Font Changing in Storyline Project After Publishing to LMS - Internet Explorer

Jul 26, 2018

Many of my government clients are having issues viewing a SCORM package posted to our Moodle LMS. The project was created using Storyline fonts such as "Roboto" and "Articulate." After publishing to the LMS and upon opening the file, the font has changed to something completely different, has compressed many of the words so that some of the letters are practically on top of one another, and is arbitrarily omitting the letter F. No other letter; just the F. Some more facts to note:

This does not happen to me on my personal computer.
When on my government computer, I do get this same error in Internet Explorer, but NOT in Google Chrome. Everything works perfectly in Chrome.
All of my clients are federal employees, therefore they all have varying versions of either Chrome, Firefox, or IE. Many of them are restricted to IE and being in the government, do not have the ability to simply request Chrome to be added to their computers.
I've tried changing the fonts on some test slides to Arial and Microsoft Sans Serif, which seem to have helped the missing F issue, but spacing is still a problem.

If this is the only fix, this would require me to go back into all of my projects and change the fonts on every single text box, so I'm hoping there's some other magic pill out there in settings that can fix this. I'll try anything! Attached is a screen shot of a slide with the missing letters and in the font I did not select.

Font_Issue.png

25 Replies

Crystal Horn
Staff

over 5 years ago07/27/18 at 3:36 pm (UTC)

Hi there, Amitty! I think you're on the right path with those details you're mentioning. Can you check out this article about missing letters and wrong fonts displaying? There are a few options listed that should help learners see the correct fonts.

Let me know what you think!

Amitty Gray
Author

over 5 years ago08/06/18 at 6:15 pm (UTC)

Hi again...nothing is working. Our clients are restricted to Internet Explorer and they not have the option to download an alternate browser. Our LMS is already a trusted website. I've tried changing some slides to other fonts and it's still happening. Aside from testing each font, publishing the SCORM, uploading to the LMS, and testing in IE for EVERY SINGLE font, I just don't know what to do. The clients are understandably upset, as you can imagine.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
Staff

over 5 years ago08/07/18 at 3:07 pm (UTC)

Hi Amitty,

I'm sorry you're still stuck with this font issue. Were you able to look into the other options of having the clients enable the Font Download Setting in IE11 or look into the Windows Group Policy Blocking Untrusted Fonts? That would be my additional recommendation as it's an IE-specific issue.

Our team is looking into a broader fix, and although it's a priority issue, it's not an easy change to how fonts are rendered and will take some time. We'll let you know here once we do have an update though!

over 5 years ago08/07/18 at 3:15 pm (UTC)

Our clients cannot make any changes to settings on their workstation computers, as they are all managed by IT departments. And in the government, many of those changes are simply not allowed. I will have to keep working my way through the fonts until I find one that doesn't drop letters.

Amitty Gray
Program Coordinator
Eastern Management Development Center

1900 E St NW | Washington, DC 20415
P: 202-606-0945 C: 202-321-1394 | F: 478-757-3057
Amitty.Gray@opm.gov | www.leadership.opm.gov | www.opm.gov/HRS

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Leslie McKerchie
Staff

over 5 years ago08/07/18 at 9:17 pm (UTC)

I understand Amitty, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I did want to let you know that your email signature came through when you replied via email. You can remove that if needed by clicking ‘Edit’ beneath your response. Here’s a quick Peek video if you need help.

kate severson

5 years ago03/20/19 at 3:50 pm (UTC)

Amitty - did you come up with a font combination that works in LMS and Internet Explorer? I'm in the same position as you, with government group policies that enforce browser settings. The fonts in my Storyline module are Lato and Ariel.

