Storline 360 HTML5 Performance
Nov 15, 2016
By
John Hudson
I have been a Storyline user since the beginning and I'm excited about the possibilities with 360. HTML5 output in Storyline2 has caused me a lot of grief in the past, requiring many hours of testing to uncover break-point patterns and workarounds. I am trying a couple of these courses in Storyline 360 and have a few questions/observations:
- Storyline 360 Features describe "Superior HTML5 Output" - is there a more detailed description of what this means technically?
- HTML5/Flash Fallback - course performance has been very sluggish compared to Storyline 2 output. It appeared some pages were not working but turned out to just be a big delay. Also had problems with a simple page with several path animations synchronized to voice-over - again it might have been just a very slow response. Are others experiencing this performance issue?
- Playing multiple media files simultaneously - appears this problem is resolved with my tests on an iPad?
- HTML5 Break-Points - The new version appears to be generally much better at finding it's way back to pages/layers after a Save/Exit and more complex branching. Storyline 2 HTML5 often had problems figuring out what to do when coming back into a page and locked in a number of situations. Does the 360 version cover these situations consistently or will it still be a trial and error process on multiple browsers, platforms and devices?
I would appreciate feedback to help uncover how far 360 has gone with HTML5 output and whether there is a way to speed up performance.
34 Replies
Hi John,
Thanks for giving Articulate 360 a thorough test run, and I hope you'll keep doing so throughout your trial! I've answered your specific questions below:
1. I don't know that there is a more technical explanation - but some of the items to improve HTML5 output and make it superior would be connected to HTML5 only output, increased browser support, our responsive player and increased gesture support within HTML5 tablets.
2. When you're seeing this performance issue where have you uploaded the course and what browsers are you using? It sounds like something we'd want to take a look at to determine reproducibility and if there is something specific in this course causing a delay or if it's how you're experiencing the HTML5 output as a whole.
3. The issue with multiple media was based on certain browsers not being able to auto play more than one as detailed here. Is that the issue you're referring too?
4. Are you referring to a resume behavior - when a user closes out of the course and then returns, in regards to where they are brought back? I'd also want to take a look at the issues you were experiencing and know more about if it's the whole course that isn't resuming or resuming to a particular point on a slide.
For the two that we'd want to investigate further with you, can you share a copy of the Storyline 360 .story file here with us or send it along to our Support team here?
Ashley,
Thanks for the response. I will try to clarify my points a bit better:
Thanks John for the clarifications - that's really helpful.
1. I can't speak directly to the code ( I wouldn't even know where to begin!) but it's generally proprietary the updates and fixes made to things like that. The broader support of browsers and the ability to have HTML5 output only or first would be connected to better overall playback in those environments though especially as certain browsers start to fade out or block Flash content as a default.
2. This tutorial has steps for all things mobile publishing, so you may want to begin there. In terms of optimizing, Storyline 360 (or any of the tools) will optimize items like video, file size, etc. as a part of the publishing process to make playback smooth and then it'll be dependent on your hosting location and internet connection how that ultimately plays back for you. For the performance issues you mentioned, is it a slow loading of the initial content? Loading in between? Perhaps you could share a link to the published output and I can give it a test on a few different environments.
4. I know that the drag and drops can be tricky as they won't automatically reset to initial state on a reattempt of the slide, and that is expected behavior. So the redirect page sounds like what we have advised in the past and similar for slide layers as the "resume" data of Storyline will recognize the slide they are on and return them to that point. I have seen a really cool example here of the "save/exit" set up here. If you're only seeing the oddities of the behavior when viewing the HTML5 output we'd want to take a look at the Storyline 2 file and we can test it in Storyline 360 as well - can you upload it here in the forums or send it along to our Support team here. Also the trial of Storyline 360 can run side by side with Storyline 2, so you're welcome to download the trial and test those items out to see if they work as you'd like as well!
I am also experiencing a problem with the Resume option. It is set for On Restart - Always Resume. When I am testing my course (published to SCORM 1.2), I fail the scored assessment and then exit the course. When I launch the course again, it always take me to a specific slide that it in the middle of the course. I can get the Resume feature to work correctly if I exit before any interactions in the course, but when I go beyond an interaction that uses triggers and layers and any question in the course, exit and returning to the course always takes me to the same slide - even if I was past it or not to it yet. Any idea on what I can do to fix this issue?
Hi Lisa,
It sounds like the reason why you always resume to a specific slide in the course is that you've exceeded your suspend data limit. Your LMS might be imposing limits on suspend data. Older LMS specs, such as SCORM 1.2, have outdated restrictions on suspend data.
We recommend publishing for the latest edition of SCORM 2004 or Tin Can API (also known as Experience API). See this article for more information.
I recommend that you try to republish your course for SCORM 2004 3rd Edition or 4th Edition, both of which support much longer suspend data. Let me know if that fixes the issue!
I wish I could publish to SCORM 2004, but our LMS person is dictating that we use AICC or SCORM 1.2. I tried AICC but had issues with 360 reporting the assessment results so I switched to SCORM 1.2 which is the only other one they will support. We are on an older version of SuccessFactors myLearning. I did several tests with this and have discovered that bookmarking works up until one slide where I have lots of layers. I am in the process of breaking those layers up in hopes that this might help. I am concerned though that it may not resolve the issue. It is odd that bookmarking works up until that slide but any slide after will always bring me back to the slide with multiple layers and interactions. I published to cloud.scorm and have the same quirky results so that led me down the path of splitting this one slide into multiple and reducing the number of layers. I don't know that this will work, but I thought it might be worth a try. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know. (Would it make a difference if using HTML5/Flash or Flash/HTML5 or just Flash as the output?)
