Storyline Course Opening Embedded PDF on Some Computers but not Others

Hi Lucas,

You mentioned linking to the story_html5 - did you publish for web? If you're burning to a thumb drive, I'd recommend publishing for CD/local and then using the story.html file to ensure that all users can access the content. If you're viewing content outside it's intended publish environment (web content locally for example) you may encounter the security restrictions as detailed here. Also, individual browser and security restrictions can play a role in opening files such as PDFs. 

Hi Lucas,

When you are publishing, are you using the Publish for CD option? If your clients or users are accessing the published course from the USB drive, you'll want to make sure to publish for CD so it's able to be viewed locally. Users should then copy the files from the USB to their local drive, then double click the Launch-Story.exe file to play the course. Otherwise, you'll encounter security restrictions from the computer, web browser, Flash Player, and network that'll cause various features of your content to fail. Check out this article for more information on publishing and sharing content as well. 

Thank you both for getting back to me.

I tried publishing for CD and wasn't able to open the Launch-Story.exe file, nothing comes up.

The story.html file, when publishing for CD, works except for the PDFs, which gives me a Warning: The web object feature on this slide has been disabled while viewing locally because your browser does not support it. That's the individual browser and security restrictions that you're talking about, Ashley?

Tried publishing for a CD and burning it onto the CD, but Launch_Story.exe just gives me a blank screen, all white.

Any solutions?

Hi Lucas, 

What type of computer are you using? A .EXE file won't run on a Mac for example, but should work on a PC. You'll need to have Internet Explorer installed to view the CD/local published content, as we use a player based on IE to run it - so it may not run in other browsers such as Chrome or that may be when you see the error messages as you described. 

I'm running on a PC, and I have IE, should it be working then? When I open Launch_Story.exe I see nothing.

HI Lucas,

Do you publish to a local drive and adhere to the naming conventions here . Could you share a copy of your .story file here with us? 

I have been working off of an external hard drive (I come from a video background).

I am copying over to my C: drive now to try that.

I can't share the story because it is being created for an attorney to present the material to a judge at mediation, so it is confidential. (I'm sure if it wasn't confidential I wouldn't have any problems!)

If I have time I will create another story with pdfs in as web objects and upload that.

Lucas, are you using a Web Object to open and view the PDF documents?  If so, I had a similar issues a few months back.  My work-around was to drop the documents (each one) into their own folder along with the index.html.  Then insert each one as a web object, publish the Story file and launch.  This worked for me, I hope it does you some good.

Good luck.

Lucas- working off an external drive could definitely be a contributing factor to what your seeing. Keep us updated on how everything goes when you run it directly from your C: drive. You'll want to make sure you're always working from a local drive to avoid loss of resources, take a peek at this article for reference. You can always store your project files and published courses on an external drive, but we recommend copying them or moving them back to your local drive before editing or viewing them. 

Eric,

That's the workaround that I have been doing, and it all works great on my laptop (which is not the same computer that I have created this project on). When I try it on any other computer the PDFs don't show up.

I used Mike's instructions from this thread. When I published to web onto a thumbdrive, I was able to eject that, stick it into my other laptop and open the story_html5 file and had no issues. I then tried putting it on a coworkers laptop and everything worked except for the PDFs, which only showed me an all white placeholder.

Ali,

I have moved everything to my C: drive and then reopened Articulate. I published it as a CD, web, and LMS and tested each.

The CD output: still doesn't open Launch_story.exe. I just get a blank screen.

The web output: no longer works on my laptop,the PDF slides now only show the background of the slide, not even a place holder like what I was experiencing before.

The LMS output is giving me the same white placeholder, still.

I should also mention that I'm new :D first real project with storyline.

Hi Lucas,

Thanks for the update and additional details! Since this particular course is completely confidential, if you do have time to create a sample course and share it here I would be happy to take a look. I'm curious to know if it's that particular course or if it happens with any course you're publishing. 

