Embedding a PDF inside a slide via WebObject

May 11, 2016

Hi folks

The Goal: To display a hosted PDF within a slide in a course hosted on Scorm Cloud

What I've tried: I have attempted to do this multiple ways without success. Simply inserting a webobject and pointing to a valid URL and publishing to Scorm Cloud results in a slide with no web object and no error, just the slide background. I've also tried unsuccessfully to implement the PDF viewer method suggested on elearning brothers - the viewer displays but their code for pointing to the PDF asset does not match where SL is storing the PDF when bundled so it throws an error.

An example SL file with embedded PDF is attached. It passed scorm cloud but when launched does not display the webobject at all. Is there any known method for displaying an embedded PDF in a course hosted via scorm cloud (or any LMS)? To be clear, I'm not looking to display a PDF in a separate window or link to a PDF via Resources - in my design the PDF needs to display within the slide itself.

Thanks in advance

 

 

3 Replies
Steve Flowers

Hi, JB - 

You might have some success using https://pdfobject.com/. This library is built to help embed PDFs inside of HTML assemblies. If you build your web object separately then import the web object package, you should be able to display that PDF right inside of the web object. 

Web Object Folder

-- index.html

-- yourpdf.pdf

-- other file dependencies

In this configuration, you'd make your index.html display the PDF. When Storyline imports a web object it will bring all of the resources in the folder containing index.html right into the Storyline file. So you won't need to worry about pointing the web object to the PDF.

CLP

Steve,

Thank you for the suggestion. Setting up the pdfObject assets and folder structure was easy enough. I now have a local folder containing the index, JS and pdf fileset.

But I'm not clear when you say "build the web object separately" and "import the web object package".  I assume these are both pre-publish tasks. If so, is this the procedure:

1) Create a new SL project
2) Insert a new webobject that points to a locally configured index.html (that is setup to use pdfObject)
3) Copy/paste this webobject into the desired project, OR import the slide into the desired project
4) Publish

And lastly, when we create the webobject does the index.html need to be server-hosted (http://) or can it be locally stored? I'm just not clear on how to build/import the webobject after I've created the pdfObject fileset.

Thanks again

 

 

 

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