Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Chris Potter -
Number of replies: 14

All I get is a black screen when I go to view a Hotpot quiz of any type. These work fine locally which can only mean its either IIS6 or Moodle... It shouldn't be Moodle unless there's a setting that I should be changing or need to change that would make this work. Is it possible IIS is disabling or not running Javascripts for some reason? Here's what it looks like for a crossword:

Crossword Screenshot

I would appreciate any help I can get.

Thanks

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In reply to Chris Potter

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Gordon Bateson -
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Hi Chris,
this is very interesting, because this is exactly the same situation that I am currently investigating for someone else.

Could I just clarify some details about your situation:

  1. you are running Moodle 1.5
  2. you are using version 2.0 of the HotPot module (the standard version for Moodle 1.5)
  3. you are running the quiz from the XML source file, i.e. the ".jcw" file

Please could you tell us the type and version of the operating system, webserver, MySQL and PHP?

cheers
Gordon

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Chris Potter -

Yeah, that other case... that's the other Admin for our site... lol. Andrew, right? Anyway, here's what we have if you don't already have it:

Moodle - 1.5.3
HotPot - 2005090713 (It's one of the latest available... not sure exactly what version... maybe 2.1. You'd know that better than I would)
XML - Yes, we're uploading the XML file and running that.

Operating System: Windows Server 2003
Web Server: IIS6 w/ PHP ISAPI extensions (not cgi)
MySQL: 5.0.18
PHP: 5.1.2

Thanks again for your help.

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In reply to Chris Potter

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Gordon Bateson -
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Andrew has already told me that the same quiz works fine on my Moodle 1.5 site, so I am beginning to think this problem is specific to your set up. However, there is little chance that I can fix it without access to a computer which behaving as you describe. There's no chance of me getting access to your machine, right? Mmm ... I will try to set up a server with IIS and see if I can reproduce your situation, but I am "on the road" at the moment, so that may take me a couple of weeks to organize.

Am I right in thinking that other types of quiz work OK? How about other JCross quizzes?

cheers
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Chris Potter -

From my understanding, Andrew was able to get quizzes to work (on our site), just not JCross quizzes. That only confuses me more. It's not 'live' on the internet yet, or I could set up an account for you. I apologize. Hopefully, we can get this solved without resorting to the extra work for you. I'm sure you're plenty busy. Is it possible that somehow a filter is adding something to the code? I know I've seen this in other uploaded files. I will investigate some of these other issues as well.

The help you offer is amazing. I'm sure you have other things that you could be doing or focusing on. My friend and I were just discussing how we wish the rest of the open source community was as helpful as you. Thank you. smile

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In reply to Chris Potter

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Gordon Bateson -
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Thanks very much for the kind words. I appreciate your apreciation approve

A couple more things to check:

  • if you add the HTML version of the JCross quiz to you Moodle site, does it work?
  • if you make a very simple JCross, where the clues are all different, and add it to your Moodle course, does it work?

The idea is to establish the breaking point on the line from the HotPots which work on your site to those that don't, so anything else you can think of to try, which would give more information about what works and what doesn't, would be useful.

all the best
Gordon

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Chris Potter -
HTML versions of JCross work just fine. As far as uploading an actual JCross file, the sample ones we have been creating are as you are asking for... no more than 4-6 words total and different clues for each. They do not work however. These tests are identical to the ones that are being exported to HTML.
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In reply to Chris Potter

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Gordon Bateson -
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OK, it seems the ".jcw" JCross files are not working on your system.

How about files for the other quiz types: ".jcl", ".jmt", ".jmx" and ".jqz" ?

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Chris Potter -
.jcl, .jmx, and .jqz all seem to work just fine. .jmt and .jcw are not working properly. It seems the matching is giving me a similar screen as the crossword (not able to view the quiz).
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In reply to Chris Potter

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Chris Potter -
I suppose that we're at somewhat of a standstill at the moment as to how to proceed. I haven't found a 'solution', but using HTML pages will be just fine for now. I wouldn't think too awful hard on making these work. I probably have a funny setting on my server. Our firewall filters pretty much anything internally and externally (our network admin's locked everything down pretty tight) and I suspect that the firewall may be stripping something from the code causing it not to display correctly, which would explain why they display just fine on a local computer, but not from a network computer. If I ever get this resolved, I will be sure to leave a post with my solution. Thank you for your help and time.
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In reply to Chris Potter

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Gordon Bateson -
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I could be the firewall, but at the moment my own hunch is that something about the PHP on your IIS server is preventing the correct parsing of the Hot Potatoes XML source files (the "jcw" and "jmt" files), so that the HotPot module thinks this quiz is empty, i.e. has no questions.

The reason I think this is that the quiz seems to be complete but empty. That is to say, there are no JavaScript errors and the footer appears in the browser, but the JavaScript array which should hold the questions has nothing in it.

The only way to verify for sure what is going on is to trace the execution of the PHP scripts (by inserting "print" statements to show what is going on as the scripts execute). You could maybe find a programmer to do it from within your intranet, or if you can find a way to make the server accessible to me, I would just love to investigate myself.

all the best
Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Gordon Bateson -
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Hi Chris,
I think the problem of the blank JCross and JMatch (and also the blank "Overview" report) has been solved. It occurred because some of the code in the HotPot module was incompatible with PHP 5.1.2, which I see you are using.

Please thank Eric Schewe for locating the source of the problem. Cheers Eric!
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=42444&parent=196285

You can download the updated HotPot module from the Moodle downloads page in about 24 hours from now (it can take that long for the new scripts I send up to the CVS server to become available on the Moodle zip files)

Please let us know if the modifications do indeed sort out your problems.

all the best
Gordon

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Chris Potter -
Wonderful! I haven't tried it yet, but I am willing to bet it will work. Thank you to Eric and thank you Gordon for all of your help!
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In reply to Chris Potter

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Joseph Rézeau -
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How about a pop-up blocker? Have you ckecked?
Joseph
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Hotpot doesn't display correctly...

by Chris Potter -
No pop-up blocker, as it opens in the same window. Even if it didn't, I have the site allowed. smile
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