Storyline 2 Course Freezing
Nov 24, 2015
Hi all,
I'm in great need of your help. I created a compliance course using Storyline 2 and have uploaded it to our e-learning sharepoint site as we call it. On the front page, there is a voiceover that greets them. They are then to click the custom made next button on the screen and it should take them to the menu screen.
However with one of our employees, once the seekbar ends, all the buttons suddenly disables. The custom made button in the course, the pause/play button on the seekbar, and the restart button on the seekbar doesn't work. It doesn't even change the cursor to a finger when the mouse hovers over it to show that anything is clickable. He's running Windows 8 and using IE11. I asked him to clear his cache (temporary internet files in IE) but that didn't work either.
Does anyone have any ideas of what the issue may be? I'm praying someone here has a suggestion!
22 Replies
Rachel,
Just to make sure I'm understanding - this seems to work for everyone except one employee? Or, is it just one employee that's made the complaint thus far?
Keepin' the joy,
Patti
Hi, Rachel - So sorry to hear you are experiencing difficulties! Would it be possible for you to test your course using Tempshare or the SCORM Cloud to see if you encounter the same behavior in either one of those environments?
Hi Rachel:
Two suggestions come to mind:
1. Disable the seekbar display in your Learning project.
Perhaps that will clear the issue up.
To do this in Storyline 2:
On your affected Slide (Slide 1?) click on the Control Widget near the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Typically, this is located very close to where your Base Layer Text is displayed.
In the "Player Features" drop-down menu, try choosing "Custom for the selected Slides".
This will allow you to turn OFF (uncheck) the Seekbar display for this slide.
2. Extend the timeline for all objects so that it is a MUCH longer amount than 9 or 10 seconds.
Maybe you can try setting the length of this to 30 or 40 seconds, some time long AFTER when your potential client(s) might CLICK your Customized Next Button on Slide 1.
To figure out what is actually causing the freezing and other issues will require more detailed testing on your part, or perhaps uploading some version of your Storyline 2 file to either this forum or the Articulate staff.
PS: In our shop, Internet Explorer 11 has caused a number of operational and display difficulties for our eLearning projects. Try repeating this with IE 9 or IE 10 instead and compare the results.
Hope this helps!
Sincerely,
-Mark
Hi Patti,
This is the first complaint of its kind so far. I haven't heard one similar just yet.
See that's the thing. The course works perfectly find on my end and many others computers. So I don't think it's an issue so much with the course...at least that's my guess. Because I would think that if it was a course issue, it wouldn't be able to work on anyone's computer right?
Hi Mark,
Great suggestions and thank you for your response. However the reason we have the seekbar is because for some of our employees they get phone call interruptions that they have to take so that seekbar/pause button is really helpful for them especially since there are voiceovers on just about all the slides some much longer than others to explain concepts. Is there any way that I can do a work around that will allow me to keep that seekbar?
I didn't know that there were known issues with IE11. I have IE 9 and many other do but I don't know of anyone else that has IE11. The course works find on my computer and many others, but this employee is the first. Do you know of a workaround since he has IE11?
Hi Rachel:
We've done some limited testing here at my workplace with IE11, and advanced interactivity that works in other browsers, such as IE9 & IE10, like drag and drop, for example, works just fine.
However, in many cases when using IE11, these interactions break, and break DRAMATICALLY, leading us to wonder how many other problems IE11 might inherently have or might cause for our courses.
If you keep the seekbar, then try extending the timeline.
However, my gut instinct tells me your problem isn't likely to do with that.
In order to be sure, you'll need to dig deeper to see if there is something else that might be confusing the playback or causing any issues with IE11.
For some ELPs, IE11 downgrades the stated version and functionality of the browser, all the way DOWN to IE *5* when it encounters issues, which is why we are reluctant to use IE 11 as our test-model and benchmark for eLearning from a client standpoint until Microsoft upgrades and improves its consistency and performance.
We typically urge our users to stick with IE9 and IE10, but with Windows 10 PCs now on the horizon, that will be much harder to control.
PS: For now, my best suggestion for your client is to just use another web browser.
