Mobile woes
Oct 10, 2016
I'm posting this here, as I'm waiting to hear back from tech support. I'm very close to just scrapping Storyline and our entire e-course venture. I understand that there are some inherent deficiencies in HTML5 that prevent it from displaying as easily as it does on a desktop. But trying to create work-arounds has been a nightmare. I currently have a ticket open for over 24 hours (since Friday morning. Now Monday afternoon) that has still not been addressed having to do with a discrepancy of different layers being displayed between desktop and mobile. (Desktop displays custom drag-and-drop "correct" layer. Mobile displays the default [undeletable] "correct" drag-and-drop layer).
My biggest problem seems to be display of video content on mobile. No autoplay. The simple response I got from tech support was, "This is a function of HTML5 browsers that can't be controlled. Some browsers will autoplay videos in this scenario, while others won't. "
But this isn't the whole story, and my initial ticket had indicated this. My reply (which has not yet received a response):
This does not address the entire problem. I could live with it if it was just click-to-play on mobile, as I could just make the first 3 frames of the video show a “click to play” message. I tried this. I also reduced the video size just to try to rule out any issues with this causing the problem. The re-encoded video is at 600x338 – BELOW HD. Please see this video:
You’ll see my message on the first frame. You’ll see that when I press the video window, the audio begins playing but the video is frozen. When I hit it again to pause and then again to play, this time the video displays. Device is iPad Air running 9.3.4.
On android, I’m not seeing my first-frames-message at the beginning. However, it DOES play the first time I press it. But without that message being displayed, it’s similarly problematic because the user won’t know what to do. I guess I can put this messaging below the video. But then this will confuse the desktop users. This is a mess.
We're not developing multiple courses. Most of the content we deliver to our members is video. Therefore, we're reluctant to require a mobile app just to play our ONE course. Furthermore, the mobile app has terrible reviews in the app store. I actually decided to try it anyway. I published for the app, downloaded it on an ipad air and launched the link (uploaded to articulate' tempshare). I got a big fat nothing. So there's that.
Is anyone else at their wit's end with developing for mobile?
3 Replies
Hi Lorin,
Thanks for reaching out here and I also looked into your case with Robert and see that he was continuing to do some testing on your file in regards to the behavior within iOS and the videos. It seems so far it's behaving as expected on iOS 10 but not on an earlier version of iOS9 - and you were looking at updating the iOS within your iPads.
As far as the Mobile player and the app reviews, the majority of those came from the time frame when folks needed to update to the latest iOS based on changes Apple made to how the app would launch and therefore the content wouldn't play. We were able to make a change within Storyline and Studio and provide this updater so that files could be easily fixed for the newest iOS here.
I'll continue to follow along as Robert continues to test your files and shared some additional information, but please feel free to let me know if you need anything else.
Thanks. If the latest OS update is the fix for all problems, it'll be a lot happier.
Is there a way to embed a "Play" button in the video playback window so that the mobile user knows to click? As I described above, I faked this by putting a play icon on the first few frames of the video, as Apple displays a first frame still. However, Android does not. Looking at the player settings, I'm not seeing a way to add anything like this, and I'm guessing it would have to be within the HTML5 spec for video playback.
Any suggestions from other users here? Adding text below the window to "click to play video" is fine for the mobile user, but the discrepancy between this and the auto-play desktop behavior worries me. I've learned to always program/write for the lowest common denominator. They will see the video already playing, they will see the text that says " click to play video" and they will think they're missing something.
I would be interested to know how others might have overcome this issue.
Ashley, any word on my other ticket - Case 00906186 (different layer displayed in mobile vs. desktop)? I'm at nearly 2 business days with no response. (4 actual days)
Hi Lorin,
Without knowing all the specifics of your situation I'll defer to Robert's continued testing with the iOS - but it did seem to help with that one situation.
There isn't an option to embed a play button, although when I view a course on my iPhone/iPad with the HTML5 output I see the play button that appears right as a part of the HTML5 behavior to start the course. This one also happened to have a video as the first screen.
If you do go the route of adding the text, you could set it to be hidden or only appear on the timeline for the first 5 seconds, so that perhaps if they're viewing it on desktop they'll think it's just a planned delay in the text disappearing.
It looks like your other case got marked as a duplicate of the existing case you have, so I'll reach out to our team to have that looked at independently.
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