Storyline 3 Crashes on iPad Safari and Chrome
May 09, 2017
Storyline Version 3 courses crash when clicking Next or Previous on an iPad on SCORM Cloud and another LMS called Ti LMS.
- Sent case to Articulate support
- Published as HTML5 or HTML5/flash
- SCORM 1.2 (experienced crashes on 2004 3rd Edition as well)
- iPad/IOS 10.3.1
- Does not crash on laptop and desktop browsers such as Safari, Chrome, and FireFox.
- Courses range for 40-70 screens, SCORM file sizes ranges from 17-40MB.
- Using layers for pop ups, quiz questions, narration
- Can't use the Articulate Mobile App, client requires iPad delivery
- Have developed courses of this scope in V2 with no crashing
We have tested four courses dozens of times with the above settings and have crashed on the iPad. The crashing is random and we do get a debug screen (see attached). Crashing can occur at any time but seems to occur well into the course and often when clicking the previous button revisiting screens (most set to reset to initial state). But, it has crashed before finishing the course as well and when clicking Next. There is not one screen (or type of screen) that seems to cause the crash. (Can't share courses here because they are proprietary.)
We reduced the layers and removed animations but the courses still crash. We split courses in half, but they crash.
We created a 50 screen course in V3 then recreated it in V2. The course contains one screen with text, narration, a graphic, and two pop ups. The screen is repeated 25 times. I also created 25 quiz questions.
When I test the V3 50-screen course on SCORM cloud, I crash. Usually after finishing the course and then when I am going back, but it crashes.
When I test the V2 version on SCORM cloud, I don’t crash. I can go through the course multiple course times and do not crash.
Has anyone experienced this issue in either V3 (or 360)? Our thinking is that there may be an issue with V3 and that the crashing may not occur on V2, but were wondering if anyone has crashed in V3 and rebuilt in V2 successfully or has crashed in V3 and found a workaround.
We have published dozens of courses with this scope and level of interactivity in V2 and have had no crashing. This all started with V3 just recently.
Support has been good and here is their take, "Based on the series of testing performed, this occurs on iOS devices but not on Android. The initial diagnosis has something to do with mobile devices limited resource allocation which might be the cause of the issue. However, investigation is still on-going and I'll be sure to let you know for any progress." And, "It doesn't appear to be an issue specific to LMS as it also occurs when I uploaded your content in our web server. The course will crash on random slides and will reload automatically asking whether to resume or not. I've logged the issue as a possible software bug."
Regardless, we have several courses that we need to deliver for the iPad, Safari and Chrome. We have already missed our initial deadline of this past Monday. Please let me know if anyone has come across this issue. If it is a Storyline bug, it needs to be fixed immediately.
155 Replies
Hi everyone, to follow-up on my posts on March 8 and 9, 2018 where videos are sometimes not auto-playing on iPad iOS 10.3.3 with the Storyline 3 update 3.3.15007.0 and Storyline 360 update 3.13.15006.0, a case was raised with Articulate: #01293964.
After much trouble-shooting back and forth, the issue has been raised as a possible software bug by Articulate.
To work around this, we have had to rebuild courses to require the learner to select a button to play each video, thus looking forward to an update when available.
Thanks, Krista for sharing that info here, and I can also connect this discussion to your support case. We'll let you know once this is fixed.
We have a big problem with iPAD, the Storyline 3 files work fine on every device except iPAD. Our customer has 300 ipad users. We upgraded every course to Storyline 3 and we find it really difficult to manage the client requirements. Can't you provide an option to stop preloading the content on iPad? I know this is not a permanent fix, at least if it works, it is better than crashing. Its taken a year and we have been facing these issues again and again. Do something and get this right soon.
Hi all, just to follow-up on my post on March 27, 2018 where videos are sometimes not auto-playing on iPad iOS 10.3.3 with the Storyline 3 update 3.3.15007.0 and Storyline 360 update 3.13.15006.0 and a case was raised with Articulate: #01293964.
I installed the Storyline 360 update 3.14.15225.0 from April 2, 2018, and the issue is still present there in my testing. It did not appear to be listed in the fixes but I just wanted to check, and wanted to let you know as well.
