H5P is unreliable and disappointing

H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Walter Byrd -
Number of replies: 28

Moodle 3.4

Just something people should know before developing a lesson with H5P.

H5P may work find with one browser, on one OS, at one time, but not work at all on another browser, on another OS, at another time. At least, that has been my experience, and the experience of others - from what I have been reading.

I put together an H5P dialog card lesson on bird identification. You can - maybe - see it here. 

https://nuclix.net/

Just go down to the bottom, and click on the "Bird Identification" link.

With Linux, and Firefox, some images are occassionally missing. They are arbitrarily deleted and have to be reloaded.

With MacOS, and Chrome, none of the images show up at all, unless you are logged in. This is not the way I have it setup, and not the way it works on other systems.

With MacOS, and Safari, the images also do not show up, I get this error, from Moodle:

-------------------

error/moodle/filenotfound

In the case of a change of server, check if you have copied the content of moodledata, especially uploaded files.

Also make sure the file name contains no special characters like '#'

You may also get this error if you have moved files after linking to them from the course page.

--------------------

H5P puts a hyphen in the image names, no other special characters.

When I looked at H5P demos, I was impressed. After trying to use it, I am disappointed. I cannot rely on H5P to actually work.

Also, I don't think you can use repositories to load images into H5P lessons, you have to upload from your system.

I am not looking for technical assistance, I am just letting people know.


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In reply to Walter Byrd

Svar: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Frode Petterson -

Hi Walter,

Thank you for sharing your experience with the H5P plugin. 
I must tell you I've done some contributions and work on the H5P plugin, and this is not how it's intended to work/not work. I would very much like to help you resolve your issue, and if possible help others that may be struggling with the same problems.

To me, it sounds like the Guest role doesn't have access to the files associated with the content, and unfortunately, the plugin has not been setting this capability for the Guest role by default even though it should have. This should be fixed with the next release of the plugin.
In the mean time, could you check that the Guest role on your site has been allowed the 'mod/hvp:getcontent' permission? 
Hopefully, allowing this should fix all the cross-browser problems that you're seeing.

Regarding the reuse of images instead of having to upload them, this is a highly requested feature and I'm quite confident we'll be seeing a better solution here not to far into the future.

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In reply to Frode Petterson

Re: Svar: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Matteo Scaramuccia -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Frode,
thanks for your reply: worth noting that https://github.com/h5p/h5p-moodle-plugin/issues/148 doesn't talk about this use case and there is no open issue about guest users but https://github.com/h5p/h5p-moodle-plugin/issues/106.

It also looks like mod/hvp:getcachedassets is required too: https://github.com/h5p/h5p-moodle-plugin/issues/145#issuecomment-294752225 , while https://github.com/h5p/h5p-moodle-plugin/issues/129#issuecomment-271236137 says it should be the only permission required.

Lurking at the code, https://github.com/h5p/h5p-moodle-plugin/blob/e120ebe7096dc55d8be17251e662200fb7d94426/lib.php#L274, mod/hvp:view is more appropriate than mod/hvp:getcontent when I looked at what Walter have described in https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=361646.

TIA,
Matteo

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In reply to Matteo Scaramuccia

Re: Svar: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Thomas Marstrander -

Thank you for the feedback.

We've just changed the permissions ( 6 days ago) required to see view from `mod/hvp:getcontent` to `mod/hvp:view`, like you've noticed. This is not released yet and has been added to be more consistent with other plugins like quiz and as a response to the feedback we've gotten on the permissions.

Default permissions for all roles has also been reworked for this reason: https://github.com/h5p/h5p-moodle-plugin/blob/master/db/access.php.

While waiting for the release Walter's image issue should be resolved by giving the `mod/hvp:getcontent`and `mod/hvp:getcachedassets` to guests for the site, since they don't seem to be able to retrieve assets for the content.

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In reply to Thomas Marstrander

Re: Svar: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Walter Byrd -

> Walter's image issue should be resolved by giving the `mod/hvp:getcontent`and `mod/hvp:getcachedassets` to guests for the site, since they don't seem to be able to retrieve assets for the content.

I am not finding either of those.  I have gone to site administration > plugins > H5P settings, and site administration > plugins > H5P library.

Do I need to download these from github? If so, is there any trick to installing them?

I have no immediate need for H5P. I may just wait awhile and see if this issues get fixed.

