Hotspots in Screen Recordings Not Working

May 09, 2013

A customer just informed me of a very strange bug in our Storyline course. We have several Try It screen recordings in the course (the story file is about 55MB, so not too large). The first slide of each recording contains a single hotspot the learner must click (this is a software training course). Now for the strange part...On my test server, everything works fine. Clicking the hotspot plays the next part of the screen recording just as it should. However, on the customer's server, clicking the hotspot doesn't do anything.

I know the hotspot is there because clicking anywhere outside that hotspot brings up the "That's incorrect" feedback layer. Clicking on the location where that hotspot is, doesn't display that feedback layer.

This same behavior is happening with every Try It activity in the course (on the customer's site only). Is it possible the customer has some security settings on their server that are blocking the loading of each successive video segment? Not sure why it would allow the first video segment and the View It screen recordings to work though. I wish I could post the story file here but this course has a sensitive subject matter that I can't post publicly.

Thanks for any suggestions. Might have to go to the Articulate technical folks for an answer to this one.

3 Replies
Christine Hendrickson

Hi there Doug!

That does sound strange and it may be an issue with restrictions, or the browser they're using to view the course.

Can you tell me exactly how this course is being hosted and viewed, please? Is it being hosted on a normal web server or an LMS, etc.? What web browser are they using? Do they experience the same thing if they view the course in a different web browser?

Thanks!

Doug Rice

Hi, Christine.

They're not using an LMS for this. Just an normal web server (Apache, I believe). I've tried viewing the course on their site with both Firefox and IE. However, when I view the same course on my Apache server, using the same browsers, everything works fine. I have a question into the customer to check and make sure all of the files from the "story_content" folder were correctly copied onto their server. After more investigation, I'm beginning to think they either have some file/folder permission issues going on or just don't have all of the necessary files.

Does Storyline break screen recordings into multiple video files (MP4 and/or FLV) when it publishes? Could be they're just missing all of the necessary video segments.

I sure appreciate your help. As I learn more, I'll be sure to pass it on.

Thanks!

Christine Hendrickson

Hi Doug!

Storyline does break projects into multiple files, but I would think that if the course was missing content on their server, they wouldn't even see it. 

They might want to try placing the content on a temporary server, such as Tempshare or SCORM Cloud and see if they can view the course properly. You could even upload it to one or both of those servers, if they prefer, and see if they can view it properly. 

If it doesn't work properly when they view it from one of those servers, it may very well be an issue with restrictions on their machine, web browser, Flash version, etc. 

If it does work, they may want to try removing the entire course from their server and adding it again. It may even help to place the course in a different directory. 

I hope this helps! Let me know if they're able to make any progress.

Christine

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