Try using Google's Chrome, which seems to be a favorite among many developers, (and our shop), or Mozilla Firefox.
Ah I see! Thank you so much for this information. I'm feeling more confident that IE11 really is the issue with this. Majority of employees use IE9 because it's better for us to use on our other work systems. I'm not quite sure why this employee has IE11 on his computer anyway. I'm going to see if he can use a different browser and we will just have to do some work arounds with it since I've noticed that when we host courses on sharepoint, it doesn't always play nice with other browsers.
(I can't wait for our new LMS that'll be up and running this time next year. It would make my life so much easier.)
Thank you all for your help!
Hi
I am using Moodle 3.2.1 to host a series of scorm-based courses. Some students are advising me that the course they are completing can be inclined to freeze.
Any suggestions as to a solution?
Thank you
Hi Íde - Is this something that you are able to replicate in SCORM Cloud or is it limited to Moodle? Do you know the browsers/environment where the users are experiencing an issue?
Hi Leslie
I don't have these specific details. It may occur when a number of learners are logged on simultaneously. I did notice when I tested the material myself that it can present with this issue.
Can you advise as to the specific details I would need to collate in order to resolve the problem?
Thanks
I would want to know if it is limited to a particular browser/environment and if you can replicate it in SCORM Cloud.
Not sure if it may be at the same place in your course, and this information may be helpful as well:
Articulate Storyline preloads published content in a specific order to make playback of your courses as smooth as possible. See this article for details.
We are experiencing the same issue with IE11. Randomly, when using the play/pause button, the over state of the button freezes and the whole course becomes unresponsive. The only way to resolve the issue is to refresh the browser page. As this is random, sometimes it can happen if a user pauses once, another time it can take 100 play/pauses to happen.
This happens in IE11:
Here is an example of the issue on Scormcloud, at roughly 5 seconds, the pause buttons sticks blue (over state) and the whole course becomes unresponsive (still plays away in background until page ends).
http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cb1VoUXH5d
Has anyone found a solution to this yet?
Cheers.
Hi RH,
I haven't seen a solution yet - but the inconsistency of is it hard to pin down and test.
Does it happen always with the fast play/pauses as you showed - or that was an example for efficiencies sake?
Are your users locked into IE11, or could they use a browser such as Chrome? My guess is IE11 is being overloaded by the back and forth clicking and that causes it to freeze up - but that's really only a guess.
Hi Ashley,
The fast clicking in my example was just the simplest way for me to to replicate the issue and record it. As is random nature, I have had this happen on the second pause used within a course, going through like a regular user would.
We are very much locked into IE11 (large organisation and the only browser they allow). We previously built this course in Captivate which had deal breaking IE11 issues, so decided to try build it in Storyline (we have never used it before) and see if it could handle IE11 HTML5 better. But it seems to have different issues.
p.s Win7, IE 11.0.9600.18665
Cheers.
Here is an example of it breaking, when going through and pressing pause every now and then:
http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cb1n6TXJv2
Hi RH,
Storyline 3 and 360 are supported in IE11 with HTML5, but Storyline 2 is not - if you're pointing directly to the HTML5 output that could explain part of the behavior.
I am happy to test your course out in the latest versions of Storyline to confirm or you are welcome to start a trial of either and give it a shot yourself! The HTML5 options have been a big focus for us in Storyline 3/360!
Hi Ashley,
Sorry, I never realised this post was Storyline 2 related. I just replied to it because it was the same issue.
We are using Storyline 360, and are outputting our published courses to HTML5 only. I have sent a support request and I'm currently waiting to hear back.
Hi RH,
Do you have the case number handy so that I can follow along?
No problem, here you go:
Case Number: 01082398
Thanks RH - I'll follow along and our team works on your file.
Hi everyone!
Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention and providing all the details we needed to tackle this bug!
I'm happy to report that we've released the fix in Update 36 (Build 3.36.21213.0) for Storyline 360! You'll find that Play/Pause buttons won't become unresponsive when clicking repeatedly. Go ahead and update the Articulate 360 Desktop App to stay up to speed on the newest bug fixes and features.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.