Engage does not open in Firefox (15.0)

Sep 03, 2012

I'n having a problem since a few days my engage content does not play/open in firefox. All other browsers work fine, also did firefox till last week. The Presenter content works fine.

I think it is because firefox is updated, because it all worked fine before, and it is on all pc's that I tried.

Does anyone know a solution?

35 Replies
Bruce Graham

Hi Astrid, and welcome to Heroes.

Sorry things are not going so well.....

Not sure what is going on here, as I am also running FF15.0 after the upgrade, and everything is running smoothly.

Sounds as though something else local is going on, but do not think there is a FF issue here.

Hope someone else can help you out here.

Bruce

Astrid Smits

Hmm, it's really weird, because on a pc with the previous firefox version it all works. And when I open the content after publishing also in FF15.0.

But when it is uploaded only the startwindow (turning wheel) appears. This problem only exists with engage slides 'labeled graphic' and 'FAQ'. An engage interaction 'process' does work fine.

For example, an e-learning course in our lms worked fine for a few months now, and after the firefox there is a problem. And that's the only thing that changed. It is really a problem because our client cannot open the e-learning when using firefox 15.0

Can someone help me?

Philip Moon

I am having a similar problem too. I have found out that it is definitely related to the most recent update of Flash Player. Earlier versions of Flash work fine in Firefox. I only experience this problem for Engage content embedded in a TAB of an Articulate Presenter package - and only when the content is run from a SCORM LMS.  Who do we report this problem too? Adobe, Articulate or the LMS provider?

P H

Our IT guys have figured this one out.  They asked me to pass this on:

"The issue with Flash and Engage and the spinning ball of death is twofold.  One, the latest version of Flash must have plugged some sort of security hole and is definitely causing the issue.  However, if you are running the latest version of IIS on Server2008, insure that you also patch with the latest security updates from Microsoft (there were quite a few from the first Tuesday of the month, also known as Patch Tuesday).  This seemed to fix and bypass the bug in Flash.  If you are still having issues after the Server patch and reboot, then your local client’s browser’s cache may need to be deleted.  Once all of this is done, the spinning ball is fixed."

Mario Pareja

I have opened a case with Articulate support regarding this issue. 

Engage content being run with any version of Firefox (I tested 3.5 and 15) that has the latest Flash plugin (11.4.402.265) may not load correctly. In some cases, parts of the content will work correctly, but other parts will not. Below are the details for anyone concerned:

Engage content that requires data stored in XML files (the Glossary for example) will not work correctly with the latest Flash plugin for Firefox if the web server is configured to delivery compressed content. It is not clear whether or not Articulate will be able to work around this issue or if Adobe will need to patch the Firefox Flash plugin.

Notes:

+ When testing, be sure to clear both your Firefox browser cache and the Flash cache (Right Click on flash presentation > Global Settings > Delete All).

+ Delivering compressed content is generally recognized as a good idea for static content, so disabling it altogether isn't a great option.

+ This issue is independent of OS and Web Server. I've verified the same problem on Windows 2008/IIS, Linux/Rails/WEBrick and using an HTTP compression Proxy.

steve mcmillen

I have run into this issue as well, specifically on a Mac (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all affected) with the current version of Flash installed.  I have tested on Windows 7 IE9 with the same version of Flash and it worked fine there.  I have definitely seen it happen when the content is hosted on an IIS server (specifically IIS6 in my case), however I just tested the same content on an Apache2 web server and I did not have the same issue.

The weird thing is that it doesn't truly seem to be a flash error.  I have the debug version of Flash player installed and if there was a sandbox security violation then there would have been a pop up from the debug version of Flash indicating the error.  I saw nothing like that here,  also I was watching http requests and didn't see any 404 errors for files, nor was Articulate generating any Flash trace comments that would indicate some sort of internal error.

Sucky thing is I very much doubt that the company that hosts the LMS for my client experiencing the issue is going to run Microsoft updates just because we said to.  Enterprise level companies are very careful about what updates they install and when they do it.

Oh one other quick thing regarding the previous post.  I believe all Engage interactions read from their data.xml file.  I have four in the lesson I tested and only the fourth one consistently causes an issue.  It is a tab based interaction with images.  Interaction 3 works and is also tab based though it doesn't load images.

Mario Pareja

Articulate support responded with a link to the following knowledge base article:

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=2322

I have requested more technical information from Articulate. Serving compressed content is quite standard. We haven't seen any problems with previous versions of Flash, and this seems to only be a problem with the Firefox Flash plugin.  Expecting hosting providers to turn off HTTP compression because of a bug in either Flash or Engage doesn't seem like a long term solution.

Christine Wolff

Very helpful posts. I am rather new to the whole elearning, SCORM, LMS arena. I am having the same problem with Firefox and initally with Chrome as well but Chrome seems to have fixed itself because the presentation works there. I am not sure what it is I need to do to make this work in Firefox. It all runs fine in Explorer.


My presentation was done in presentor 09 with an engage interaction (tab) as about the fourth slide. The presentation stalls as it is opening this interaction. I have read the above post but I am not sure what I need to do to fix this.

