Compatibility issue IE 11 and Match Item Question

[Kataleena]

Hi,

I'm updating an old course for the web, matched Item Questions are used in the course. I have now found they don't work in IE 11. On TB website I found a manual way fix problem but I cant get it to work, just wondering if anyone else has had this problem and fixed it?


Thanks kate
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Option 2: Manually Fix Already Published Lessons
For those of you who are using a version of ToolBook older than 11.5, or who are using 11.5 but cannot republish the content (perhaps because it is already on a Web Server) - there is a way to manually adjust this logic within each of the already published lesson, to fix the problem. Essentially a small adjustment to some JavaScript logic will allow ToolBook's DHTML to work with Internet Explorer 11 and higher.

LOCATING THE JAVASCRIPT LOGIC
The file which controls this is named BOOTSTRAP.JS and can be found within each of your web-published project folders. For example, here's a view of a sample web export where I selected Firefox and Internet Explorer as my desired supported browsers:

FOLDER: firefox3
FOLDER: ie7
FOLDER: media
FOLDER: resources
FOLDER: unsupported
bootstrap.jar
BOOTSTRAP.JS
buildid.ser
index.html
media.ser
readme.html
scriptlet.html

The file BOOTSTRAP.JS is dynamically created during the web publishing process and is custom-made for your current project. It includes all the necessary JavaScript to handle the Browser Detection logic. This also means that the contents of BOOTSTRAP.JS can be (and is very likely to be) different from project to project.

EDIT THE BOOTSTRAP.JS FILE
The BOOTSTRAP.JS file is just a text file - so it is recommended that you use NOTEPAD to edit it.

Within the BOOTSTRAP.JS file, locate the one occurrence of:

="ie7";

directly after that, you will find a JavaScript function (shown below in Blue) such as:

="ie7";_Ke[_Ke.length]=function(){

In the case of ToolBook 11.5, you will see a _Ke variable referenced, but other versions of ToolBook may show a different variable.

="ie7";_Ke[_Ke.length]=function(){

It is not important what variable name you see in your code, as long as you don't change it.

Very carefully ADD the following code (shown in Orange), directly after the function declaration (feel free to copy/paste from this article):

="ie7";_Ke[_Ke.length]=function(){if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Trident/")>-1){return true;}

Save the file, and exit Notepad.

That's it, you will now be able to properly load your lesson in Internet Explorer 11 and higher (on Windows 8 and earlier).
Warning
You may need to close and reopen Internet Explorer (and possibly clear your Browser Cache) in order for Internet Explorer to recognize the changes to this file.

[Clifton]

If your course is PowerPac-enabled, then the fix you described is already applied automatically during export. Regardless what the SumTotal website says, the fix is not designed to fix the matching question problem explicitly, but was designed to fix a browser identification issue that occurred when IE11 was released.

It is important to understand why this problem exists:

• All non-IE browsers (Chrome, Firefox, etc.) use svg to draw the matching lines between objects.
• IE did not supprt svg drawing at the time ToolBook developed this catalog widget. Therefore, it uses a non-standard proprietary way to draw the lines. This method was dropped in IE9+ and was supported only in quirks mode. IE11 introduced a different browser identification method which caused the hiccup for bootstrap.js and further broke some things.

Possible workaround:

• Non-IE browsers will continue to support this catalog widget and will continue to do so with the PowerPac-enabled.
• To support IE, you must UNCHECK the PowerPac menu item Enable IE HTML 5 Display. This forces IE to revert to quirks mode to display its content.
  
  The downside of doing this is that any HTML 5 features that you are using in your course may not work as expected. The PowerPac will try to adjust for some of these issues (e.g.: it will attempt to continue to support MP4 video and MP3 audio), but any CSS3 styling or other advanced features may appear broken. In essence, you will have to test the result to make sure you are satisfied with the course. But realize that Microsoft may drop support for quirks mode altogether and then this activity will not work at all.
  

Recommendation:
Consider rebuilding the matching question pages with different type of activity.
This following forum post discusses another possible question type that could be employed that doesn't involve line drawing:
http://www.pgsoftwaretools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=195

[Kataleena]

Hi

Thanks for the advice, I will have to change the question type but in the mean time I tried the below option to see what it looked like and it did not work. I even repackaged my book. any idea?

To support IE, you must UNCHECK the PowerPac menu item Enable IE HTML 5 Display. This forces IE to revert to quirks mode to display its content.
The downside of doing this is that any HTML 5 features that you are using in your course may not work as expected. The PowerPac will try to adjust for some of these issues (e.g.: it will attempt to continue to support MP4 video and MP3 audio), but any CSS3 styling or other advanced features may appear broken. In essence, you will have to test the result to make sure you are satisfied with the course. But realize that Microsoft may drop support for quirks mode altogether and then this activity will not work at all.

Thanks Kate

[Clifton]

Can you provide a url for me to see what happens?
Also, what version of ToolBook was the original activity developed in and what version are you currently exporting to? The Matching question is one of the fussier question types.

[Kataleena]

Hi,

I have to get a project out today, so changing the question type. When I'm finished i will get a sample for you. I am using 10.5. As always thanks for your help.

Kate