Problems with Jintro in Quizport

Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Deborah Delin -
Number of replies: 14

Hi Gordon

I have a jintro quiz which is displaying original navigation aids although Moodle Navigation Bar is set and the actual quiz does not display but just shows a continue button.  I have uploaded this to your server and it is behaving in the same way:
http://bateson.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/19/mysql/mod/quizport/view.php?tab=preview&unumber=-1&quizid=959&qnumber=-1&columnlistid=display&columnlisttype=quiz&sesskey=P8LiNjPWVt

I uploaded some other jintros to your server for comparison but I am unable to enter them atall, even though they function properly on my server.thoughtful

But very strangely, the exact same quiz behaves perfectly on my .com site:

http://www.strivney.com/mod/quizport/view.php?tab=preview&unumber=-1&quizid=6914&qnumber=-1&columnlistid=conditions&columnlisttype=quiz&sesskey=pzZDtcwSQq

The .com site does not have the latest Quizport version - it is a couple of weeks old.

The jintro quizzes are also not advancing in Internet Explorer, even though you fixed that bug and I tested that it was working.  But I have to admit that my latest update of Quizport may not have worked fully.  I seemed to have some permission issues and am waiting for my host to come back to me. 

To cap it all I have had the "quizzes dislayed off the page" problem occurring intermittently in Internet Explorer (OS Windows XP).  I have lost the screenshot I took so I will keep testing on that one and advise further.

Hoping you can cut through this muddy picture in your usual magical way!

Thank you.

Deborah

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In reply to Deborah Delin

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Deborah,
the problems are caused by the fact the htm files in this QuizPort have unexpected characters that are a result of them having an unexpected encoding, namely UTF-16LE. The unexpected characters mean that QuizPort doesn't realize these are JIntro files, and just treats them as ordinary html files. In some cases, QuizPort cannot read the files at all.

I have adjusted QuizPort so that it can recognize and fix some unexpected encodings, including those that are used on your htm files. Please download and install the latest version of the QuizPort module.
After installing, I suggest you also clear your QuizPort cache:
  • Site administration -> Activity modules -> QuizPort
That will be enough to prevent the problem occurring with unusual encodings in the future.

However, there is a problem that some of the JIntro quizzes have been incorrectly labeled as ordinary html quizzes. You can find out which, if you go to the "Edit quizzes" page of a QuizPort activity, and switch the "Show columns" setting to "General". The "Source file type" shows what kind of file QuizPort thinks each quiz uses.

The JIntro html files should be labelled as "hp_6_jmatch_html_intro". If they are labelled as "html_xhtml", you should do the following to force QuizPort to re-run its file detection scripts:
  • go to the "Updating: Quiz" page for that quiz
  • change the "Source file" to something else, e.g. the jmt file for this quiz
  • save changes
  • go back to the "Updating: Quiz" page for the quiz
  • change the "Source file" back to the JIntro htm file
  • save changes
  • confirm that the source file type is now "hp_6_jmatch_html_intro"
Also, I suggest you change the encoding on the html files in this QuizPort and possibly the templates you used to create JIntro files. Currently they are encoded as UTF-16 (Little Endian) and the have a BOM (byte order mark). Please change that to either ACSII or UTF-8 (with no BOM).
FYI, Hot Potatoes files are expected to be plain ASCII files (i.e. they contain only standard English letters and number), where any non-English characters are converted to HTML entities.

If you think you may have a lot of UTF-16 (LE) files, I have a utility to detect and convert them, so please contact me privately about that.

regards
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Deborah Delin -

Hi Gordon,

Thanks so much for your explanation and for updating Quizport to fix the problem. 

I updated my Quizport version and see that the j_intro which has the erroneous html_xhtml source file type label is now not displaying at all (blank white page).  However, I am unable to re-label it as you suggest as when I select the little hand "update" icon from the Edit Quizzes page I arrive at a blank white page:

http://www.strivney.co.il/mod/quizport/editquiz.php?id=5586&tab=edit&columnlistid=general&columnlisttype=quiz&action=update&sesskey=smENscc9VZ

In fact I am now unable to update any of the quizzes - the update icon takes me to the same white page for all of them. (I just did my first manual Quizport update - I hope I haven't messed something up there).

I am puzzled as to why I have started producing these strangley encoded html files with BOM's in them!  I haven't changed the source file.thoughtful   I looked at the explanations you sent me of these problems but they are over my head.  Any tips as to how not to have this happen in the future would be gratefully received.

Do you think this encoding problem was likely to have been what was causing the "shift over to the right" problem I mentioned?

I also notice that I am unable to delete the abandoned quizzes - I select delete but nothing happens. (http://www.strivney.co.il/mod/quizport/view.php).

Sorry, to present you with more problems. 

