Hello everybody!

I am working on a course containing only one module so far. All my slides consist of only one frame. I am calling MP3-Files to be played one after the other in this way: MP3-Sound is connected to a textbox. This textbox is displayed when the proceeding MP3 ended. All objects in the slide are set to "display til end of slide".

Everything is working fine in IE, not so in Firefox: MP3-Files are not being played at all and whenever the next Textbox should be displayed I have this JavaScript Alertbox poppin up "ShowObject: undefined".

I can handle the alertbox quick and dirty but would prefer a clean solution for both problems.

Thankful for any kind of help.

Jцrg Kern

Hi, Jцrg,

it seems that there is FireFox/WMP issue in this case (Windows Media Player is used to play mp3 by default). Too little information to say more.
I can suggest workaround that works fine in all browsers (at least AFAIK). You van convert mp3 to SWF and attach SWF files instead. In this case Flash Player will be used to play audio files, and it seems to be much more cross-browser. AFAIR, there are freeware mp3/swf converters on the Net.

Hi Jorg
Its all about the target browsers, as of April 2006 the market share was about
Explorer (6+) 66%
Firefox 22%
Safari 8%
Googlge Chrome <1.5%
Opera < 1%
Others > 1%
Like it or not IE is the most use browser and pretty much the standard in most institutions, that's education, business and medicine.
As you'll know all of these browsers work and render pages slightly differently. So you target full function against the predominant browser,it is very difficult to make simple web pages work well across the range of browsers. For something as complex as Courselab adding code to accomodate all the browsers is very hard. Hence everything works in IE but may not in other browsers.
The clean solution would be having all browsers WC3 compliant but hey, you think that's going to happen??

Hey Nick.

Different browsers handle different things differently. I agree on that. But blaming them for anything not working is no solution to my problem. Whats more Courselab claims to run in Firefox. So why doesn't it then?

Thanks for your answer Nick, but I think I'll go on trying to solve my problem.

If anybody can help, I would appreciate that very much!

Jцrg

Hi Jorg
Does the player run and work in this link when you view it with firefox?
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/testpages/wmp11.html
This is playing the current version 11 M$ codec encoded content. If you are using these codecs for the content then they won't work in the older plug in.
In any case try reinstalling the plug in as adding other players to your PC can disable the decoders. Things like Nero are well known for doing this kind of thing.

OK, I had a few hours off today [:cool:]

Here you find a small (2 kB) mp3player, works in IE7 and FF and shows an object when the mp3 has finished playing:
http://www.maaskant.net/mp3player_for_Courselab.zip
[:)]

I hope someday I can change 'shows an object' into 'triggers an action' but for now I don't know Courselab enough to have the player start a user defined function. [:confused:]

Hmm ... the mp3player I made for use in Lectora does not work directly in Courselab; I used some specific Lectora commands.

I'll see if I can make a new version coming day's and post it here.

(Slav!) Maybe it is possible to add method 'Flashvars' to flashobject in coming release?[:)]

Hi Jorg, Nick ..
Glad I can post without showing an emailaddress ;-)
Jorg, the mp3-not-playing-in-FF item is not Courselab specific. I encountered it in other authorsystems, too.

Best solution imho is to use a flash mp3 player (3 kB). Advantage then is, you can let the swf give a signal when the file has done playing and react in your lesson accordingly.