I'm also not able to reproduce content being blank on my end when I publish a course to CD and try opening the Launch_story.exe .  Since you mentioned that you're working from a PC with IE and now viewing it on your C: drive, that isn't expected behavior. Please let me know if you see the same thing happen with the sample file you create. 

As for the web output- you'll need to make sure you're uploading it to a web environment to properly test it otherwise you may see things behaving undesirably. The same goes for the LMS output, you'll have to test that in an LMS environment. Check out this article on publishing and sharing your content. For your web output, Tempshare is a great free way to test it out. It'll create an internet link for you to view your content that will only be available for 10 days. For the LMS output, testing using a free account through SCORM Cloud is recommended as it's the industry standard. You may also find this article on troubleshooting using SCORM Cloud to be helpful.

Hi Ali,

Thanks for all the help! I've created another course using the method I have been doing but just with one pdf and nothing else, using a webobject with the method descrived above. Do I just attach the story file?

Do my users need to have articulate storyline to be able to open the Launch_story.exe file?

The web output worked before on my laptop by just clicking the story_html5 file. I didn't put it on a webserver, just clicked that and everything, including the pdfs, worked.

Tried the CD output to both thumbdrive and burning it onto a disc and that's what I got.

The LMS output I tried on our LMS.

Lucas, when you publish the course, Storyline will package the PDF into the course. Your people will not need to have copies of the PDF on their local storage.

Eric

Lucas-

Eric is correct, your users do not need to have Storyline 2 to be able to open the Launch_story.exe .

As for testing the web output, you may be able to view it locally by simply clicking the story_html5 but it isn't recommended for testing as the published course is not formatted for local viewing. Uploading to a web environment is the best way to test Published for Web courses to ensure no loss of resources. 

Thanks for sharing that sample file. I was able to see the course when I publish for CD and double click the Launch_story.exe . I do see what you're saying about the blank slide for the PDF, however. In Mike's steps that you're using, for Step 4 try using this code:

<object data="example.pdf" type="application/pdf" width="100%" height="100%">

<p><b>Example fallback content</b>: This browser does not support PDFs. Please download the PDF to view it: <a href="example.pdf">Download PDF</a>.</p>
</object>

Replace both instances of "example.pdf" with your PDF doc name. Follow the rest of his directions as they are. You'll notice in his steps that he mentions it wouldn't work locally, but it did once uploaded to the web. Using the above code, when you view locally after publishing for CD it will prompt you to download the PDF to view it, as viewing the PDF embedded locally won't be supported. If you publish for web and upload it to a web environment, you'll be able to view the PDF content in the course. If the particular browser your viewing it in doesn't support it, you'll still see the option to download the PDF to view it. 

You'll also want to make sure that if you're sharing on a USB drive, that your users copy the course files to their local drive before double clicking the Launch_story.exe . It isn't recommended to try running it directly off of the USB drive. 

Hope that helps! :)

Wow you guys rock!

Ali,

That new code worked wonders! Don't know anything about coding so that's definitely the part I was stumped on.

It works great in the LMS. When publishing to web and copying it onto a thumbdrive, I'm able to run it on any computer, PC and MAC, runs amazing in Internet Explorer, great in Chrome and Safari, but the slider doesn't work when opened with Mozilla Firefox.

The Launch_story.exe file I was never able to make work no matter where that file lived.

But, I've got my solution! 

Very excited right now, for this and using Storyline in general.

Thanks :)

Fantastic, Lucas! So excited to hear that worked out for you :) 

Thanks Ali!

Little update about the code Ali Gave me:

<object data="example.pdf" type="application/pdf" width="100%" height="100%">

<p><b>Example fallback content</b>: This browser does not support PDFs. Please download the PDF to view it: <a href="example.pdf">Download PDF</a>.</p>
</object>

With the height set to 100%, I was getting an extra scroll bar because the entire pdf viewer didn't fit in the slide. I set the height to 90% in the code and the extra scroll bar is gone!

Thanks again for all the help. A lot of excited people over on this end because I was able to get this to work!

Thanks for sharing that tip, Lucas! I'm sure others will find it handy, as well. Happy Friday!