Scorm course not opening in new window

Scorm course not opening in new window

by cathy vdberg -
Number of replies: 9

Hi!

I have just installed Moodle 2.3.2+ (Build: 20120927), and added a few SCORM packages, but I cant get these packages to open in a new window.

I have set the 'Display package' option to "new window" when creating and uploading the course in Moodle.

I have also changed the settings here.... Site administration>Plugins>Activity modules>SCORM package... to new window, but my courses still dont open in a new window.

When I open the course in editing mode it opens in a new window but if I go back to Home and navigate to the course like a learner would, it opens in the same window and looses the Moodle navigation so I need to use my browsers back button to get back to Moodle.

Am I doing something wrong, or could this be a bug?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

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In reply to cathy vdberg

Re: Scorm course not opening in new window

by ben johnson -

I'm having this same exact issue.

I just upgrade our Moodle instance from 2.1 to 2.2 to 2.3.  We had some SCORM courses and activities authored (all set to open in a new window), and now none of them are opening in a new window - they are opening in the same window, replacing the Moodle course view page.

Does anyone have a solution for this?  I've got the most recent stable release I could find (2.3.3) which has a date of Nov 12.

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In reply to cathy vdberg

Re: Scorm course not opening in new window

by Andy Muir -

Im having this problem too with the latest 2.3.2. 

Also, if the user clicks the logout button, whilst on a SCORM course then logs back in they get an error

"A required parameter (sesskey) was missing"

click the continue button then another error

"A required parameter (scoid) was missing"

Any ideas would be very well recieved.

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In reply to cathy vdberg

Re: Scorm course not opening in new window

by Phil Everist -

Hi

What browser and version are you using?

I have had issues with IE7 and IE8 and the compatibility settings (Tools Compatibility View Settings / untick all the tickboxes at the bottom)

We also made some changes to js_view file as per issue tracked in MDL-34755  - this was fixed in 2.3.3 (I noted you have 2.3.2 still)

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=209330 has more details.

The other thing I find is that a new window doesn't work if the Content Structure screen (the one with Info & reports tabs and enter button) is displayed first - we set this to 'skip always' in the settings to bypass it. Note that it curently always displays anyway if viewing in teacher/admin mode etc (reasoning was to give teacher access to the tabs but I think this logic may be changing soon).  Switching to Student role shows it opening in a new window correctly.

Phil

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In reply to Phil Everist

Re: Scorm course not opening in new window

by ben johnson -

Phil - although I think you were replying to the other poster, we are experiencing the issue on all browsers.  I did look at MDL-34755, since we had an issue with SCORM tracking from Flash due to the IE8 compatibility view fix, but it looks like that is not the issue here.  I did play around with some of the content structure settings, but nothing seemed to help.

Upon further digging in the code, it looks like a new piece of code in /mod/scorm/locallib.php is part of the issue:

Line 836:

if (!empty($scorm->popup)) {
echo '<input type="hidden" name="display" value="popup" />'."\n";
}

That wasn't there in our version 2.1 code.  When I comment that out, the SCORM window launches correctly.  This is because line 238 in /mod/scorm/player.php checks the display value as follows: 

if ($scorm->popup != 0 && $displaymode !=='popup') { 
// go launch a popup window

 

Can anyone provide insight as to why this was changed and if this is a bug?

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In reply to ben johnson

Re: Scorm course not opening in new window

by ben johnson -

One last note - this is for a SCORM-format course, not for a SCORM activity in another course format.  It looks like those are working as expected.  

Also, if I view the SCORM activity with /mod/scorm/view.php?id=XXX instead of via /course/view.php?id=YY, it works as expected.  

So, it appears this may be an issue where the code for the course format doesn't jive with the code from the activity view.

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In reply to ben johnson

Re: Scorm course not opening in new window

by Dan Marsden -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Plugins guardians Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

yeah it's a bug/regression: MDL-36421

it's caused by some improvements we made to the normal view to get around pop-up blockers - the pop-up is now generated on user action instead of via JS - but we didn't test the scorm course format sorry. I've been quite busy over the past month so haven't had a chance to look at it yet - if someone else wants to fix it properly (I think the way we display the stuff in the course format needs a bit of a restrucuture) I'd be happy to review a patch - but it's unlikely I'll have volunteer time to work on this before Christmas.

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In reply to ben johnson

Re: Scorm course not opening in new window

by G. Mack -

Hey thanks for this, it was super helpful! The same issue applied to us with Moodle 2.4.

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In reply to G. Mack

Re: Scorm course not opening in new window

by ben johnson -

See the bug report for an update on a potential patch.

https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-36421

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In reply to ben johnson

Re: Scorm course not opening in new window

by Peter Devaney -

Re version: 2.3.3+ (Build: 20121208)

I am trying without success to get a SCORM object to launch in a new window such that the student does not see the content structure page. When creating the activity I set:

Display package  to New Window
 Student skip content structure page to Always.

When  a student attempts to access the activity no new window appears and the screen is as below.

If I have Student skip content set to Never then the student sees the content structure page and can launch the module with the enter button without any problem.

I can get it to work in Chrome if I switch the pop-up blocker off though this seems to make no difference in IE9. It seems to be related to the pop-up blocker though I'm not sure why it should behave so differently when launched from the course screen vs launched from the content structure screen.

I've posted this query here because it seems to have similarities to the first comment in this discussion though the difference in my case is that the activity doesn't open at all whereas in Cathys' post above it opens in the current window. I also have got the error messages in Andy's posting above.

I have tried applying the patch listed above.  Using the patch command it applied the first change but failed the second. I tried therefore applying the changes manually to ../mod/scorm/locallib.php. This made no difference. I also tried removing the two line of code referred to in Ben's posting above though noticed that in my version of locallib.php they were at line 830 rather than 836. Likewise no joy. I should say that I am at the limits of my technical expertise here.

 

 

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