pipwerks

Important Adobe Captivate SCORM template update

philip — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 05:42:14 +0000

Over the last few weeks, I received a few reports that scores were not being saved in the LMS when using my template. Turned out to be a simple oversight on my part, which I have just fixed. Please download the latest version of scorm_support.js (v1.20120328) from GitHub.

Cause and effect

If you’re curious what happened, here’s a quick rundown:

When a SCORM course launches for the first time, the value of cmi.completion_status is "ab-initio". This means the course is a fresh launch with no prior completion attempts, and therefore no historical data in the LMS.

When Captivate launches, it requests a slew of information from the LMS via SCORM_API.GetValue. This includes the usual suspects, such as completion status, suspend data, location, score.raw, score.max, score.min, and score.scaled. However, if the course has never been launched before, suspend_data, location, and the score elements will all be empty (null). If the LMS follows the SCORM spec, it will throw the “element not initialized” error.

In my earlier work on the template, I decided to prevent these “element not initialized” errors by adding some logic to the template, preventing suspend_data, location, and the score elements from being checked when the course status is ab-initio. This was achieved via a regular expression:

if(entryStatus === "ab-initio" && /location|suspend_data|score/g.test(parameter)){
   //prevent action
}

Unfortunately, I overlooked one important detail: when the Captivate course loads, it queries the LMS to see which SCORM fields are supported. This is done by requesting the “._children” CMI elements. For example, cmi.score._children will return the string “scaled,min,max,raw” indicating that cmi.score.scaled, cmi.score.min, cmi.score.max, and cmi.score.raw are supported by the LMS.

See any problems yet?

My regular expression was too broad, and prevented cmi.score._children from being queried, making Captivate believe that cmi.score was not supported. Since Captivate thought cmi.score was not supported, it did the right thing and stopped sending cmi.score data to the LMS.

The solution was to make the regular expression a bit more explicit:

if(entryStatus === "ab-initio" && /location|suspend_data|score\.(raw|min|max|scaled)/g.test(parameter)){
   //prevent action
}

Instead of blocking any GetValue calls requesting “score” data when the course is ab-initio, we now only block GetValue calls that request specific CMI elements: score.raw, score.min, score.max, and score.scaled. Problem solved.

Important Adobe Captivate SCORM template update is a post from: pipwerks.com. Unless specified otherwise, all code is licensed under an MIT-style license. All other content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Introducing SWFRightClick

philip — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 07:35:35 +0000

Adobe Captivate currently ships with a 3rd-party JavaScript utility named RightClick.js, which enables the Captivate SWF to detect when a user right-clicks the SWF. While upgrading the Captivate publishing templates, I realized RightClick.js wasn’t built to work with SWFObject 2.x and suffered from a few shortcomings. I modified the Captivate template’s SWFObject code to get around the issue, but marked it down as something to revisit when I have the time.

Now, I’m happy to report I’ve created a replacement for the RightClick.js utility, creatively named SWFRightClick. It uses the same approach to handling right-clicks, but does it with a completely new codebase and a few extra goodies. SWFRightClick is compatible with every edition of SWFObject, and is free to use (MIT license).

Check it out on GitHub. I plan to fold it in to my Captivate publishing templates very soon.

Introducing SWFRightClick is a post from: pipwerks.com. Unless specified otherwise, all code is licensed under an MIT-style license. All other content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

New SCORM 1.2 Template for Adobe Captivate

philip — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:13:05 +0000

By popular demand, the SCORM 1.2 edition of my revised SCORM publishing templates for Adobe Captivate 5.x is now available on GitHub.

Instructions can be found here.

While testing the SCORM 1.2 revisions, I noticed Captivate sometimes sends invalid data to the LMS, specifically for cmi.interactions.n.correct_responses.n.pattern, cmi.interactions.n.student_response, and cmi.interactions.n.weighting. I may fix these errors in a future update, but they’re relatively harmless, so I’ll leave them be for now.

New SCORM 1.2 Template for Adobe Captivate is a post from: pipwerks.com. Unless specified otherwise, all code is licensed under an MIT-style license. All other content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Further Tweaks to the Adobe Captivate SCORM Publishing Template

philip — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:52:02 +0000

Now that my version of the Adobe Captivate publishing template for SCORM 2004 is on GitHub, it has become a living document, bound to get updates (major and minor) from time to time. For those of you unfamiliar with GitHub, it’s a nifty site for storing code; it provides issues list for tracking bugs, it enables people to leave comments or make code suggestions, and it even lets you copy an entire open-source project with a single click!

Since the code for my templates will remain on GitHub, I highly suggest checking in from time to time to see if the code has been updated. I won’t be posting a blog entry on pipwerks.com for every little edit I make to the code.

Speaking of edits, I made two or three tonight, spurred by an insightful comment from Jimmi Thøgersen. He noticed a bug or two, and explained some of Saba’s bugginess — thanks Jimmi! If you know of any oddities or bugs, please let me know by posting an issue on GitHub.

Further Tweaks to the Adobe Captivate SCORM Publishing Template is a post from: pipwerks.com. Unless specified otherwise, all code is licensed under an MIT-style license. All other content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Cleaning up Adobe Captivate’s SCORM Publishing Template, Part 7: Giving the Revisions a Home

philip — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:31:13 +0000

I decided to post my revised Adobe Captivate publishing template to GitHub, where it can be easily copied, forked, and updated. Currently, the only files are for the Captivate 5.0 and 5.5 templates for SCORM 2004. I hope to add SCORM 1.2 soon, as well as replacing the default ’standard.htm’ template, which doesn’t use any LMS-related code.

Update: The SCORM 1.2 template is now available.

If you take a look at Default.htm on GitHub, you’ll notice I’ve made a few changes since I wrote my series about editing the templates. I moved a few bits of markup/code around, added some configuration options (such as the ability to turn off centering, turn on logging, and require SCORM when loading), and added a ton of comments to explain some of the new options. Hopefully it’s all self-explanatory.

I also made a small edit to manifest2004.xml, and a few edits to scorm_support.js.

To use these template files, do the following:

Make a backup of your entire publishing folder and put it somewhere safe!
Go to Captivate’s Templates\Publish\SCORM\2004\ folder and replace Default.htm with the new file.
Go to Templates\Publish\SCORM\2004\SCORM_support\ and replace scorm_support.js with the new file.
While you’re in your SCORM_support folder, delete scorm_support.htm and scorm_support.swf, they won’t be used anymore.
Go to Templates\Publish\ and replace manifest2004.xml with the new file.
While you’re still in the Templates\Publish\ folder, replace standard.js with the new file.
Restart Captivate and give it a try!

Find a bug? Think of a good edit for the template? Post a comment here, or better yet, file an issue on GitHub!

Cleaning up Adobe Captivate’s SCORM Publishing Template, Part 7: Giving the Revisions a Home is a post from: pipwerks.com. Unless specified otherwise, all code is licensed under an MIT-style license. All other content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.