCloud as well to rule out the LMS (Blackboard). We're embedding Kaltura videos with their iFrame code, and the videos play back correctly in all browsers EXCEPT firefox due to this bug. FWIW, the code was written correctly in Storyline 1.

-dave

Hi Dave,

Thanks for sharing that here and I have reported this to our QA team for review, although I don't have any updates to share at this time. This thread is included with the report filed with our QA team so I'll be able to update you here once there is additional information. 

Hello Ashley,

Is there any update on this issue? We are encountering it with our published courses that use a video embed code (Vimeo).

Thanks for any information on this!

Hi John,

No update on this issue yet, but I've flagged it for update when there is additional information from our QA team to share here. 

Thank you!

I also hope that this can be fixed soon. One of my custumors wasn't happy when I told him about this.

Hi Chris,

I do see that this issue is still with our QA team and that they're looking into it currently. I don't have a timeframe to share in regards to an update, but have tagged this thread as a part of the QA report so that any additional information can be share here once available. 

Hey there - this is an issue that affects me and my client and it's very important to get a fix to this, as it affects a lot of my client's users, who are heavy Firefox users.

To comment on John's note above, I have found in Storyline 2 that Vimeo seems to embed and play fine in Firefox both locally and from my client's Blackboard site.

If there's any was to escalate this and get it out with the next update (which is hopefully coming soon :)) that would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Jamie! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and the team is working on this. We do not share any information about updates or product roadmaps, but this thread is flagged for update when applicable.

Hi All!

Articulate Storyline 2 Update 5 is now available for download. It includes WCAG 2.0 support, several new accessibility features, better HTML5 performance, and bug fixes. Click here for details:

Hi Emily,

Unfortunately, it appears as though the update didn't address the "video in Firefox HTML5" issue based on our testing.

Since this is an older thread, i am wondering if anyone has found a way to provide video for Firefox through HTML5. Am I doing it wrong? 

Thanks!

We do not support HTML5 content in Firefox as you can see in our system requirements here.

Not sure if someone in the community will be able to assist you with this.

Articulate QA staff: Please note that our entire college runs on Firefox because we are Moodle-based (which runs best on FF). If you cannot fix this problem, you will make it so that we cannot use Articulate for ANY PURPOSE in our higher education programs. This is a bad thing for me (since this is my JOB here), and for our thousands of students.

Fix this as soon as you can because the clock is ticking.

Hi Steve!

Flash content is supported in Firefox. This is listed in our system requirements here as well.

Has this issue been fixed yet? We have an embedded video that works fine in Chrome and IE, but won't play in Firefox. Is there any custom scripting that could make it work in Firefox for HTML5. We can't deploy in Flash.

Hi Connie! Our viewing requirements are still the same as shared above. We do not support the HTML5 content in Firefox.

Not sure if there is a workaround or someone in the community would be able to assist you with this.

We ended up detecting if firefox is being used and routing to a parallel file set where the mobile\slides js was modified to not look for mp4 but instead a webm that was prepared.

Thanks for popping in to share your solution Henry.

Hello Connie,

We were able to find a fix for this issue in our environment. I partnered with my IT director (who did all the hard stuff). 

Here's a summary of our workaround:

We noticed that the storyline module was failing to convert the “\” character immediately following “story_content” in the URL into “/”.  Our IT director, was able to create a rule for the webserver (using mod_rewrite in apache) to detect and translate the malformed URLs into the URLS that would actually match.  I have listed the rule below.  Please note that you will likely need to involve your organization’s IT dept to accomplish this workaround.

 <Location /prod>

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

  RewriteEngine On

  RewriteRule ^(<ABS_PATH>/story_content)\\([a-zA-Z0-9]*.html) $1/$2 [QSA,L]

</IfModule>

</Location>

<ABS_PATH> is the absolute system path to the directories where you store storyline courses (in our case, we store all courses in the same root directory, so this was easy to construct).  I strongly recommend getting this rule set up and testing extensively, as mod_rewrite can be somewhat fiddly to get working.

I hope this helps!

Thanks very much for the awesome workaround, John.  ...really cool to see how you lifted the hood and figured that one out.

I do want to point out, though, that the specific problem you are describing (Non-YouTube Video from Website Referenced via Backslash Breaks in Firefox) was resolved with the release of Storyline 2 Update 5, way back in May 2015.  You should not need to use the workaround you developed unless you are working with published output that has not been republished since Storyline 2 Update 4.  Please let us know if you find that this is not the case.

Having said all of that, it is certainly possible that there are other problems related to HTML5 video playback in Firefox, since its support for the HTML5 standard is so poor and as a result, we prohibit support for it within our HTML5 output.

The specific problem of videos referenced via backslash, however, should be resolved at this time.

Please let us know if you need anything else, and have a great day!