We will have over 2000 stores who can only access our lessons with iPads. We currently use SL3 to author. What is the best option for authoring and publishing for iPads until the SL3 fix is in place > We will need to recreate lessons in SL2 and publish for Tin Can API with the Articulate Mobile Player if we want to track activity?
Is there an offering to unlock backward compatibility to facilitate this? Or is there any word on when a fix is coming?
We have had good success when we publish the course in Storyline 2. We have had the same course with the same videos working without any problem when we create it and publish it with Storyline 2. I fail to understand why Articulate would provide an upgrade which fails to do even what its previous version did. Its close to a year or more, but there is no fix on the way. We look to every release and hope that it works, but it doesnt. Now we use SL2 for most of the development coz customer cant use it on iPad if we use SL3.
I hope the team looks into this seriously when so many users are affected. You must at least mention that in the system requirements that iPad wont work with SL3. We can share with the customer and make him believe that it is not our development process issue.
Can you give a date when this would be fixed?
Hi Heather and Santhosh, thanks for sharing what's happening on your end. We released this fix for Storyline 3 in update 3, and in testing, we felt confident that it addressed most of the problems with content crashing on certain iPads. It sounds like you're still seeing problems, though. 😕
Heather - Can you confirm what version of Storyline you’re using? Go to Help > About Storyline for the build number. If you aren't on update 4 (latest), let's start by updating and republishing one of your courses for testing.
If you are already on the latest version, can we have a look at one of your files? We'd love to help test on a few devices to figure out what's happening.
Santhosh - You mentioned "looking to every release" for a fix, so it sounds like you are likely on update 4 for Storyline 3. Can you confirm that as well? If so, can you share the problematic course with us here? We are thankful that you chose to upgrade to Storyline 3, so I hope we can make it a worthy investment for you.
I am on Update 4: 3.4.15731.0. I was asking for more information on this thread because I didn't see a solution was posted. I came across this while I was researching another problem that I am having - receiving error: "Unable to acquire LMS API, content may not play properly and result may not be recorded." I'm relieved that I can remove the SL3/iPad crashing concern from the mix.
I was having problems with running on iPads with previous versions. I've not had the same issues with iPads crashing with the latest version - Update 4: 3.4.15731.0
Hope this helps.
Hi all, just to follow-up on my post on April 3, 2018 where videos are sometimes not auto-playing on iPad iOS 10.3.3 with specific Storyline 3 and Storyline 360 updates.
I installed the Storyline 3 update 3.4.15731.0 from May 8, 2018 and the Storyline 360 update 3.16.15842.0 from May 22, 2018 and the issue is still present there in my testing. The original issue is a case with Articulate: #01293964. Just as FYI on this issue.
Thanks for the update, Krista. I'll make sure our report of this issue includes the impact on those latest versions!
Just to catch up on this particular issue: Some videos that are set to play automatically are not auto-playing in iPad iOS 10.3.3 when published as SCORM packages.
Hi Crystal, We updated to the latest version(including update 4). But it does freeze on iPad. The course plays fine when we develop using Storyline 2(that's what we do at a huge development cost). But with Storyline 3, it locks up on the same slide. We deleted one slide at a time, published and tested. When the file size was under 18MB, it worked fine without any freeze or video autoplay issue. when it crossed 18.2 MB, it froze again. We used all possible options like publishing using Handbrake, M4V, MP4 etc., The problem we have is that we have a lot of videos in the course. When we just have slides and text it works fine. You can create an account on www.compliancebay.com and try our courses. The one on GDPR or IT Security doesn't work beyond slide 12 and slide 14 respectively.
Hi Santhosh,
I didn't see an option to create a trial account on that site, but perhaps I was missing it?
Since you've done a bit of troubleshooting to narrow it down further, I'd like to have our Support team take a look and I'll be opening a Support case for you. Keep your eyes out for an email from Support@articulate.com.
Hello,
We are using latest SL360 updates September 18, 2018 (Build 3.20.16814.0), we are still facing crashing issues on iPad, iPhone and Android Tablets. The courses are working fine on desktop browsers.
Urgent attention is required, since we cant deliver such courses to our clients.
Pratik,
What version of iOs is running on the iPad? Older versions have less support for HTML5.
It's iOS 11
It's iOS 11
Thanks so much for the information Pratik.
We're still seeing some isolated occurrences of this behavior and would like to take a look at your .story project file.