Amitty Gray
Author

5 years ago03/26/19 at 12:52 pm (UTC)

This post was removed by the author

5 years ago03/26/19 at 12:53 pm (UTC)

I did, actually! It took forever, and I feel your pain! This was the most frustrating project by far; mostly because the solutions I was offered required IT assistance on the user end. Unfortunately, government employees are not able to edit most (if any) internet settings. However, if IT is able to assist with either of these, they may be the fastest and easiest solutions. From what I’ve been able to gather through various forums and help tickets, the reason the fonts aren’t working is because of one of two reasons: The font download setting is disabled in Internet Explorer, or Windows group policy is blocking “untrusted” fonts. Again, both of these may require IT intervention since they are in the browser security settings. Otherwise, scroll down to Option 3 for the manual labor option. :)

Option 1: The font download setting in Internet Explorer is enabled by default, but some users or organizations may disable it. If learners have the option to enable it, here’s how to do so:In Internet Explorer, click the gear icon or the Tools menu, then choose Internet options. When the Internet Options window appears, select the Security tab, choose the Internet zone, and click Custom level. When the Security Settings window appears, scroll to the Downloads section and enable the Font download setting. Click OK twice to save your settings, then close and reopen Internet Explorer.
Option 2: ‘Group Policy’ in Windows 10 has an optional feature to block untrusted fonts. When it’s enabled, learners might see the wrong fonts in Internet Explorer. The advice on this one was to “ask your network administrators to disable the font-blocking feature.” As a government employee myself, this is seemed the less feasible option to me of the two, but it’s still an option.
Option 3: Change font to Tahoma. I spent a week testing font by individual font, re-publishing and re-uploading each time, in order to test for one that interfaces correctly with Internet Explorer. I made it aaaaalllll the way down to Tahoma, and it appears that we have a winner. It’s not perfect by any means, because it doesn't even actually look like Tahoma once published, but at least all the letters are there. The spacing wound up a little bit off and the placement of some things shifted, but the most important thing is that it's actually legible. I changed the font on hundreds of slides across five projects, and this was the solution that worked for me.

If your project is finished or you're still working on it, I suggest making the font change. Going forward, if you know you have a government client, I suggest counting on this to be an issue. I'm a federal employee, so I can speak personally to the difficulty of making any sort of change to administrative IT settings; it simply isn't allowed. Additionally, I know for a fact that many agencies don't have a selection of web browsers to choose from, so Internet Explorer is their only option. Hope this helps, and good luck!

kate severson

5 years ago03/26/19 at 2:11 pm (UTC)

Wow - thanks for the reply Amitty! You went through a lot of work to identify a satisfactory font. I really appreciate your help.

Eboni DuBose

5 years ago03/29/19 at 9:53 pm (UTC)

This happened to us too. When we launched our LMS, we noticed there was an issue with our IE browser reading courses through Workday. Many of our software simulations are housed in Rise through interactions. We have been having issues with these interactions showing scrambled letters and wacky fonts that make it unreadable for the learner. On 2/20 our IT was able to adjust our enterprise IE setting to fix the issue (in addition I changed all courses to Calibri a font common to all stores and re-uploaded the SCORM packages to our LMS). Everything was working fine.

Last week we started reports of font issues from store users. Our IT said they changed nothing. We double checked their settings and it was the same. To try to figure out a solution, they suggested I change the font to Arial. Once I changed the font to Arial, the issue was fix. I shared this in Workday and someone said that they experienced the same but that it was on Articulate side. I'm trying to figure out the issue? I made no changes to the SCORM package and it was uploaded on 2/20 and last week we started getting issues. Is this is Workday (LMS) issue or Articulate issue?

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Alyssa Gomez
Staff

5 years ago04/01/19 at 2:07 pm (UTC)

Hi Eboni,

I took a peek at your Support case with Gren, and I see she recently requested a copy of your exported Rise course. I'll continue to follow your case as it moves forward!

5 years ago04/01/19 at 2:18 pm (UTC)

Hello..i’ve now updated my files to Arial (the issue was with Calibri). Do you have the files that I sent last time when Gerald assisted me

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
Staff

5 years ago04/01/19 at 6:12 pm (UTC)

Hi Eboni,

It looks like you had a couple of cases with Gerald, so I'll see if Gren can sync up with him to track those files down. I saw a bunch linked in your earlier support case, so it may help expedite things if you could narrow that down or upload the exact files you and Gren discussed.

RECO Education

over 4 years ago12/09/19 at 3:46 pm (UTC)

Hi Ashley,

I'm having the same issue with the Lato font. What was the resolution? I cannot request users update their settings. We have to find a solution that allows users to see the text properly.

