by Clifton » Wed Sep 08, 2021 11:30 am
Audio is NOT played by default in modern browsers unless the user clicks somewhere (anywhere actually) on the page. This has the effect of satisfying the browser's security provisions and indicates that the user wants to interact with the page, thus allowing audio to play. When auto-playing audio, the user must interact with the page BEFORE the auto-play mechanism starts playing the audio, otherwise the audio will need to be unmuted by user intereaction. This is how many news websites work.
For ToolBook apps, the user only has to interact with the first page displayed; even if there is no audio on that page. If you are trying to play audio when the first page loads, then the browser's security provisions will block it, no audio will play and no events will be triggered. Interestingly, the progress bar will generall move even though the sound is blocked. But when the user interacts with the controls, the browser will unblock the sound and allow notification events.
IE11 may not follow this, but with curent development going on in Windows, IE11 is very soon to be obsolete (a good thing really).
Nevertheless, Chrome, Firefox, and Edge all block audio until the user interacts with the page in some way.
The easiest way to get around all of this is to a create splash page for your courses. Somewhere on the page you can include a button that the user simply clicks to enter the course. This will move to the first page of the course and all audio will automatically be unblocked and play nicely for the rest of the session—even if it is set to autoplay. Works in all browsers too!
I read an article on a courseware development site on another way to get around this. However, I remember feeling that the method probably would hold up over brower development as it was quite a hack. Hacks only work for a short time before browsers figure out what people doing.
Hope this helps.