Hyperlinks to websites not working while viewing locally

Hi Elan,

As you discovered, not everything works when publishing locally, due to browser restrictions. This article explains in more detail, and also provides you with ways you can publish so that you can view the links.

Thank you very much Rebecca

Glad that Becky was able to assist you here Elan, thanks for the update.

Hi Rebecca

I am also having the same issue. I have published it to a zip file and then saved the zip file to SharePoint. I have to publish on SharePoint at the moment and was wondering how to do this without the error. I looked the tutorials you mention but am none the wiser. Can you help?

Hi Gael!

Rebecca does not make it back to the forums very often, but if you are experiencing the same error that the user reported in the beginning of this thread, then that indicates that you are still viewing the content locally.

Be sure that you are accessing the published, uploaded content as your learners would be for proper testing.

This is a known issue from your Internet Explorer security. If you lower the security level to the Lowest, it will allow opening the links, however for some people this is automatically adjusted by their IT department and it is not possible to change.

I suggest uploading to an LMS system, it is always safer and that's when you actually make use of full Storyline functionalities.

Good points Alexandre and thanks for popping in to share. We advise publishing and uploading as well.

Sorry, I think this is BS.  No output from other publishing programs I use result in this error.  My browser will ask me to allow the file to play (usually SWF) and then plays it.  This is a Storyline message telling me I can't play the file and provides no way to accept the "risk".  Quirks like these are frustrating to my client.

Hi Ray,

Thanks for reaching out here and sharing your situation and needs. I can't speak to other programs and how they'll publish, but based on the way Storyline publishes content for web or LMS trying to access the links locally can cause you encounter the security restrictions from the browser or Flash as detailed here. If you need to provide a testing version for your client, you may want to review a few of the items in the linked article such as using a site like Tempshare or uploading to Amazon S3.  Similarly you could look at publishing for CD and providing that option for the clients to test locally, and please note that you'll see hyperlinks open in Internet Explorer when you publish for CD as detailed here. 

You'll also see at the bottom of this tutorial that the preview won't allow for certain elements to be seen either such as web objects, hyperlinks or Javascript triggers. 

If there is anything else we can assist with, please let us know. 

Yes. But my browser also gives me the option whether or not to accept the restricted content that is trying to load.  Here, Storyline is making that decision for me.  I’ve read the workarounds and it means more work for me and the client reviewers.

This is nothing new.  Flash player security issues when attempting local file playback is a long known problem, and is not unique to Storyline.  It's not Storyline, it's the Flash Player.

It is a common best practice to let your clients know that not all functionality will work when testing the Flash version of the course until it has been uploaded to a web server, a LMS or some other less conventional means of deployment such as CD, as Ashley suggested.

If you still think it's BS you may try going over to the Adobe forums and complaining there and see if you can get something done about it, as Articulate has no way of controlling what Adobe does with security settings in the Flash Player...

I repeat:

But my browser also gives me the option whether or not to accept the restricted content that is trying to load. Here, Storyline is making that decision for me.

Hi Ray. 

I wanted to give you a little more insight as to why we are handling active content locally the way we are. Viewing active content locally is considered a security risk by Flash Player 10 and higher, modern web browsers and operating systems. This could potentially allow someone to take over your computer without your knowledge. As indicated previously by Ashley, if you are viewing content locally you should publish for CD. This is not a workaround, this is what you should do as we have built in the necessary features to allow you to do so. If you are planning on hosting the content online, I would not recommend distributing the content locally but rather online. You can easily do this using Tempshare or Amazon as Ashley indicated. You want to view content in the environment you are publishing for. Locally would be CD, Web would be via a web server, LMS would be inside an LMS, Articulate Online would be by uploading to Articulate Online. We would not try to circumvent security that is already in web browsers, Flash Player or operating systems to allow active content to be viewed when this is a security risk. Reviewing content not in the environment you are publishing for may result in aspects of the presentation not working. You can find similar issues when publishing for LMS and viewing the content outside the LMS, for example. I hope that helps explain a little why we are handling things the way we are. We aren't trying to make things more difficult, we are adhering to the security restrictions already in place in Flash Player, web browsers and operating systems.