Hyperlinking to Documents

klbarr29 · 07-01-2009, 11:24 PM

I read the KB on how Articulate Presenter doesn't support hyperlinks to documents. This is not good for many of the courses I work on as I work for a Federal Agency, and many times the student is asked to click on a link to open some document, whether it be a Word Doc or PDF file.

I did try the workaround, however, it wouldn't work within our firewall. This was looking to be a huge stumbling block as we produce a LOT of e-learning courses, and many customers are requesting them to be published with Articulate.

As I said, I followed the workaround instructions, and what would happen is a blank webpage would open, and then immediately it would display "Action Canceled" or "Action Failed". And there would be no Open/Save dialog box at all. Again, not good. The odd thing is that the workaround works fine outside of our firewall, but within, fails everytime. I tried this both on documents hosted on a server and one that I had on my local machine at work. Neither would launch and both would display the same error message.

The strange thing is if I added the document as an attachment, then the Open/Save dialog box would appear each time in the Attachments pull-down. Now there are some that would simply direct the student to open the Attachments pull-down to open the file. However, I believe in making things as simple for the student as possible, and nothing is easier than having them click on a link on the actual PPT slide and having it work. Sadly, this was not possible within our firewall.

Believe me, there was nothing we could do to make the hyperlinks work and we tried everything. Now hyperlinks on the slide did go to webpages with no problems, they just wouldn't work if being linked to a document of any type.

Then I had a brilliant idea over the weekend. I thought, what if I wrote an .html file which I could hyperlink to in PPT. In this .html file I would auto launch my needed document and then make it close itself so the student would never see it. All they'd see is the typical blank webpage and the Open/Save dialog box on top of it.

So I played with the coding and was successful in getting it to work! I'm placing my code below. Just place the following code into an .html file. I named mine based on the slide the hyperlink was located in. You'd also need a seperate .html file for all hyperlinks in your course for which you're linking to a document only.

<html>
<body onload="Launch();" onblur="Close()">
<script language="JavaScript">
function Launch()
{
var win=window.open('http://www.articulate.com/support/help/studio09/Studio09_Documentation.zip','_top');
}
function Close()
{
window.open('','_top');
window.close();
}
</script>
</body>
</html>

You'd simply replace the URL with the path to the document you needed to Open or Save and then place the .html file in the root of your published course.

Or if the file is on your local machine, then you replace the URL in the code above with the name of the file, and ensure you place that document and the .html file in the root of your published course.

I don't know if anyone else will find this of use, but it saved our bacon and every single course that we'll be creating in which a hyperlink in PPT needed to be pointed to a document of some sort.

WordKraft · 07-02-2009, 05:50 PM

I cannot TELL you how excited I was to read your solution. We have 50 courses with hyperlinks that used to work, and narration that tells learners "Just click on the icon to open the document." That worked just fine, but then the whole curriculum was moved to a new server and all of our absolute links were hosed.

Your solution would give us a nice workaround that avoids the need to renarrate all the courses. I followed your instructions. Although I am complete stranger to HTML, it looked like something I could figure out.

But when clicking on the new link in the Published course to the HTML file, the HTML file opens! I see the code. Same result if I double-click the HTML itself.

I don't know if it matters, but I created the HTML in Word and saved is as an HTML from there.

Am I missing something obvious that a more astute programmer would quickly see?

Thanks

Tim Kraft

klbarr29 · 07-02-2009, 06:10 PM

Hi Tim,

I'm glad that this will work for your courses.

As for getting my code to work, I just tried this from scratch. All I did was create a new text document, copied and pasted the code above into it, then you would need to modify the URL to where your document is hosted, then save it and make sure you cange the extension from .txt to .html. When I double clicked on it from my desktop, it launched as expected.

Hope that helps. The key is to make sure it is being saved as an .html extension.

Kelly Barrett

klbarr29 · 07-02-2009, 08:01 PM

Well I found out that the code I gave above works for IE 7 or above. However, it isn't the best if using IE 6. So I'm posting a different code set to be used for IE 6.

<html>
<body onload="window.opener = ''; window.open('http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf'); window.close();">
</body>
</html>

So if you are using IE 6 at work, you may want to try this code here. If you are using IE 7 or greater, then use the code from my first post.

Let me know if this helped.

Kelly Barrett

WordKraft · 07-03-2009, 06:21 AM

Shazam! I don't know why it made a difference, but creating the HTML file in Notepad instead of Word did the trick (even though both were HTML files in the end).

You have saved me HOURS of work. Where do I send the flowers? ;-)

klbarr29 · 07-03-2009, 02:33 PM

LOL!

As I'm sure you know, there is nothing more daunting than the thought of having to re-record narration. Again, I'm glad this will work for you. I just can't understand why Articulate wouldn't support hyperlinks to documents. It boggles the mind. Oh well, thank goodness for workarounds.

Lets see, flowers can be sent to... J/K

I prefer gift cards to Texas Roadhouse. They have the best ribs! Again, only joking! I was just glad that my solution worked for someone else.

Regards,

Kelly Barrett

WordKraft · 07-06-2009, 09:55 AM

Kelly,

Sorry to be a pest ... but in the first course where I applied your HTML code trick, I used it to open a PDF. Closing the PDF (CLOSE button at top right) returned me to the course. Any idea why, in the next course where I used your trick, it closes the browser window and bails out of my course entirely?

Oh these pesky computers. They are so naughty and so complex.

Tim

klbarr29 · 07-06-2009, 12:04 PM

Hi Tim,

That is a good question. I have no idea why it would close your course since it is opening in a new window. The only reason it would close Articulate is if it was opening the file within Articulate instead of opening a new window. Which code are you using and which IE do you use? Also, if you could copy and paste the code from the link that is closing your Articulate, that'd be helpful.

Kelly

WordKraft · 07-06-2009, 02:34 PM

This one works fine:

<html>
<body onload="Launch();" onblur="Close()">
<script language="JavaScript">
function Launch()
{
var win=window.open('DocLibrary/LM_Mod2.WasteAnalysis.pdf','_top');
}
function Close()
{
window.open('','_top');
window.close();
}
</script>
</body>
</html>

This one (used in a different course) closes the browser when I exit the opened PDF:

<html>
<body onload="Launch();" onblur="Close()">
<script language="JavaScript">
function Launch()
{
var win=window.open('DocLibrary/LM_Mod_5.PlanOfAct.pdf','_top');
}
function Close()
{
window.open('','_top');
window.close();
}
</script>
</body>
</html>

The only difference between the two (aside from the linked document) is that the first presentation (that works) has only one linked document. The second presentation has two linked documents, but I cannot imagine why that would make a difference.

Confused in Canton.

klbarr29 · 07-07-2009, 11:11 AM

I just ran a test using multiple links on both the same slide and on multiple slides using the code you provided above, except I swapped out the folder name with one I made called "test" and the .pdf's with mine own. I had 4 different hyperlinks throughout. They all worked as expected and launched giving me the open/save dialog box and when I chose "open" they did and when I clicked on the "x" in the upper right, the window closed, but Articulate stayed in place each time.

I'm afraid I can't reproduce what is happening, which makes me wonder if there is some setting in the one Articulate course that is closing that is different from your other course that is working?

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Kelly

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

Articulate News

Rapid E-Learning Blog