Issue with Hyperlinks in Storyline & Rise in Microsoft Edge

Hello All -

I just wanted to share a workaround that I've found for this issue. It's ugly...like, really ugly, but the end result works to get the hyperlinks opening in a new browser, if you find it worth the effort. I'm planning to use it in Rise courses that don't have too many hyperlinks. In the courses that have many hyperlinks, the instructions will emphasize at the beginning that the link opens in a browser tab that will make them feel like they exited the course upon closing, but that the course is still open and they need to press Alt+Tab to find it.

The basic idea of the workaround is to create a Storyline course (one slide) that has buttons that open hyperlinks in a new window (done using WBOs on a layer that opens in new window full screen when clicking the button), and then embed the Storyline course (slide) into your Rise course at the point you want the learner to access the hyperlink(s). Here's the general steps of how to create:

1. Create a slide in Storyline that has one or more buttons to launch the hyperlink(s) you want learners to access. (I made the dimensions of my slide 720x125, so it fits into the flow of the Rise course without taking up extra room.)

2. On your Storyline slide, have the button trigger to show a layer that has the hyperlink as a Web Based Object (WBO) set to display in new browser window, window size>Full screen, and check to load the web object automatically.

3. Adjust the player to remove all of the extras. I edited the player colors to make the border blend in. I use the Classic player, but I don't know that that matters. Also be sure to remove the Next/Prev button from the slide. You want the end result to be that it only shows the button(s) and any intro text you may choose to add right above it.

4. Publish the 1-slide course to Review 360. Test it to ensure it works as intended.

5. In your Rise course where you want the hyperlinks, go to All Blocks>Interactive>Storyline and select the Review360 course that you just published. This will place the buttons in the flow of your Rise course. When clicked, the hyperlinks should open in a new browser window full screen. When the browser is closed, it will return to the Rise course.

6. If you make any edits to the Storyline course, you will need to republish to Review360. Unfortunately, this does not automatically update the embedded Storyline slide in the Rise course. You will need to edit that to direct to the newly published version.

Again, this is very inefficient and ugly, but I was happy to at least find a way to do it. I'm still playing around, so I will update with any efficiencies I find.