I was forced to install an update for Windows 10; since the update, I am not able to launch my story.html files. Chrome opens (like always), but I get the loading icon on a white background and it never opens.
It worked before the update and I am opening it the exact same way, using Chrome (like I did in the past).
Anyone else experiencing this? Does anyone have a fix for it?
We always recommend testing the published output in the intended publish environment as detailed here. If you need to test locally you'll want to look through the forum discussion Michael linked to and the specific documentation and steps you'll need to go through are documented here.
What happens when we have hundreds of students trying to access the file. We can't tell them to change the setting to view the content. This is a huge problem for us. Plus some storyline work fine and some don't
Chrome has blocked the ability to play swf from the local environment. Try right-clicking on the file and select IE or another browser to see if it will run. If it still doesn't run, the you may not have the flash player on your machine anymore. (A lot of IT departments are removing it for security reasons.) In this case, be sure you published and HTML5 version, and try running the story_html5.html file. This will play the HTML5 version of your published output. The story.html file is supposed to switch to the html5 content automatically, but when you try to play a web or lms version, locally it doesn't always behave properly.
I'm sorry this issue is causing such headaches on your end! As Dave mentioned Chrome changed the way they're handling Flash content recently and it's causing some issues for Storyline and Studio content. The steps to rectify this are detailed here and it'll be up to each user to adjust for their browser and set up.
Flash as a whole did cause some earlier issues with how local content was being viewed, so if you were not having users view the course in an LMS or web server, the steps to allow the local playback was detailed here.
My experience has been that those steps to configure flash permissions don't always work, and sometimes local profile permissions don't allow changing them. That's why I'm always hesitant to mention them. But I agree, if developers want users to be able to run content locally, then the content should be published for the local environment. On the other hand, I like to preview my projects before I publish them to the LMS. I've so far been able to that by running them in IE, or running them in localhost.
What I've found is that stakeholders often want to play the project on their local machine too. That's when the challenge starts, as they don't want to go through the trouble of setting up flash, or may not even have flash anymore. (I had this happen yesterday.) That's why I made the suggestions above.
Just about when you think you've figured out where the ends are, someone moves the ends.
Asking our 100's of students to change the settings just isn't an option for us, it just looks unprofessional. It's a bit like Apple telling you there's nothing wrong with their phone signal, it's the way you hold it.
We have hundreds of courses on an LMS that will need to be changed to point to HTML5
The new flash security restrictions only apply when the presentation is presented locally on a machine from the local file system. The content should still play fine when presented from the LMS, or any other web based URL.
If it doesn't, then your IT department has probably removed flash from your user's systems. In this case, if you publish HTML5 content, your courses should fail gracefully, and play the HTML5 content.
If you didn't publish the HTML5 content, then the course will fail to run. If you can, I would go back and republish with the HTML5 output enabled and re-upload the content to your LMS.
We've tried republishing a few and it the same problem. It doesn't default for us to the HTML5 when viewing through a PC. Thanks for your help though. This move had to come sooner or later
A good point Dave - and the local playback of web/LMS published courses isn't something we recommend but we know it still happens so we wanted to get it documented as such.
As for the HTML5 playback not defaulting to showing in a browser such as Chrome if Flash is blocked, that's something we're keeping an eye on too as Chrome changed how they're handling it and previously you could manually disable the Flash plugin and then it worked - they're blocking it instead of disabling it...so a little different. Users can right click on the prompt that it's blocked and allow the content to play and it's what I've been doing myself when testing courses in Chrome.
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This seems to be related to the issue discussed here.
Hi Melanie,
We always recommend testing the published output in the intended publish environment as detailed here. If you need to test locally you'll want to look through the forum discussion Michael linked to and the specific documentation and steps you'll need to go through are documented here.
Hi Melanie,
Just wanted to note that I am also experiencing the same problem.
What happens when we have hundreds of students trying to access the file. We can't tell them to change the setting to view the content. This is a huge problem for us. Plus some storyline work fine and some don't
Chrome has blocked the ability to play swf from the local environment. Try right-clicking on the file and select IE or another browser to see if it will run. If it still doesn't run, the you may not have the flash player on your machine anymore. (A lot of IT departments are removing it for security reasons.) In this case, be sure you published and HTML5 version, and try running the story_html5.html file. This will play the HTML5 version of your published output. The story.html file is supposed to switch to the html5 content automatically, but when you try to play a web or lms version, locally it doesn't always behave properly.
Hi Mr. Horizon,
I'm sorry this issue is causing such headaches on your end! As Dave mentioned Chrome changed the way they're handling Flash content recently and it's causing some issues for Storyline and Studio content. The steps to rectify this are detailed here and it'll be up to each user to adjust for their browser and set up.
Flash as a whole did cause some earlier issues with how local content was being viewed, so if you were not having users view the course in an LMS or web server, the steps to allow the local playback was detailed here.
Hi Ashley,
My experience has been that those steps to configure flash permissions don't always work, and sometimes local profile permissions don't allow changing them. That's why I'm always hesitant to mention them. But I agree, if developers want users to be able to run content locally, then the content should be published for the local environment. On the other hand, I like to preview my projects before I publish them to the LMS. I've so far been able to that by running them in IE, or running them in localhost.
What I've found is that stakeholders often want to play the project on their local machine too. That's when the challenge starts, as they don't want to go through the trouble of setting up flash, or may not even have flash anymore. (I had this happen yesterday.) That's why I made the suggestions above.
Just about when you think you've figured out where the ends are, someone moves the ends.
Asking our 100's of students to change the settings just isn't an option for us, it just looks unprofessional. It's a bit like Apple telling you there's nothing wrong with their phone signal, it's the way you hold it.
We have hundreds of courses on an LMS that will need to be changed to point to HTML5
What a nightmare!!
Hi Mr. Horizon,
The new flash security restrictions only apply when the presentation is presented locally on a machine from the local file system. The content should still play fine when presented from the LMS, or any other web based URL.
If it doesn't, then your IT department has probably removed flash from your user's systems. In this case, if you publish HTML5 content, your courses should fail gracefully, and play the HTML5 content.
If you didn't publish the HTML5 content, then the course will fail to run. If you can, I would go back and republish with the HTML5 output enabled and re-upload the content to your LMS.
We've tried republishing a few and it the same problem. It doesn't default for us to the HTML5 when viewing through a PC. Thanks for your help though. This move had to come sooner or later
I saw another thread where a user did this:
Delete the index_lms.html and story.html and then rename index_lms_html5.html to index_lms.html and story_html5.html to story.html.
I haven't tried this myself, but you might see if this works for you.
Suppose it could work yes but it would be easier going in and just change the URL to the HTML5 I think
That's worth a try, if you can do it in your LMS. Please let us know how it works out.
A good point Dave - and the local playback of web/LMS published courses isn't something we recommend but we know it still happens so we wanted to get it documented as such.
As for the HTML5 playback not defaulting to showing in a browser such as Chrome if Flash is blocked, that's something we're keeping an eye on too as Chrome changed how they're handling it and previously you could manually disable the Flash plugin and then it worked - they're blocking it instead of disabling it...so a little different. Users can right click on the prompt that it's blocked and allow the content to play and it's what I've been doing myself when testing courses in Chrome.
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