Firefox seems the best browser to use with Xerte

In my experience Xerte Toolkit output performs best when using Mozilla Firefox browser. Do you agree?

Hi Anne
why do you say that?
Xerte output should work fine on most browsers especially recent versions. I/we test on most browsers including older versions and the output has wide compatibility.
Authoring is slightly more complex and needs more recent browser versions especially with IE e.g. really needs to be IE10 or later. I regularyly test authoring and vieiwing in each of the main browsers without problem.
People often report problems with video or audio but that's because video uploaded directly must be .mp4 and audio must be .mp3 but apart from that the output should work on most modern browsers and devices.
The only real exception to this is offline viewing e.g. if you export a project without using the offline export option (only currently available with the main template) then yse you might find that Firefox is the only browser that plays your content because of security defaults with the other browsers. However the offline export option should play in all browsers.

HTH
Ron

Hi Anne

I'm sure I've heard people say this before but without specific reasons / examples I can't really fix it!

I do tend to use Firefox during development of new pages (through habit more than anything else - I'm just more used to using Firebug rather than Chrome's developer tools for example). I then test thoroughly in the other main browsers and fix and problems I find before release though. Are there any specific things we can look in to? Is it functionality on the pages or the look of things?

Thanks
Fay

Thank you for the replies.

We have tested Xerte on various browsers here. Our testing has concluded that Firefox provides the best browser because when using other browers some of the activities, eg drag and drop, won't work properly. So we tell all users to change their browser to Firefox. We have also found that when using Thumbnail Viewer with text overlay, the text will not appear when using Chrome but it does appear on Firefox browser. IE is a problem and Xerte will not perform properly on IE9.

This isn't criticism, it's our findings here at the University. I was wondering if others had the same issues. I just wanted to mention this. Many thanks.

Hi Anne
we aren't taking this as criticism but likewise we aren't aware of any issues especially with Chrome e.g. the thumbnail viewer in the page types example www.nottingham.ac.uk/toolkits/play_8203&page=27 works fine in Chrome for me and shows the text overlay just fine. Does that example not work for you? Can you share a link to one of your examples where this doesn't work?

Also what interactions don't work? What happens? Examples/screenshots/steps to replicate?

It certainly shouldn't be necessary for your users to switch to Firefox from Chrome or IE 10 or later and in my experience even IE 9 should be ok in most cases for viewing rather than authoring and certainly IE 10 or later should be fine.

This is a public forum so it's important that anyone else reading this should not get the idea that Xerte output only works in Firefox - that's certainly not our experience and we would hear from many more users if that was the case. If there are specific examples we would want to investigate and resolve any issues but as we've said we test regularly in all modern browsers and versions so would need specific examples with links and detailed descriptions and screenshots to troubleshoot.

HTH
Ron

Hi Ron,
Using Chrome and accessing the Xerte which has been uploaded into Blackboard (NILE) results in the text overlay not showing when the mouse is hovered over the picture.

If you look at the screen print in the attached document you will notice that my mouse cursor is there on the screen hovering over the image which should then show the text but the text is not appearing.
Versus
However accessing Blackboard (NILE) and the Xerte using Firefox browser will show the text overlay. See the example attached.

On an iPad we noticed that you need to press and hold down your finger on the image until the text appears.

We are using Front Motion Firefox and Google Chrome version

Testng the link sent to me

You images show the text overlay using Google Chrome – I accessed this content via the link you gave me with Chrome and not via Blackboard.

Also works using the direct link when in Firefox – see attached screen-print.

So therefore, is this pointing to the problem being related to Blackboard and something that happens when using Xerte via Blackboard platform with different browsers?

I have also encountered issues with Interactivity > Categories in that the appearance changes and instead of the horizontal appearance (where the items to drag are above and the categories – let’s say 2 for example which are shown in two columns), the category headings end up underneath each other rather than being side by side.