Articulate and ColdFusion gotcha
First, a brief background: Today I attempted to publish my Articulate preso to our company intranet. Our intranet allows different business units to manage content in their own directory. Let's say I create the file mypage.html under our directory, then browse to it. Magically, the corporate "wrapper" with graphics and navigation elements appears around my page. In order to break out of the intranet wrapper, I must change my filename to a CFM template as mypage.cfm. Then I move this page to a new subdirectory, and also create a new Application.cfm file, with only a dummy application name. Now mypage.cfm displays only what's inside, no wrapping occurs!
Segway this "intranet intro" to my Articulate content publishing task, where I have my file player.html, and 2 directories (data and player). I move these 3 elements to my newly created subdirectory, with the dummy Application.cfm. Next, I changed the filename to player.cfm (not .html). When I browse to the page, it appears blank! Where the heck is my Articulate Flash preso? It plays just fine when I browse my computer's file system to the player.html file. The issue is that some of the HTML comments that Articulate generated when I published are not proper. Most web folks know that a basic html comment looks like <!-- my html comment here -->. However, Articluate included extra dashes, for example this line.
<!-------- Articulate Presenter Lives In Here ---------------------------
Well, the ColdFusion engine thinks anything with 3 dashes (or more) is the beginning of a CFML comment, which take the form of <!--- my cfml comment here --->. So as you can see, Articulate's comments should have followed the standard HTML format and not used extra dashes! The fix is to change the above line to start with only 2 dashes, it becomes:
<!-- Articulate Presenter Lives In Here ---------------------------
There are a few other places in the player.cfm file to make this change. Once you fix them all, save the file, and browse to it again. Whalla, the Articulate Flash preso now plays in your browser, problem solved!!!
Segway this "intranet intro" to my Articulate content publishing task, where I have my file player.html, and 2 directories (data and player). I move these 3 elements to my newly created subdirectory, with the dummy Application.cfm. Next, I changed the filename to player.cfm (not .html). When I browse to the page, it appears blank! Where the heck is my Articulate Flash preso? It plays just fine when I browse my computer's file system to the player.html file. The issue is that some of the HTML comments that Articulate generated when I published are not proper. Most web folks know that a basic html comment looks like <!-- my html comment here -->. However, Articluate included extra dashes, for example this line.
<!-------- Articulate Presenter Lives In Here ---------------------------
Well, the ColdFusion engine thinks anything with 3 dashes (or more) is the beginning of a CFML comment, which take the form of <!--- my cfml comment here --->. So as you can see, Articulate's comments should have followed the standard HTML format and not used extra dashes! The fix is to change the above line to start with only 2 dashes, it becomes:
<!-- Articulate Presenter Lives In Here ---------------------------
There are a few other places in the player.cfm file to make this change. Once you fix them all, save the file, and browse to it again. Whalla, the Articulate Flash preso now plays in your browser, problem solved!!!
posted by webdh | 2:42 PM