Peter Anderson

Welcome to Heroes, Christine

Would you like us to take a look at your project files so we can try to help troubleshoot? If so, please create an Articulate Presenter package, then upload the zip file to our server. You can review how to do this here: 

 

Send to Articulate Presenter Package – Articulate Presenter ’09 Help

 

Upload the resulting zip file from your computer to our server using this upload form: 

 

Articulate Support - Upload Your Files for Review 

 

Thanks!

steve mcmillen

FYI this just isn't for Firefox.  I'm using Chrome version 22 on Mac 10.8 and the same thing happens when content viewed from an IIS server.

I spun up IIS 7 on a virtual machine and the problem happens when viewed in Chrome on Mac with the current version of Flash as well.  Weird thing is why are some engage files affected and others aren't.  I have four engage files and the first three are fine. 

Mario Pareja

steve mcmillen said:

FYI this just isn't for Firefox.  I'm using Chrome version 22 on Mac 10.8 and the same thing happens when content viewed from an IIS server. 


I haven't verified whether or not compression has the same impact on Chrome for Mac, but I see that Chrome for Mac (and not Chrome for Linux/Windows) was recently updated to Flash 11.4.402.265.

steve mcmillen

I fired up a virtual machine with IIS 7 on it and duplicated the issue in Chrome v22 on a Mac.  I was able to deactivate 'dynamic file' compression and it resolved the issue.

It is a shame but this isn't a solution that will be able to be used all the time.  Larger hosting companies might not always be willing to make server tweaks like this just for the sake of a bug(?).  One nice thing is that in IIS Manager it is possible to just apply this setting change to the folder that contains the Articulate content so it isn't necessary to make a global change, as this adjustment can have an impact on load time for dynamic files hosted on the server.

Is there any understanding on the true root of the issue?  So when Engage pulls its xml file it can't read it?  Why does it happen to some Engage files and not others?  I think someone mentioned a Flash security adjustment in the new version but that doesn't seem to make sense as it would be more of a consistent issue loading xml then.  Any thoughts?

Mario Pareja

I submitted a case with Articulate asking them to take a more "in-depth" look into this issue so that either they can resolve the problem in Engage, or if they determine the proble is in the Flash plugin, they can open an evidence-backed case with Adobe's support team. I was told that the issue was further escalated to Articulate's Quality Assurance team, but I have not received any updates since then.

Not that this issue is IIS specific, but here are a couple notes about IIS in case you are interested:

+ As you noticed, you can disable compression as a whole at different levels (server, site...). This doesn't work well for us because we server a wide variety of user submitted content.

+ Another approach is to disable compression for the text/xml MIME type. Unfortunately, this can only be done at the server level due to IIS limitations.

Peter Anderson

Hi everyone, 

Just wanted to quickly update the thread and let you know that our Quality Assurance team has this under review. It appears to be a problem with Flash Player 11.4 for Firefox. In the meantime, please consider using one of these workarounds: 


* Turn off server-side compression (at least for XML files). 
* Downgrade Flash Player for Firefox. 
* Use a different browser. 

I'll continue to update as we learn more. Thanks for your patience. 

hans erlandsson

Peter Anderson said:

Hi everyone, 

Just wanted to quickly update the thread and let you know that our Quality Assurance team has this under review. It appears to be a problem with Flash Player 11.4 for Firefox. In the meantime, please consider using one of these workarounds: 


* Turn off server-side compression (at least for XML files). 
* Downgrade Flash Player for Firefox. 
* Use a different browser. 

I'll continue to update as we learn more. Thanks for your patience. 


Let me just comment on the suggested alternatives adding some facts from "reality":

- Turn off server-side... well... our webhotel provider won´t agree to do this since we dont have our own VPS or better. Of course we could upgrade to a VPS given that we agree to tenfold our annual fee for hosting but... come on... this was caused by the roll out of F 11.4 which started mid august. The F 11.5 Beta won´t help and F 11.4 doesnt work in Chrome either (unless you disable pepper flash, downgrade and forces Chrome to use F 11.3)

- Downgrade Flash Player... no problem for us.. but how about our 600 users? Should we also encourage them to disable "automatic upgrade" / "dont remind me of upgrades...." No... not that serious...

- Use different browser... well.. Our Scormobjects renders a little bit stocastic in IE... so which browser do you suggest? 

How about a fourth alternative: you guys at Articulate and/or Adobe solve this utterly urgent issue. Kind of immediately? We have built numerous interactions in Engage, everything worked fine for our customers until mid-august but now the situation is a complete disaster.... 

Peter Anderson

Welcome to Heroes, Hans, and thanks for the feedback. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience that I know this is causing. As mentioned, our team has been hard at work on trying to get a permanent resolution in place, however, other than the workarounds listed above, there is nothing to update at this time. I'll update the thread as soon as I have one. 

steve mcmillen

Can I hear an Amen!

I totally agree with Ivan.  So what happens if this isn't a bug in Flash?  Meaning that we can't expect Engage to just 'magically' start working with the next version of Adobe Flash.  Does that mean that essentially Engage is a dead product because its output can't be counted on working in all cases?

Has the root cause for this issue, that my clients have been starting to call the 'death spiral' for the endless pre-loader on some Engage files, been identified yet?  Why does it only affect some Engage files? Its been about a month since we've heard any new info, hows the investigation going Articulate?

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