Web Object Flickering on Mac/Safari

I've encountered a very similar issue with some of our recent releases that use Web Objects. It was happening for me in Firefox with the Flash release. If you moved the mouse off the storyline slide and onto the Web Object, it would disappear for a split second and then reappear. I had a few cases where it disappeared entirely, but couldn't replicate.

Hi, Keith -- Sorry to hear you are having troubles, as well! If you'd like to share your file, you are also welcome to attach it here and we'll be happy to check it out on our end. 

Hi Christie, I'll see if I can pull together a sample to share with you. The actual project is proprietary for our client so I don't feel comfortable attaching it the community forum at this time. I'm sure we can easily replicate the issue in another file though. We have tested across 5 different Mac computers and always get the same results so I'm confident that you would see the same thing that we are.

Hi Keith, your issue sounds like it may be slightly different. What I'm seeing is a flickering that is almost like going between hover state and normal state vs. totally disappearing altogether. It's a bit difficult to describe, which makes it fun to search for when trying to troubleshoot. Flickering, fluttering, jittering...I'm not really sure what to call it. And it's constant, not just a once or twice kind of thing. 

Hi, Meg -- The need to protect confidential client info is common and certainly understood, so you have a few options if you would like to submit your file for private review!

You can either use this form to submit, and I will take a look at it first thing in the morning. Or, if there is a timecrunch and you need immediate assistance, our 24 hour Customer Support Engineers would be able to take a look as soon as possible, and here is the other form you could use to send in your case. The choice is yours! :)

Hi Christie -- It was easier for us to just create a copy of the file and upload it. Here is a link where you can take a look at the behavior.

My colleague did some digging into the issue and send me the following: 

I have narrowed it down to just Flash in Safari. Internal Flash in Chrome works fine, HTML5 in both browsers is fine, but the Flash player downloaded from Adobe causes the issue in Safari. 

It’s the z-index between the wrapper and the <div> holding the web object <iframe> (in Chrome it goes between -1 and 100 programatically, presumably the desired behavior). 

Is this something that you think I should submit to support?

Hi, Meg -- Thanks so much for sharing your link! I will be happy to take a look shortly and will reply here with my findings. If I share the same experience on my machine, I may go ahead and create a support ticket and submit it on your behalf for additional investigation by our Support Engineers. I will be in touch! 

Hi, Meg -- Can you please share a bit more about where you are seeing the flickering behavior? I just ran through the module in Safari on my MacBook and did not experience any odd behavior. 

Yes, that would be helpful wouldn't it, if I told you where to look. You need to click the green buttons to advance to the assessment questions. When the mouse moves over the web-object (which takes up the entire slide) you should see the text and the submit button flickering. When the mouse hovers over an answer option, the hover state often does not appear (no hand icon, no color change). Then you often have to click multiple times to select an answer or to click submit. 

Hi, Meg -- Thanks so much for narrowing it down, but I'm sorry to report that I am still not experiencing anything that seems to be like what you have described. Is there anyway to could share a screen recording of the behavior you are seeing? Or again, if this matter is urgent, you are certainly welcome to reach out to our Customer Support Engineers directly using this form, and I will be sure to follow along with their progress. 

Hi, Christie--Sorry if this is a silly question, but you are running the Flash version and not the html5 version in Safari, right?

Hi, Meg -- Sorry if there was any confusion, but I am running the Flash version. Would it be possible for you to use this form to send me your .story file privately so I can publish it on my machine and test beyond the link provided previously? 

Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dg5k04Cgg4

Oh no, Meg -- I received a message where it says that the video is private and I am not able to view it! Since we seem to be running into some technical difficulties, I am going to go ahead and create a ticket for support and submit it to our Engineers for further investigation. You will be hearing from a member of that staff shortly, and I plan to follow along with their progress. We'll get you taken care of one way or another! 

D'oh! Should be viewable now. 

That is so peculiar, Meg, and I am glad I finally got to see what you meant because that was definitely not happening on my machine... Your ticket will be submitted momentarily. In the meantime, have you had the opportunity to review this information on System Requirements, by chance? 

Hi, Meg -- I also wanted to mention that your ticket, 00724126, is now in our Support queue and an Engineer will contact your via the email address we have on file as soon as possible. I did want to note, we saw a ticket for a gentleman from your company named Matthew that appears to be a duplicate of your case, so his ticket, #00724112 has been closed (and a note has been made to include him on all email correspondence on that ticket moving forward). 

UPDATE for anyone who may be wondering how Meg's case worked out: Our support engineer, Cleo, last replied with the following:

"Hi, Meg -- I asked my colleagues on Mac to retest the link again and found that it is indeed switching to HTML5. I since then republished the project files and disabled that HTML5 option. Upon testing the Question titles is flickering when you mouse over the Web Object.

I have submitted your case to our Quality Assurance team for their review. Unfortunately I was unable to determine a workaround. I cannot offer a time frame for when or if this issue will be resolved. I suggest that for the meantime, please enable the "Include HTML5 output" when publishing. We will contact you once a permanent solution is found."

Thanks for posting the update here, Christie.

Just to make sure that everyone is aware, simply enabling the "Include HTML5 output" option when publishing does absolutely nothing to actually provide any sort of fix for the issue. Since Storyline will default to displaying the Flash version if Flash is installed on a user's machine, it really makes no difference at all whether or not this option is selected unless you can somehow disable Flash on their machine. 

If you want to get fancy you can add some code into your published files to force the course to skip from the Flash version to the HTML5 version automatically. I would only do this if it's absolutely necessary (like in our case users are so widely distributed that we have no control over their environment) because each time you republish you'll have to add that code into the publish files so it will be a huge pain. 

I have noticed the same exact problem and am unable to resolve it without switching entirely to an HTML5 output.

Hi Matthew!

I popped in to check and this issue is still in the hands of our QA Team, so I have no update to provide at this time.

Hi Matthew, 

Yes, the issue seems to be related to Flash and since Storyline will always default to that if Flash is installed on the user's computer you really have no way to publish to html5 only. The response I received from support about this issue seemed to indicate that they didn't really have any intention of fixing it anytime soon (if ever). Let me know if you need to know how to edit your published files to skip the Flash course and go right to html5.

We've experienced the same issue.
It is related to the z-index of iframe's container.
It is -1 for some reason. Disabling of it fixes the issue.
Look at this screenshot http://prntscr.com/b0hxat

Hi Alex and welcome to E-Learning Heroes!

I will not pretend that I fully understand, but I did share with our team. Glad you were able to find a fix that works for you and thanks for popping in to share.