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In reply to Walter Byrd

Re: Svar: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by John Provasnik -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

No, it is a user permission, so you need to go Site Admin - Users - Permissions - Define Roles - and then select the guest role. There is a Search box where you can type in the permission and it will show if it is enabled or not for the guest role.

Even if you have no immediate need for the H5P plug in, these steps are very useful to follow (as a Moodle administrator) to troubleshoot other issues that may arise down the road with various other plugin or site role configurations. 

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In reply to John Provasnik

Re: Svar: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Walter Byrd -

I checked the guest permission.

I regards to H5P, I found this:

> Activity: H5P
> Get cached H5P content assets    Allow
> mod/hvp:getcachedassets   

I seems the guests do have permissions, but it does not work.

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In reply to Walter Byrd

Svar: Re: Svar: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Frode Petterson -

Hi Walter, it looks like you checked the wrong permission. See my previous reply:

> could you check that the Guest role on your site has been allowed the 'mod/hvp:getcontent' permission? 

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In reply to Frode Petterson

Re: Svar: Re: Svar: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Walter Byrd -


What I posted was the only thing I could find regarding H5P in the guest permissions.

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In reply to Walter Byrd

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Justin Hunt -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
I think you are being too harsh on H5P, Walter. H5P has been great in the cases that I have used it. 


It is a little different in the way it works to other Moodle plugins which are more tightly integrated with Moodle, but its a tool designed to work in and out of Moodle. And perhaps your use case, allowing people to access activities when they are not logged in, is not very common. For mainstream use, H5P is pretty darn good I think.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Justin Hunt

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

I have been tracking the use of H5P since it first became available as a Moodle plugin and have generally seen very positive feedback.  Some of the most positive feedback on anything available for Moodle since about 2001.

My only concern is that people understand that because it is mainly a JavaScript/Client technology one should not depend on it for high stakes assessments because it may be possible to spoof results.  But apart from that put it in the basket marked awesome.

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In reply to Justin Hunt

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Walter Byrd -

> I think you are being too harsh on H5P, Walter.

You may be right. I am not sure if H5P is officially approved for Moodle 3.4.

For now, I feel like I cannot trust H5P.

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In reply to Walter Byrd

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by John Provasnik -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

If you still "like" using H5P activities (but don't need the results to go to your gradebooks), one thing you could consider is building the activities directly on the H5P.org site and them embed the activity into your Moodle. This is how we currently use H5P (we also do not use the plug in until all the kinks are worked out). We have over 1,000 H5P activities embedded into our Moodle. Our students love them! -- they are very interactive, engaging, and provide immediate feedback. Even though Moodle Quizzes and do a lot of this, our students know the H5Ps aren't graded so they are less hesitant to use them : )

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In reply to John Provasnik

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Joost Elshoff -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

That is an interesting solution, but it does have a few drawbacks:

- user activity is not logged (so it doesn't end up in your gradebook, course statistics or activity completion logs)

- any content you make on H5P,org can be accessed by anyone with the url, so it's more public than when you'd use the Moodle plugin. This means you'd have to be very careful about copyrighted materials and also have to take care of using the correct GPL / CC or other licenses for the activities you've created there.

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In reply to Walter Byrd

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Daniell Goodin -

Walter, 

have a look at the very well put together site of prepare2getahead.co.uk. 

You can see some fantastic examples of H5P working and having full guest access. 

While this is not Moodle but I think Wordpress it might give you some idea's of the scope of H5P other activities that might be more suited to what you are trying to achieve. 

I am steering you towards the hotspot activity, but as you work through this site you can see some other great examples. 

http://www.prepare2getahead.co.uk/h5p_understandingSelf.html


Also a good time to thank these guys for giving us more inspiration on what H5p is capable of. 

 A few more I have picked up on my travels.. and I see you have used google slides as an example, with in this next link have a look at the "slides" section as this is part of the Reveal and markdown slide content that has great potential as well. 

http://ryerbanta.com/blog/

https://slides.com

More working examples.. 

https://www.pluscenterh5ptool.com/Examples

https://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/altc/examples/


Also I don't know if you have gone down the path of setting up  the truly local embedded H5P content via nadavkav's plugin but for myself it is a god send as it just makes things work. I just sat with a client on a MAC over the weekend and went through a few of the activities within our site and compared it to Chrome which I develop in and didn't have any problems.. Understanding that they don't work off the Moodle Mobile app. but this is a minor problem for us at the moment. 

https://github.com/nadavkav/moodle-atto_hvp

https://github.com/h5p/h5p-moodle-plugin/issues/30#issuecomment-207549678

A key bit of the puzzle to get it working.. 

https://github.com/nadavkav/moodle-davidson/blob/moodle_31_davidson/mod/hvp/view.php#L51-L53


All Credits to nadavkav and the H5P team ... 

