Storyline course (flash player) freezing in Chrome when opening a link in a new tab

Aug 14, 2018

Elisha Gillett
By Elisha Gillett

Just wondering if anyone else is having this issue?

Recently, anyone using chrome to view our modules has had an issue with the course freezing when opening an external link in a new tab.

After closing the new tab and returning to the course, visually everything appears frozen. The mouse still moves - but nothing happens when we click buttons, animations don't work and certainly no hover states etc. The only way to 'unstick' chrome is to resize it - essentially waking it up again - at which point it skips to where it's meant to be (as if it had been working all along).

It's a rather annoying little bug and I'm pretty sure it's a flash player / chrome issue. It does not happen when published in HTML5 but this is not ideal for us just yet as with that comes other issues. 

Unfortunately we have no control over how our courses are viewed - they are external facing - so we can't demand it is viewed on IE etc. I have submitted queries to both google and adobe but would be interested to see if anyone else is having this issue - and if you've happened to find a fix?

Thanks guys!

5 Replies
Alyssa Gomez
over 5 years ago08/14/18 at 5:40 pm (UTC)

Hi Elisha!

I'd like to get some more details from you to test this on my end. I'm sure this little glitch has been an annoyance to your learners, so hopefully it's an easy fix!

  • What version of Storyline are you using? Are you on the latest update?
  • Are the learners clicking on hyperlinked text? 
  • What 'New Browser Window' settings did you select for these hyperlinks?
Elisha Gillett
over 5 years ago08/16/18 at 2:20 am (UTC)

Hi Alyssa,

Thanks for reaching out.  It is indeed quite an annoying glitch!

  • I am using Storyline 360 on v3.15.15581.0
  • Learners are clicking on hyperlinks and custom buttons
  • I have them launching in a new browser window with default settings.

However - I can since confirm it is actually an issue with flashplayer in chrome. I have raised this with Adobe who have been able to replicate and have logged a bug. Hopefully it will be fixed quite soon as we certainly are not the only ones experiencing this.

In the meantime - I have a fix which seems to work for us, thanks to a helpful adobe forum member. 

Since the best way to 'wake up' the browser is resizing it, we can put some code into the story_flash.html file which will adjust the size ever so slightly to wake up the page automatically.

I have put this code in just before the end script  </script>  tag:

 

document.addEventListener('visibilitychange', function(){ 

            if(!document.hidden) {

                document.querySelector('html').style.width="99.9%";

                setTimeout( function(){

                    document.querySelector('html').style.width="100%";

                }, 1000);

            }

        });

Hopefully this will help someone else experiencing this issue - at least until Adobe get a fix in place. 

 

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