How to force the LMS to call index_lms_html5.html?

Sep 22, 2015

We want ONLY the HTML5 version of a particular course to load in the LMS (Cornerstone OnDemand). We are all good on how to output to HTML5 and we have tested the file locally. When we publish from Storyline 2 update 7 we get both the SWF and the HTML5 files in the output. I am guessing there are dependencies.

It seems, however, that we're going to have to do some manual editing of the manifest file and possibly some other files in the output in order to get the LMS to launch ONLY the HTML5. Before I try brutal hacks like removing the index_lms.html file or manual trial and error edits—does anyone know how to do this already?

UPDATE: One of my IDs has figured out how to work around the LMS and browser hiccups and force HTML5 to load in any compatible browser.

Not sure if this link will take you directly to his post (with screenshots) but if not, it's on page 3 of this thread. Thanks a million @BrettBerish.

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/how-to-force-the-lms-to-call-index_lms_html5-html?page=3#

Thanks to Phil, Steve, Mike and Ashley.

87 Replies

Christie Pollick

over 8 years ago09/23/15 at 1:55 pm (UTC)

Hi, Dave -- As we cannot provide support for modifications to the published output, I will go ahead and defer to the members of the community to chime in and assist you further. :)

Dave Howard
Author
Reply Deleted

over 8 years ago09/24/15 at 4:47 am (UTC)

Thanks, Matt but that doesn't work. The LMS alerts as a non-critical error that the story_html5.html file is missing. (It is referenced in the manifest file). We published it anyway and the course wouldn't load in any browser. You also can't modify both "story" HTML files and get the course to load in IE, Chrome or Firefox.

On the subject of LMS being the correct domain for certificates, I would suggest to the Articulate staff to look at what some of them offer (#keywordSuck). With so many IDs posting about certificates, maybe it's time to look at giving us what we need. We're designers. We wouldn't design something we didn't need and with so many workarounds that don't work... Just sayin'.

Captivate allowed us to have a certificate slide but we needed a special script to allow us to print it without printing the player too. We're trying to use what we've learned from this article https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/storyline-2-example-generating-a-pdf-certificate-for-users-who-successfully-complete-a-quiz-html5 and this article https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/populate-a-pdf-from-storyline to have the course call a script to populate a certificate with a decent-looking design, background, logo in a new HTML window so the user can print or download it.

It would really suck to have a certification program that results in Times New Roman, black, 14 point, centered on a white background, half-page, portrait orientation. #Ewwww

Dave Howard
Author

over 8 years ago09/24/15 at 5:07 am (UTC)

Life's too short to guess. We're moving on.

Dave Howard
Author
Reply Deleted

over 8 years ago09/24/15 at 6:05 am (UTC)

Yeah. We already have it looking awesome. Works great locally but not in the LMS. Like I said, moving on.

Sent from my mobile device. Please excuse brevity and mistypes.

Dave H.

Phil Mayor
Hero

over 8 years ago09/24/15 at 9:29 am (UTC)

Matts suggestion would work with a little modification, delete Story.html, duplicate Story_html5.sotry and rename duplicate to story.html

Bruce Holliday

over 8 years ago09/24/15 at 12:01 pm (UTC)

Hi,
I have successfully created an html certificate that carries name values from SL. Hope its useful to you.

printcertificate.zip

Leslie McKerchie
Staff

over 8 years ago09/24/15 at 1:51 pm (UTC)

Thanks everyone for popping in to share :)

over 8 years ago09/24/15 at 3:56 pm (UTC)

Bruce,

This is elegant in its simplicity. Definitely something to consider as an alternative.

Many thanks for chiming in. Cheers.

Steve Flowers

over 8 years ago10/25/15 at 2:23 am (UTC)

It looks like this thread is a little on the old side but this 6 character change does the trick for me:

1) Publish to LMS with the HTML5 option turned on.

2) Navigate to the published folder and open the imsmanifest.xml file.

3) Scroll down to the resources node. The first node within the resources node <resource ... is where the edit needs to happen.

4) Change index_lms.html to index_lms_html5.html.

The beauty of this change is it doesn't make your manifest differ from your contents. Some LMS are persnickety about manifest contents.

over 8 years ago10/25/15 at 8:04 am (UTC)

I'll try it! Thanks.

Sent from my mobile device. Please excuse brevity and mistypes.

Dave H.

Rachel Craig

over 8 years ago11/02/15 at 9:14 pm (UTC)

I've recently been having similar issues with Cornerstone OnDemand and HTML5 output. Were you able to use Steve's workaround in your course, Dave?

over 8 years ago11/02/15 at 9:18 pm (UTC)

I'm working on a new product module now.
I'll let you know when I publish it. Probably around November 9.

Thank you

over 8 years ago11/02/15 at 9:20 pm (UTC)

Cool! Thank you, Dave!

Leslie McKerchie
Staff

over 8 years ago11/02/15 at 9:24 pm (UTC)

Thanks for popping in to assist Dave! Just wanted to let you know that replying to the forums via e-mail attaches your signature. You are welcome to pop in and edit if needed.

over 8 years ago11/02/15 at 9:26 pm (UTC)

Hi Rachel

if Dave's fix doesn't work let me know, we make changes to the index_lms.html to force html5

Dave Howard
Author

8 years ago03/09/16 at 8:38 pm (UTC)

Doesn't work in Cornerstone LMS. We are now trying to trick the LMS into thinking the browser is not Flash-compatible or that the device is mobile (ergo no Flash) but that is difficult.