Thanks
Sandy

Amitty Gray
Author

over 4 years ago12/09/19 at 6:43 pm (UTC)

This post was removed by the author

over 4 years ago12/09/19 at 6:43 pm (UTC)

Hi Sandy,

If changing settings isn't an option, you'll need to change your font. Through trial and error, Tahoma is what worked for me. The last time I checked, there was no resolution on the Articulate side after testing an option to turn ligatures on and off, and I'll paste a copy of the status update email I received back in February for reference.

Amitty Gray
Author

over 4 years ago12/09/19 at 6:48 pm (UTC)

Here is a copy of the email we received:

Hello from Articulate,

We wanted to give you an update on an issue you’ve experienced where some characters (such as ligatures) in a Storyline 360 or Storyline 3 course would not display for some learners. A ligature occurs where two or more letters are joined as a single symbol, such as the fi in first, or the fl in flower. We want to tell you more about why this is happening, what we’ve done to try to mitigate this problem, and how we’re moving forward.

We investigated the issue and confirmed that it’s caused when font downloads are disabled in Internet Explorer, typically by a system administrator. This security setting prevents the player from downloading the fonts it needs to display the course as you’ve designed.

Storyline 360 and Storyline 3 require font downloads in order to precisely display content just the way that you’ve designed it. Our customers are super passionate about making sure their content looks right—and font downloads let us deliver on that expectation.

We explored addressing this concern by adding an option to turn ligatures on or off. We released the feature to our beta testing group and asked for feedback from other affected folks.

After months of feedback and careful analysis, we’ve decided not to move forward with this idea. Here’s why:

Customers told us that this didn’t solve the core issue because it required disabling ligatures for all learners, not just those affected by the IE security setting.
It created concern amongst the majority of authors who felt they would now have to make an additional publishing decision based largely on guesswork.
Overriding the text rendering engine in this way is complex and raised quality concerns because it’s impossible to ensure the feature will work as intended with different fonts and languages.

We also conducted a detailed analysis to measure the impact of this issue. Here’s what we found:

Blocked font downloads affect less than 1% of all learners.
We’ve found no evidence that font downloads are a viable attack vector for malware authors. Chrome, Firefox, and Edge (widely considered the most secure browsers) do not expose a security setting to disable font downloads. In addition, Microsoft explicitly recommends against blocking web fonts.

With all of this in mind, we’ve determined that the best way to serve the needs of our customers is to continue to require font downloading, just like we require having JavaScript and other browser features enabled. We’ve revised our documentation to make this clear. As a prerequisite, learners using Internet Explorer (or their IT departments) should enable font downloads to allow the course to display as intended.

We know that this may be disappointing news, and we’re sorry. We’ve worked hard to come to a decision that allows us to deliver on customer expectations and focus development resources on the features and fixes that will have the greatest impact.

Thanks so much for working with us on this tough issue.

over 4 years ago12/10/19 at 3:06 pm (UTC)

Hi Amitty

Thanks for providing me with your workaround and the email you received. This is very helpful. We'll have to update our fonts to Tahoma to make it work. I really appreciate your feedback!

Thanks
Sandy

Christa Novelli

over 3 years ago10/09/20 at 7:46 pm (UTC)

Our IT department updated our browsers to allow font downloads and to auto-clear our caches every time we close IE. I verified that those settings were correctly set on my machine, and I still experienced the issue with missing fs.

Are there any other suggestions out there other than changing the fonts in all of our eLearning?

over 3 years ago10/14/20 at 12:21 pm (UTC)

Hello Christa!

We're happy to work with you in a support case to troubleshoot further! Feel free to connect with our Support Team here.

over 3 years ago10/14/20 at 2:17 pm (UTC)

I submitted a case and will let you know what/if I hear back. Thanks.

Leslie McKerchie
Staff

over 3 years ago10/16/20 at 3:38 pm (UTC)

Thanks, Christa. I did not see your case at first glance, so if you could share your case number we'd be happy to follow along.

over 3 years ago10/16/20 at 3:40 pm (UTC)

I'm going to try resubmitting. I never got an email confirming the case, although I did hit "submit."

over 3 years ago10/16/20 at 3:56 pm (UTC)

It looks like you have to submit cases in Chrome, not IE. I tried again in IE (our primary browser) and got the same result of hitting the "submit" button and having it grey out but then go nowhere.

Case # is 02485469. Unfortunately, I pasted the URL for the support site rather than this thread accidentally into the "related ... discussion URL" field - oh well!