Student types HTML in an Essay - it disappears
Jul 13, 2014
Hey all,
I'm having a problem with essay responses. Is there any way to get HTML typed by a student in an Essay response to show up on the next slide? I'm not using a results slide, but rather using the variable that the essay format stores the response in and using %variable% to display that response on the next screen. The only problem is that the HTML disappears when I do this. Anyone know a way to make it NOT do that? 
it makes this:
turn into this:
The other problem is that it totally blows the formatting out the right side (as you can see in the result), and you can't even read the entire text results. Is there any way to fix this! Maybe with some JavaScript? Or changing the variable type somehow? I can't find anything on the forum, so any help would be appreciated!
Thanks for your help!!
-Sam Parsons
13 Replies
Sam - It looks like Storyline is reading the HTML and outputting it when the variable is shown. Would it be too weird to have your learners use the "<code></code>" tag? It might just get Storyline to display the code that you need from them.
Robert - thank you for your reply. That is a great idea, but sadly it didn't work. I tried to use it in the text box that displays the output, and also as if I was the user who is typing the code.
Any other ideas? Is there some way to do this with JavaScript?
Also - for reference, this is the example code I used:
<code>
<html>
<body>
<code>
<p>hi</p>
</code>
<samp>
<p>samp</p>
</samp>
</body>
</html>
</code>
It only displays hi and samp, with no accompanying html along with it, but lots of spaces in-between the words. Its like the code is there, but invisible. =\
Sam - Yeah, I noticed that Storyline is interpreting the HTML when the variable reference is called, but it obviously doesn't interpret the code tag. It must have a limited number of tags that it interprets: paragraphs, bold, italics, but it seems to ignore the code tag when it displays the variable text.
If we could find the magic thing to get the code to display, then it would be very easy to get JavaScript to add that additional opening and closing tag to whatever they type. Hopefully someone else knows the trick.
Thanks Robert,
I've submitted a support case, perhaps they can chime in here. Let's hope!
Sam
Hi Sam,
I was able to find your support case (#00410413 for my reference) and I wanted to take a moment to share the response that Miker sent you today.
"We don't currently support this feature to include HTML tags in variable display. This is likely to prevent the unforeseen execution of the HTML or similar tags when it isn't needed."
It looks like Miker also submitted a feature request on your behalf for this functionality. I also wanted to include the link here, in case anyone else was interested in seeing this type of feature available in the future:
Articulate Support - Submit a Feature Request
If you'd like to submit more detail, you're always welcome to share another request with our product development team as well.
Thanks!
Christine - Thanks for the update on this, I'm going to submit a feature request too just that the "code" tag will be executed to display code blocks in variable displays.
I haven't tested it out but just an idea: would instructing them to wrap all their code in the " <pre> </pre> " tag for pre-formatted text work?
Hey Seth, Yeah, I tested the "
I wonder if in the meantime, as a workaround, you could have your students type the code into a Google doc or something and then embed it as a web object in storyline.
Hey Seth, I tired Pre, Samp, and Code and none work sadly. Thank you for the suggestion!
Interesting idea Nancy! I actually just provided the shell HTML and had the student enter the other code that isn't HTML, as it renders fine bc no symbols are used. I wanted to create that authentic, build it from scratch experience, but providing the framework reduces some cognitive load, and makes writing the instructions easier so I'll take it!
Thanks Robert, appreciate your support here!
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