Losing work in HTML Editor

Losing work in HTML Editor

by Stephanie Belt -
Number of replies: 9

Good Morning Everyone!

I am looking for some help and maybe an explanation.

The content developers on my team are experiencing some errors with the HTML editor within Moodle.  Since they are developing or editing in-depth material within our courses sometimes they have the HTML editor open for long periods of time.  They have begun noticing that sometimes an error message will display on the screen and the page will refresh - erasing the changes that they have made.  This is of course extremely frustrating.  The error that appears is gone quickly enough that none of the developers has been able to get a screen shot of it yet and I have not been able to recreate the issue yet, so I am a little puzzled by the problem.  I do not know if this a truely a Moodle problem or possibly an IE problem.  We are currently using IE8.  We recently (right before this issue started occuring) upgraded our Moodle to version 1.9.7+ (build 20100106). 

Has anyone else experienced anything like this or have any ideas of what this could be?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!!

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In reply to Stephanie Belt

Re: Losing work in HTML Editor

by Ann Adamcik -
If they're not loading pages for long periods, things may be timing out. You could try increasing the session timeout value in Site Administration -> Server -> Session Handling. The other option would be to use an external text editor to develop content, and then copy/paste it into Moodle when ready. Watch out for copy/paste from MS Word issues, though. mixed
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In reply to Ann Adamcik

Re: Losing work in HTML Editor

by Stephanie Belt -
Thank you very much.  I am not sure if this is the problem of not.  Our session timeout value is already set to 4 hours, which is the highest option we have.  They are also not being returned to the login page, they are returned to the page they were viewing - with the HTML editor - but whatever changes were made before the page refreshed are gone, which sometimes results in a total loss of their work.
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In reply to Stephanie Belt

Re: Losing work in HTML Editor

by Stephanie Belt -

One of the material developers got a screen print of the message that is displayed with this problem occurs which is attached.

Again, any ideas on what is happening and what is causing it I would appreciate!

Attachment moodle_error.JPG
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In reply to Stephanie Belt

Re: Losing work in HTML Editor

by Chris Kenniburg -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
We are also experiencing this problem. This is not just a session time out. I am thinking it is related to the javascript, but do not have the skills to track it down. It seems to happen after about 40 minutes of having the editor open.

For us, this issue presents itself when students are using the Journal activity since it may be open for most of the hour.

Did you find a solution????
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In reply to Stephanie Belt

Re: Losing work in HTML Editor

by Ravishankar Somasundaram -
Dear Stephanie,

When i face any problem, i would approach it like this.

1. An immediate solution (Stop cab measure) to stop any further loss.
2. A detailed research on cause of the issue and then fixing the source asap.


So if you are ok with the above model i shall suggest you to use firefox for development, and use lazarus => an firefox addon which can prove efficient in saving developers time entering data into fields.

And now to the second part, Internet explorer has one of the slowest javascript processing engine, but this issue is news to me.

Have dealt with moodle sites having cross browser compatability starting from ie 6 to 8 and firefox 2 to 3 and safari till date (though i doubt whether its 1.9.7 ver of moodle), but never came acros such issue.

Will have a look at this issue once am back at my development desk.


~ ~ ~ Peace - Ravishankar Somasundaram ~ ~ ~
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In reply to Stephanie Belt

Re: Losing work in HTML Editor

by Valérie BOULAND -

Bonjour,

I could solve this pb on Block adminitration => User => enable HTLM editor.

As a french teacher I really don't know what happened and why my user profile changed making impossible to use the HTLM editor.

Best regards

PS: Sorry for the english

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In reply to Valérie BOULAND

Re: Losing work in HTML Editor

by Chris Kenniburg -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
This issue I don't think is related to the editor not showing up. This is when the editor is open for a long period of time and all of a sudden any work you had disappears and the browser refreshes itself. I think it relates to some java not working properly. It seems as if the browser window crashes and then refreshes causing you to lose your work. I have heard of it happening with IE8 as well as Safari and Firefox. Teachers were reporting it happens randomly and they thought it was something the student was doing. I watched a class using it and can confirm they were using it properly.

Can anyone shed some light on this issue?
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In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: Losing work in HTML Editor

by Chris Kenniburg -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
I found this line in moodle/lib/editor/htmleditor/htmlarea.php

$lifetime = 1800;

which equals 30 minutes and is about when the students would experience this problem of the browser crashing. I had guessed the time was about 40 minutes when browsers would crash. I doubled this to 3600 for an hour.

I am hoping in testing today that this might fix the problem.

Anyone see a problem with trying this?
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In reply to Chris Kenniburg

Re: Losing work in HTML Editor

by Chris Kenniburg -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
In the testing we did today it would appear that at about the 30 minute mark some browsers started crashing.

Why would there be a setting or time limit set in the html editor of $lifetime = 1800;????

We never had an issue until students started spending more than 15-20 minutes entering info into the html area such as in journals or Online Text Assignments.

Is there any other places where there would be a $lifetime = 1800;limit placed on the htmlarea editor?
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