Deborah

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In reply to Deborah Delin

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Gordon Bateson -
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Deborah,
it seems your previous upgrade of QuizPort was not successful. When I tried to delete a QuizPort I got the following error message:
  • Unknown column 'gradeignore' in 'field list'

    SELECT id,parenttype,parentid,timelimit,allowresume,attemptlimit,attemptgrademethod,grademethod,gradeignore,gradelimit,gradeweighting FROM mdl_quizport_units WHERE id IN (75) AND parenttype=0 ORDER BY id
The gradeignore field should have been added when you upgraded to version 2008033177 of QuizPort. You are currently using version 2008033178 of QuizPort, so we need to go back and redo the earlier QuizPort upgrade.

I won't speculate on what might be causing the other strangeness that you have reported, until we are sure your QuizPort module is healthy.

Gordon
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In reply to Deborah Delin

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Deborah Delin -

Hi again Gordon,

It seems I actually only had the one rogue wrongly labelled html_xhtml file in that Quizport.  When I deleted it and replaced it with a properly labelled file it displays properly and I am also able to update the other quizzes.  So it seems that quiz was "upsetting" the rest of the Quizport!  One problem solved!big grin

The problem of being unable to delete the abandoned attempts remains.

Thank you.

Deborah 

p.s. I just saw your post about my Quizport upgrade.  I am having some permissions problems which I am waiting for my host to resolve.  I will revert when they are sorted.  thank you.

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In reply to Deborah Delin

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Deborah,
thank you for giving me access to your site so that I could check the QuizPort tables and force the earlier QuizPort upgrade to be rerun so that the QuizPort tables could be set as they should be.

Everything is as I think it should be now, so we are ready to tackle the next issue which I believe is some quizzes being shifted to the right in IE.

Please could you send me a link to a quiz that doesn't display nicely in IE, and if you could tell me which version of IE you are using that would help a lot.

best regards
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Gerald Grow -
What is Jintro? There are so many things with that name that when I Google it, I can't find this one.
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In reply to Gerald Grow

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Deborah Delin -
Hi Gerald

Jintro is an adaptation by Michael Rottmeier of the Jmatch Hot Potatoe. Michael kindly shares his adaptations. See his website:

http://www.teaching-tools.de.vu/

In Jintro the first page of the quiz is more of a presentation, where the matching right hand item appears as a "gloss" when you move the mouse over the left hand item. Then the student moves to the second page of the quiz where he has to pair up the two items in a normal Jmatch quiz. It is a nice way of presenting new information and then testing it.

There are other goodies on Michael's site, like Jmemori, a pairs game, and Findit, an adaptation of JCloze whereby you can have different options for each cloze. I have found them to be a really useful way of varying the type of exercise.

Deborah
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In reply to Deborah Delin

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Gerald Grow -
Thanks, Deborah. I spent some time with Michael's creative and helpful adaptations in the past, especially Findit, but students had trouble getting them to work consistently across PC and Mac and with different browsers.

Have you been having good results with Jintro on different browsers and platforms?

Also, I must be missing something because I can't find Jintro on Michael's site, and a Google search of +Jintro +Jmatch turns up no hits. What's the status of this software?
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In reply to Gerald Grow

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Gerald,
I think the following is the link to Michael Rottmeier's JIntro:
It was actually designed for HP5, but I think it works well enough with HP6.

I don't think it works with the HotPot module, but QuizPort can handle hte JIntro HTML files.

HTH
Gordon

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Glenys Hanson -
Hi everybody,

I've used Michael Rottmeier's add-ons a lot but never JIntro. But if Deborah's using it, it must be useful, wink so I went to his site to try and download it but the link's not working - not on the page in German either.

I've emailed Michael and will you all know here when he replies.

Cheers,
Glenys
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In reply to Gerald Grow

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Deborah Delin -
Hi Gerald

Michael refers to Jintro on his website as "Jmatch with Introduction Page".

Oh dear that is worrying that you have had problems with Michael's adaptations! My programme is not yet "live" and has mainly been tested on PC's using Internet Explorer. There haven't been any problems with it, including with Findit. Yikes! I wonder why you had problems? I wonder if Gordon has any comment as to whether the experience might be better within Quizport (she says hopefully)?

Deborah

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In reply to Deborah Delin

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hello Deborah,
I am not aware of any outstanding issues with FindIt or JIntro in QuizPort. Neither do I know of any problems with FindIt in the HotPot module.

Of course I am happy to be shown otherwise, so if anyone is having problems please report them here, and will to my best to investigate.

regards
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Problems with Jintro in Quizport

by Glenys Hanson -
Hi Deborah, Gordon and everyone,

I've made lots (a couple of hundred) of Find-It exercises in Hot Potatoes and in QuizPort. As far as I know, there have never been any problems with Hot Potatoes and there are no problems with the current version of QuizPort. I test regularly on Windows XP: IE 8, Firefox and Opera and on Mac OS X: Safari, Firefox and Opera. I must say I don't test each and every version of QuizPort but there seems no need. JGloss works fine too in all of these.

Cheers,
Glenys
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