8 years ago03/09/16 at 8:46 pm (UTC)

Hi Dave, I hate to repeat myself from a previous post but In scormcloud changing the index file to call the story

Dave Howard
Author

8 years ago03/09/16 at 9:03 pm (UTC)

Doesn't work in Cornerstone LMS. But here's what we've found.

So far, we know that imsmanifest.xml, meta.xml and story.js all work together along with browsersniff.js to determine if the Flash version can load (which is what Articulate wants to happen.)

We opened Chrome with the Flash plugin turned off and without any file changes or renaming or deleting, the HTML 5 version loads. Anytime we try editing files to point to "_html5.x_ we get a big white window with nothing loading in it.

So... the only way to force HTML5 to load is to have a non-flash-compatible browser.

Phil, I'm curious, when your content loads in scormcloud, have you tried right-clicking on the window to see if it shows Flash settings and version or just HTML commands?

Steve Flowers

8 years ago03/09/16 at 9:15 pm (UTC)

To clarify, you've tried changing the webcontent reference in imsmanifest to point to the index_lms_html5.html file and it's loading a blank page? I've tested this in multiple systems and it's worked consistently. Don't have access to cornerstone but I can't see why it would work any differently. The LMS is *supposed* to load the file designated in the manifest file. Double-check to make sure the modification is made in the right spot and that it's entered to point to the correct file.

When looking at the browser console, what errors appear?

8 years ago03/09/16 at 9:16 pm (UTC)

Definitely the HTML5 version not sure if this will work for you https://cloud.scorm.com/sc/InvitationConfirmEmail?publicInvitationId=674067cc-c5bd-4fb4-b700-742d573a6f65

I only edited one line in the index

Dave Howard
Author

8 years ago03/09/16 at 9:24 pm (UTC)

Looks just like yours but without any content

Dave Howard
Author

8 years ago03/09/16 at 9:30 pm (UTC)

Phil,

SCORMcloud definitely loaded the HTML5 version and the URL was the index_lms.html file. And you accomplished that with this fix?

"delete Story.html, duplicate Story_html5.html and rename duplicate to story.html"

What publishing settings did you use in Storyline for SCORM reporting and tracking?

Steve Flowers

8 years ago03/09/16 at 9:39 pm (UTC)

Odd that it starts loading the html5 package but hangs up on the spinning loader. Wonder if Cornerstone is doing something funny with their launcher that's messing up the load.

In addition to renaming the story.html file. A couple of other ways to tackle the problem that could be worth trying. Edit the line in index_lms.html that sets strContentLocation = "story.html"; to strContentLocation = "story_html5.html";

If that works, you should be able to modify the publish template in the application directory to do this permanently every single publish and just put it out of mind. No post-publish-surgery required. If this doesn't work, can you look at the console errors to see what pops up?

<HTML>
<HEAD>
  <TITLE>Untitled1</TITLE>

  <script>
   var g_biOS = (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("AppleWebKit/") > -1 && navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Mobile/") > -1);
   var g_bAndroid = (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Android") > -1);
   if ((g_biOS || g_bAndroid) && true)
   {
    var strLocation = location.href.replace("index_lms", "index_lms_html5");
    location.replace(strLocation);
   }
  </script>

  <script src="lms/APIConstants.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/Configuration.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/UtilityFunctions.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/SCORM2004Functions.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/SCORMFunctions.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/AICCFunctions.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/NONEFunctions.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/LMSAPI.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/API.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>

Steve Flowers

8 years ago03/09/16 at 9:45 pm (UTC)

If that last one works (editing the line in index_lms.html) then here's where you can make it permanent:

1) Navigate to your install directory's content folder. On my machine it's C:\Program Files\Articulate\Articulate Storyline 2\Content.

2) Copy and paste the line that reads strContentLocation = "__PLAYER_HTM__"; //Put the link to the start of the content here. so that there are two lines. Comment out the first line so you can restore it if necessary.

3) Set the new copied line to read strContentLocation = "story_html5.html";

4) Save the file.

This should force the publish to output HTML5 launch every single time. Flash will never be queued up to load in the SCORM launch.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
  <TITLE>_TITLE_</TITLE>

  <script>
   var g_biOS = (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("AppleWebKit/") > -1 && navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Mobile/") > -1);
   var g_bAndroid = (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Android") > -1);
   if ((g_biOS || g_bAndroid) && __USE_HTML5__)
   {
    var strLocation = location.href.replace("index_lms", "index_lms_html5");
    location.replace(strLocation);
   }
  </script>

  <script src="lms/APIConstants.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/Configuration.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/UtilityFunctions.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/SCORM2004Functions.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/SCORMFunctions.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/AICCFunctions.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/NONEFunctions.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/LMSAPI.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="lms/API.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>

  strContentLocation = "story_html5.html";
  //strContentLocation = "TestAllFunctions.htm";

  function LoadContent(){
   window.scormdriver_content.document.location.href = strContentLocation;
  }
  </script>
</HEAD>
<frameset rows="100%,0%,0%,0%" onload="Start()" border="0" onbeforeunload="Unload()" onunload="Unload()">
  <frame name="scormdriver_content" src="lms/blank.html" scrolling="__SCROLLING__">
  <frame name="AICCComm" src="lms/AICCComm.html">
  <frame name="rusticisoftware_aicc_results" src="lms/blank.html">
  <frame name="NothingFrame" src="lms/blank.html">
</frameset>
<noframes>
  Your browser must be able to view frames for this content to display.
</noframes>
</HTML>