Full screen on mobile devices - Very frustrated
May 24, 2018
Hello,
I have been attempting to get courses published in AS360 to go full screen on mobile devices and have become extremely frustrated that such a seemingly simple function has been so difficult to achieve with this product. I have scoured this community for information, and while some of that has helped I still haven't found a silver bullet solution (which seems like all it would take would be for Articulate to add a 'full screen toggle' element we could put on slides).
To be clear, I am not talking about a responsive design, or getting a course to "fill" a page. I understand the player options. I am talking about a true "full screen" toggle on mobile devices. Think the little rectangle on a YouTube video in the bottom right. Full screen means the whole screen - no browser chrome, address bar or anything but the course content.
I thought I had found a solution on this thread: https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/storyline-toggle-fullscreen-mode-in-web-browser#reply-522362
I have been able to get the JS working on Android devices but not on any iOS devices using any browser.
My understanding is that the responsive player should automatically go full screen on mobile devices, but this hasn't been my experience, ever. Even publishing a blank course to the web will not cause mobile devices to switch to full screen when viewing. Either this feature isn't working correctly or I'm missing something.
I hope I don't get rebuffed here because this has to do with JS - I would much rather not use JS, but Storyline 360 still seems to have no way to force fullscreen on mobile devices, which seems really crazy considering how important real estate is on said devices.
Please help.
5 Replies
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Hi there Max,
That's a great question, and I'm happy to help clarify.
Mobile Safari will not show the browser chrome in landscape mode, making the course appear "full screen."
Mobile Safari will have browser chrome in portrait mode, and Mobile Google Chrome will have browser chrome in both portrait and landscape modes. For Android Devices, Mobile Google Chrome does not show browser chrome.
That said, we're talking to our team about what additional work we can do to eliminate browser chrome from both Safari and mobile Google Chrome to free up even more space for your content! I'll be sure to add this discussion to that report so that we can update you right here with any developments.
Hi Alyssa,
Thank you very much for your reply.
I've been playing with the new modern player and the player settings and I seem to have fixed the issue for all devices but iPads with Safari (have not yet tried with Chrome but Safari is the more relevant browser for us). Nothing I can do will get a course to display in full screen on an iPad in Safari, even in landscape mode. The address bar is always visible.
Even though our courses still look OK this way, it would be really nice to be able to use all the real estate. Can you confirm whether you can replicate/match this behavior on an iPad? Or am I still getting something wrong?
Max
You're spot on, Max. The browser chrome will remain visible in Safari on an iPad. On an iPhone, Safari will not show the browser chrome in landscape mode.
Let me know if you have more questions about that!
Hi Alyssa,
Thank you for confirming that.
Just to close the loop for anyone else who might be in the same situation I was - my understanding now is that the address bar cannot be hidden on iPad Safari under all normal circumstances. In other words, this has nothing to do with AS360 but is rather a limitation of iPad Safari itself. If I had known this upfront it certainly would have saved me some time and confusion!
If I could offer a suggestion, it would be to update https://articulate.com/support/article/Comparing-HTML5-Flash-and-Articulate-Mobile-Player-Output-for-Articulate-Storyline-360 with information on full screen capability. That page was one of the first places I looked when starting to research AS360's mobile features and it would have been super helpful to me and my testing to have this information available from the start.
There is a single, limited-use workaround to this (thanks to Cruz for pointing it out and linking - https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/storyline-toggle-fullscreen-mode-in-web-browser) - but it is complex and in my case wouldn't work at all since all my organization's courses are published through an LMS...so linking to the story.html file is not a possibility. Worth checking out if you web publish and can manipulate the homescreens of your learners' devices.
Max
Hey Max,
Really appreciate your feedback, and I'm sorry our documentation on what's expected isn't very clear. I'm going to chat with my team about how we can better explain this behavior to eliminate confusion!
Also, thanks for linking that workaround! I'm sure other folks who have the same need will find that helpful.
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