So, once this is set up you can hide these activities and then introduce it in to where you want within a lesson, page, or where ever. 

And you have the team here giving you some good advice on how to get it working, thus how could not trust a team that is open source and willing to engage with Moodle problems directly.. smile

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In reply to Daniell Goodin

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Walter Byrd -


Thank you for all of those resources.

Please understand that my disappointment with H5P is not with it's capabilities, but with it's reliability. I need to able to create an H5P project, and be fairly confident that it will actually work on whatever platform.


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In reply to Walter Byrd

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Daniell Goodin -

Heads up Walter, 

You get to play.. 

direct from the H5P HQ.. .Moodle embedding

"Yes, it is done and the only thing left now is to release it. We should be able to get the new version out later today smile"

https://h5p.org/node/62720#comment-16908

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In reply to Daniell Goodin

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Walter Byrd -


I upgraded the plugin, and it seems to working.

Big thanks to the developers.


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In reply to Walter Byrd

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Lee Hensley -

I am using h5p currently with moodle 3.3 started with 3.21  with 187 instances of it and I have to say my students and teachers love it. I will admit though we do not allow guest access to our site though. Like the rest I agree seems to be a problem with permissions. At first had some trouble with it but once I learned the little differences between h5p and other moodle plug ins it works fine. I have quite a few students using a variety of devices and have received no complaints.   

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In reply to Walter Byrd

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Jari Vilkman -

Hello,

If you find a bug with H5P or any of its libraries you can create issue here;

https://github.com/h5p

to proper repository. This way the bug will be known and so someone can fix it.

H5P feature requests should be posted here;

https://h5p.org/forum/16

So they may be added in the future if someone codes them.

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In reply to Jari Vilkman

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Ted Long -

Can anyone else provide an update as to reliability issues with H5P?


I'm currently considering moving all of our Storyline 360 content across in to a H5P format as we are finding SCORM to be too unreliable.


Ideally, we're looking for 100% reliability.  Is H5P the answer?

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In reply to Ted Long

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

No software is 100% reliable.  The Moodle partner I work for has multiple sites with H5P and we have had no reported issues with reliability.

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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Matteo Scaramuccia -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

+1 to Marcus' comment big grin.

BTW IMHO today the relevant issue here could be that it opens the H5P contents to Moodle guests too, by default.

HTH,
Matteo

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In reply to Matteo Scaramuccia

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Ted Long -

Really helpful comments, thanks both.

Kind regards

Eddie

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In reply to Matteo Scaramuccia

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
" it opens the H5P contents to Moodle guests too, by default."

Which is the sort of feature people have been asking for since the dawn of Moodletime. But it possibly brings some drawbacks with it.

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In reply to Walter Byrd

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Paul Raper -

Has anyone come across this error, and do they know how to solve it please?

Attachment 2018-03-02 11_19_54-Editing Interactive Content - Firefox Nightly.png
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In reply to Paul Raper

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Colin Fraser -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Testers

Paul, this is not a good idea, resurrecting an older, resolved, thread. Your issue is different, I suggest so should be awarded a thread of its own. Having said that...

My first suspicion would be the preloaded dependencies are not properly referenced or are missing from the package. My bet, not properly referenced.  



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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Paul Raper -

Hi Colin,

Thanks for the input. It seems the problem was in the source file. There seemed to have been something that was not correctly compiled, and when it was reloaded into the H5P on-line tool, and then recompiled, it seemed to work just fine.

Thanks again for the input and also the tip. I have to say though that in the past I have started new threads and been told off for doing so: they should have been placed in with another thread, this time I should have started a new thread. Hmmm.

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In reply to Paul Raper

Re: H5P is unreliable and disappointing

by Colin Fraser -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Testers

Hahahaha...can't win either way... surprise. Yeah, had the same thing. That's always an issue, but most of the time, if the question is dissimilar to an existing one then go for it, but it doesn't hurt to look. If you do find something similar and it is recent, try it, might work, if it doesn't... 

Overall tip, check the Moodle, PHP and server error logs first, depending on the error, they will often provide information about what is going wrong. If no error has been recorded, make sure they are turned on, replicate the process that leads to the error and then check the logs. Never know what you might turn up.  

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