Lisa Dobias
Thanks for that update, Lisa. Let me know if breaking up the layers into separate slides does the trick. If not, it would be best to get in touch with our Support Engineers here so they can work with you to investigate further. They are rockstars and you'll be in great hands! :)
I also wanted to mention that replying to this thread via email includes your email signature here. You're welcome to pop back in and edit out personal information, if you like. :)
The issue was not resolved by separating my one big slide with all the layers and interactions into separate slides. The other problem I ran into is that when I did this, I changed the hotspot to Jump to slide instead of show layer, I lost the ability to change the rectangle box to visited (gray) when user clicks HS. It all works fine when I have this show layer, but not for jump to slide. I have a slide where I want users to click each step to see details and it doesn't work well when the box(es) the clicked on don't switch color - hard to know which ones you have looked at already.
I tested this all on the cloud.score site and am now stuck again as far as what to do since our LMS person will not let me use anything but SCORM 1.2 or AICC, and AICC won't track quiz results correctly. Any other suggestions?
Lisa Dobias
I also just published to AICC using index
Hi Lisa,
At this point, I would recommend that you share your file with our Support Engineers so they can investigate further. You can reach them directly here 24/7 and we're getting ready to go into the holiday weekend - but if you can share you're information there they'll get testing it as soon as they can!
Hello. I'm also having issues with mobile performance using the Flash/HTML5 publishing option. The performance on my iPad (Safari) is not as good as Storyline 2 - keeps crashing and the clickable interactions are shaky. I assumed that all publishing options involving HTML5 would work better. I can't seem to be able to use the HTML5 only option because my company uses IE11 / SumTotal. Do you know if this is an IE-related issue or is it a bug in 360?
So, it looks like if you still need both the Flash option and HTML5, that you're going to get a bad experience with mobile. I may need to revert back to Storyline 2 until this is fixed. Depending on how long it takes to fix this, I may need a refund on 360 for now.
Hi there Natalie,
So sorry you're running into issues with mobile performance. We definitely wouldn't expect that behavior, so let's see if we can narrow down why this could be happening. Are you working with a new Storyline 360 file, or a file that was originally created in Storyline 2 and upgraded to Storyline 360? Since you mentioned using SumTotal, it might also be worth testing in SCORM Cloud to compare your experience there with your experience in SumTotal. We generally compare the behavior in SCORM Cloud to your LMS experience to try to parse out file issues versus LMS issues.
If you're still having trouble, it would really help us if we could take a closer look at the original .story file to do some mobile testing. Would you be able to send it to our Support Engineers by clicking here? If you do decide to open a case, be sure to let me know your case number so I can follow along. :)
Hello. Thanks for responding. This is a Storyline 2 file that I upgraded to
Storyline 3. I have tested the file on my iPad via SCORM Cloud and
SumTotal. My biggest issue now is that the file keeps crashing about
half-way through the training - both on SCORM Cloud and SumTotal. I have
other issues as well, but the crashing is my biggest concern.
I have submitted a case, and they are currently working on it.I hope to get
a resolution soon. Thanks.
Thanks for letting me know you opened a case! I see you're working with my colleague Cleo in case# 01052503--you're in good hands there!
Hi, I'm also experiencing the same performance issue as John mentioned in his second point. I tested my html5 output with various browsers and it's very slow to load or sometime broken halfway. I typically use Amazon S3 and it's still very very slow.
Hi Virak,
Could you share a link to your published output? I'd like to test it on various browsers. Thanks!
Hi Virak,
Are you using Storyline 360? Can you share a bit more about the testing environments you're working in?
I cannot share it, because it's confidential. My courses sometimes, load the text and audio first before the image come up.
Mostly we tested on Chrome with the latest version of Storyline 360.
Hi Virak!
Would you be able to work with our team privately here? An NDA can be signed if needed.
Hi Virak,
I can see that you’re still struggling with hearing the audio on mobile since you reached out here and in this other discussion. Since you've also opened a case, let's keep the conversation going there! We'll follow along as the case progresses. :)
Hi
I'm using Storyline 3 and I'm also having issues with courses upgraded from Storyline 2 to Storyline 3. I have published them HTML5/Flash fallback. Sometimes the video flickers; sometimes the sound plays with a blank screen where the video should be and overall the course is very sluggish. I get the same result if I run the course on my local pc - so it isn't an internet speed issue. I have tested in both Firefox and Chrome with the same results. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Hey Sally!
So sorry you're running into that.
Can you share the backup Storyline 2 version of one of the files you're seeing this happen in? I'd love to do some comparison testing with it!
You can add it right to a comment in this thread as an attachment.
Thanks!
Hi Ali,
I attach one of the files for testing. These files started out as SL1, upgraded to SL2 and now SL3.
Hey Sally!
Thanks so much for sharing your file here with me. I'm going to have one of our Support Engineers reach out to you directly via email to troubleshoot this further.
Keep an eye out for Support@articulate.com in your inbox!
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