I've opened up a support case on your behalf so that you can work directly with one of our support engineers on this.
Hello! We have similar iPad issues with slides not advancing on SL360 Build 3.25.18088.0 when testing on SCORM Cloud (although this may be an issue on normal web link as well but we have not tested this yet). I've narrowed it down to 2 slides. First slide has about 20 layers, each with videos and orange buttons that advance to the next layer above. At the end of this first slide's last layer, we have a button that is supposed to jump to the next slide.
Instead, on the iPad anyways (not on PC testing), it freezes. The Menu (we call Course Map), does show that the next slide is active but the on screen slide does not update from slide 1 to 2 as it should.
I'd like to request any other options for troubleshooting and upload my file for the support team. I just opened a case report for this: 01733616. Thanks!
Hi Wesley,
Thanks for sharing those details here and reaching out to our Support Team. I talked with Cleo as he was testing your file, and we believe you're running into the memory limitations of mobile Safari.
One slide with 20 layers, each including a video, would match the description for slides or courses that could crash mobile Safari or cause it to freeze. Can you look at breaking that slide with the layers into smaller groupings or separate individual slides? That should help with course playback, and you'll also want to encourage learners to use the latest iOS or iOS device available to them. Each new iOS device has added more memory and improved performance within the Safari browser.
Our team continues to work on performance improvements for our authoring tools and the published output. It's an area we will continue to focus on as browsers and operating system release updates that could impact your experience with Articulate.
Hi everyone, just to follow-up on my post on June 7, 2018 where videos are sometimes not auto-playing on iPad iOS 10.3.3 with specific Storyline 3 and Storyline 360 updates.
I tested my sample build on the Storyline 3 update 3.5.16548.0 from August 16, 2018 and the Storyline 3 update 3.6.18134.0 from March 5, 2019 and the issue appears to be FIXED in my testing. I select the Play button that appears on the initial video, and from that point, including on bookmark or if I restart to reset tracking, the videos automatically play in my sample build.
The original issue is a case with Articulate: #01293964, so this can please be closed now if required. Thank you!
Thanks Ashley! We appreciate your reply, testing, and information. We have made a version that would split the issue-slide in two. That was fairly complex as it required jumping around using the next and back buttons and revealing the appropriate layers when navigating the slide before and after the split.
For the sake of this conversation, we'll call the 2 slide split Slide1A (now with 8 layers) and Slide 1B (now with 12 layers). Testing this however, still seemed to cause the same next slide freezing issue on the iPad (12.4.1 (16D57)). This time, the next button froze at SlideA when trying to go to SlideB. This occurred in Safari and Chrome on the iPad. Maybe we need to break it down more?
Any information you may have on where the Safari, Chrome, or iPad hardware limitation is, please let me know. I'm here to help support you all with information you may require. I can provide you with this file but not sure if I should make a new ticket or somehow upload the new SL360 file on the same ticket (which I would need help doing). Thanks!
Hi Wesley!
Thanks for letting us know you already tried splitting the layers into two separate slides. Since you're still seeing issues, you might be correct that you need to break it down even more.
As a next step, upload the latest file to your current case with Cleo. You can send Cleo your file directly using this form.
Let me know if you have any trouble sending your file to us!
Pardon the delay. Got pulled away to work on other projects past couple of days.
Tried splitting the course into more slides several ways. It wasn't until we split the 1 slide into 5 parts that it finally played through the whole slide on the iPad in Safari and in Chrome. I tested Chrome as well since it did not work there either before. I can send the file over via that "form" if you need it for review.
Wish we knew what the slide layer with videos limitation is. Not sure if per slide if we are preloading/retaining content before or after a slide plays. I assume, maybe this may have an effect on how much memory the iPad is holding when and where. We are converting a lot of older courseware from Flash to MP4 videos in SL360 so this would be good to know during our conversions.
Thanks for your help! Keep us posted if you have any more clarity on this iPad Safari videos in the layer issue.
No worries, Wesley - we're still here. :-)
If you're able to share a copy of that file with our team using the case upload form, that would be really helpful. It sounds like splitting the single slide into 5 distinct slides was the remedy for you? It will be good to see how many videos and other items are on that slide.
Let me know if you're able to share it and I'll follow along in the case!