Running Storyline output from my Ipad Dropbox account

May 09, 2012

Does anyone have a quick tutorial on running my Storyline output directly from my dropbox account?

Thanks - Storyline is a great product.

34 Replies
Nancy Woinoski

Here is one way to do this - publish your storyline file as html, with the html5 and iOS options enabled. Copy all of the output to your public dropbox folder. Then copy the story.html file as a public link (or you may be able to create a link from any of your dropbox folders) and paste it in an email. Send the email to the people you want to access the course.

On your iPad, download the Articulate Mobile player app from the apple store. Once this is downloaded, open the email and click the link. The course will open in the mobile player.

Just keep in mind that dropbox does not cache files so there might be some performance issues with playback.

If you don't want to use the Mobile player app - you can use the Safari browser to view the html5 output. I think when you click the story.html file and do not have the mobile app installed, SL will redirect you to the html5 output for viewing on Safari. I have not tried this so am not sure if it actually works this way. If not try entering story_htm5.html in the Safari browser.

Brian Batt

Hi Richard,

Here's a tutorial:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/143914426

Also, if you need a temporary place to test your content, check out our Tempshare site:

http://tempshare.articulate.com/

An Articulate engineer cooked up Tempshare over a weekend to make it easier for you to test Storyline content on your iPad.

You simply drag your project to Tempshare and it’s saved to a web server. Tempshare generates a non-guessable URL to your project that you can then access from your iPad. Content is hidden from search engine indexing so it stays private while you test.

Keep in mind that Tempshare is not an official or supported Articulate product. It’s just a helpful tool we’ve made available to folks who need it. Please use Tempshare for testing purposes only, as we delete content 10 days after it’s posted.

Gerry Wasiluk

I've run Storyline courses for an iPad through Amazon just fine using their S3 service.

Public dropboxes are often not true webservers usually and, when they sometimes do, usually have a very poor web server.  Putting a SL course on a poor or non-existent web server and delivering it to a device that is poor at caching (the iPad) seems a possible recipe to disaster, IMVHO, especially if the course is very media-rich.

And yes, if using a dropbox, you usually need to do something like have the permissions open for everyone.

Kulari Lokuge

Brian Batt said:

Hi Richard,

Here's a tutorial:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/143914426

Also, if you need a temporary place to test your content, check out our Tempshare site:

http://tempshare.articulate.com/

An Articulate engineer cooked up Tempshare over a weekend to make it easier for you to test Storyline content on your iPad.

You simply drag your project to Tempshare and it’s saved to a web server. Tempshare generates a non-guessable URL to your project that you can then access from your iPad. Content is hidden from search engine indexing so it stays private while you test.

Keep in mind that Tempshare is not an official or supported Articulate product. It’s just a helpful tool we’ve made available to folks who need it. Please use Tempshare for testing purposes only, as we delete content 10 days after it’s posted.

Thanks worked well!
Kulari Lokuge

Nancy Woinoski said:

Here is one way to do this - publish your storyline file as html, with the html5 and iOS options enabled. Copy all of the output to your public dropbox folder. Then copy the story.html file as a public link (or you may be able to create a link from any of your dropbox folders) and paste it in an email. Send the email to the people you want to access the course.

On your iPad, download the Articulate Mobile player app from the apple store. Once this is downloaded, open the email and click the link. The course will open in the mobile player.

Just keep in mind that dropbox does not cache files so there might be some performance issues with playback.

If you don't want to use the Mobile player app - you can use the Safari browser to view the html5 output. I think when you click the story.html file and do not have the mobile app installed, SL will redirect you to the html5 output for viewing on Safari. I have not tried this so am not sure if it actually works this way. If not try entering story_htm5.html in the Safari browser.

Thanks for sharing this.
Nancy Woinoski

Hi Dana, here is how you share the public link.  Go to your public folder in dropbox (you should have already copied the entire storyline output to this folder). Copy the public link by right clicking on the story.html file and selecting "copy public link" from the menu that appears.

Then you can just paste the link in an email to your clients. When they click the link in their email, the storyline project opens in the browser of the device they are using (or when viewing from an iPad-in the mobile browser if the user has it installed).

Hope this is the info you were looking for.

Pete K

Actually, from what I've noticed, the "Share link" feature is not the same are the Public folder feature that Dropbox provided up until last year. The "Share link" feature only allows the person you're sharing the file or folder with to access contents individually, but they will not be able to view the course with that link or stream it directly from that location.

If I am mistaken about this, please let me know. Since the Screenr video above is outdated, I would love to know if there is a workaround.

Leslie McKerchie

I've not heard of any users having this issue Pete, and I did not create my Public Dropbox folder until June, so I'm one of the 'new' ones and have not had any difficulty.

As far as the Screenr above, I think that those directions are still valid. When you right-click on what you are sharing, you are still given a 'Copy public link' option. 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179217427/Tutorial/How%20to%20start%20a%20new%20Forum%20Thread.docx

Pete K

Below is what new Dropbox users currently see (notice that there is no Public folder option compared to your screenshot). The issue is that new Dropbox users are not able to share "working" links to their SL courses anymore because the Share link option only allows downloading of the individual file not streaming of the entire course. If it's still possible to make it work, can you create an updated Screenr to show us?

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