Custom tab doesn't always appear

[canbry]

Hi,
We are trying to create a presentation using Articulate that loads a custom tab into the options panel on the left-hand side of the presentation window. We have defined the tab in the "art_plugins.xml", according to the SDK instructions, but the tab frequently doesn't appear when the presentation is first launched from a remote web server. If the page is refreshed, thus reloading the presentation, the tab then appears.

This issue doesn't occur when viewing the presentation from the local machine, which leads me to suspect that the "art_plugins.xml" file is not being loaded and parsed in time before the menu appears.

Has anyone else seen this issue or can offer some insight?

Thanks!

[clevewaterman]

Same problem. No solution that I can figure.

[canbry]

Hi clevewaterman,

Here is a solution that I came up with. It is not very elegant, but it does the trick for now:

Instead of launching the presentation directly in a new window, a different HTML page is launched in the new window that contains an SWF that (pre)loads the custom tab's SWF. The preloader then then uses GetURL(“player.html”) to load the presentation into the window once the custom tab's SWF has loaded.

By using this loading sequence, the custom tab has been loading every time.

Hope that helps someone, or at least helps them toward a better solution.

[clevewaterman]

Thanks for the tip. I have been working on it but no luck so far. I can see my .swf load, but when I go to the player.html, I don't see the tab.

Could you give me a URL to your solution?

[clevewaterman]

More testing reveals the same problems. I am showing my preloader below, but I also tried simply loading the .swf used in the tab directly and then opening player.html. Still no luck.

Firefox seems to give the problem more consistently. Internet Explorer sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.


Here is the link to my example with a preloader.
http://www.pdamultimedia.net/articul...preloader.html

Here is the link without a preloader.
http://www.pdamultimedia.net/articul...bs/player.html

You can see the .swf preload. There should be a tab that says "Lectures" in the Articulate presentation. It usually doesn't show up in the first try.

I make sure the cache is cleared before each time I load the preloader. If I re-load the presentation without clearing the cache, then the tab appears.

This is the actionscript I am using to preload. It loads the .swf used in the tab (toctab.swf) into a target movieclip in the preloader.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
this.createEmptyMovieClip("target_mc", 999);
var loader:MovieClipLoader = new MovieClipLoader();
var loader:MovieClipLoader = new MovieClipLoader();
// Create listener object:
var loadListener:Object = new Object();
loadListener.onLoadStart = function(loadTarget) {
trace("Loading into "+loadTarget+" has started.");
};
loadListener.onLoadProgress = function(loadTarget, bytesLoaded, bytesTotal) {
var percentLoaded = bytesLoaded/bytesTotal*100;
trace("%"+percentLoaded+" into target "+loadTarget);
};
loadListener.onLoadComplete = function(loadTarget) {
getURL("player.html", "_self");
;
};
loader.addListener(loadListener);
loader.loadClip("player/toctab.swf", target_mc);
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am not an action script maven, so this is just copy and paste from Flash help on preload.

The .fla is available at
http://www.pdamultimedia.net/articul.../preloader.fla

[canbry]

Hi again,

Unfortunately I cannot give you a link to the presentation I was working on, since I was working as a contractor for a company that hasn't even released the presentation to their clients.

I can tell you that I also preloaded the art_plugins.xml file as well as the tab's swf file. I used the following very basic ActionScript 1 code:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
var swfIsLoaded = false;
var xmlIsLoaded = false;

var mc:MovieClip;
this.createEmptyMovieClip("mc", 1);
mc.loadMovie("player/toctab.swf");
mc._visible = false;

var my_xml = new XML();
my_xml.onLoad = function(success)
{
xmlIsLoaded = true;
}
my_xml.load("player/art_plugins.xml");

this.onEnterFrame = function()
{
if (mc.getBytesLoaded() >= mc.getBytesTotal())
{
swfIsLoaded = true;
}
if (swfIsLoaded && xmlIsLoaded)
{
getURL("player.html");
delete this.onEnterFrame;
}
}

stop();
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hope it works for you, too. I've gotta run, but I'll check back when I can.

[clevewaterman]

You are the man!
Works in IE, Firefox and Opera.
Fast!
I don't have Safari available right now, but it looks like it should work.
Thanks again.
Do you do contract work?

[canbry]

Thanks! Glad it worked for you. Yes I do contact work - mostly Flash and web programming. This job was actually the first time I've seen the Articulate product. Seems like a fairly easy solution for creating web-based presentations.

If you are interested in some further contact you can reach me by email at:
bry (at) rogers.com
Unfortunately I don't have a website set up right now. Too busy :-)

Cheers,
Bryan

[Steve99]

Hi,

Sorry to bump this post but its a problem that still seems to exist. We implemented a preloader in the past that seems to solve the problem of the custom tab appearing in firefox, IE and Chrom(ium) (we preload the art_plugins.xml file) but this seems to fail in Safari? I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts?

As far as I can tell this is all handled by the swf objects so Im rather puzzled as to what difference the browser makes unless the flash plugin is implemented slightly differently??

Thanks

[this.onEnterFrame]

Here is my solution for this... it basically builds off what others have done here.
Mine loads the art_plugins.xml and then loops through and/all items listed in it.
As it loads each it displays a bit of progress.
When it is done it loads player.html
Just put preLoadTabs.html and preLoadTabs.swf in the same folder with player.html.
Where you would normally link to player.html link to preLoadTabs.html instead.
Note: you will need to edit index_lms.html if using an LMS.

It is not very pretty but I included the source so you customize it.

Enjoy!