Browser Health Checking

Pages that include bright.js can launch courses without contacting the web server that served them. They do this by connecting directly to Bright.

Course Launch Sequence

In this diagram, we show the control flow to render a page to the learner, and then process a course launch request from the learner.

launch

This creates one issue on the browser side, which is that it doesn't need to be able to connect to Bright to receive the page, but a networking issue between Bright and the page won't manifest itself until a user launches a course. That is, connectivity between the browser and Bright is not checked until step 3 above.

Bright.healthReport

> Bright.healthReport()
Current Health: false
Total health attempts: 8
Total success: 1
Total failure: 7
Average Time(ms): 553.875
​

Bright.healthReportShort


This is the string that appears in the tooltip of a greyed-out launch button

> Bright.healthReport()
8.1.7.554
​


bright.js uses the css class bright-launchable to decide what to disable. You can add the class to any element you want disabled..... and if that element is a button, you should get the desired behavior.

Also bright.js will add a health-failed-button-disabled class to the button, which in bright.css is set to:

.health-failed-button-disabled {opacity:.2;}
​


You can extend this behavior using Bright hooks:

EnableLaunchButtons Hook

It is also included in an error popup under the title 'Bright Health:'.

To make it easier to resolve these issues, new in Bright is Browser Health Checking. When the page loads, the browser will check it's connectivity to the Bright Server.

Here's a normal launch button:

good

In the case that connectivity cannot be established, the course buttons will 'grey out':

grey

If the user mouses over the button, they will receive the following tooltip:

error

Now if the browser reestablishes connectivity, the launch button(s) will automatically re-enable themselves. Neat!

In the error message above, an error is listed;

For example:

8.1.7.554

This means:

Total health attempts: 8 Total success: 1 Total failure: 7 Average Time(ms): 553.875

Using this data, it should assist in determining if there's an intermittent network fault, for example.

Bright.healthReport

> Bright.healthReport()
Current Health: false
Total health attempts: 8
Total success: 1
Total failure: 7
Average Time(ms): 553.875

Bright.healthReportShort

This is the string that appears in the tooltip of a greyed-out launch button

> Bright.healthReport()
8.1.7.554

bright.js uses the css class bright-launchable to decide what to disable. You can add the class to any element you want disabled..... and if that element is a button, you should get the desired behavior.

Also bright.js will add a health-failed-button-disabled class to the button, which in bright.css is set to:

.health-failed-button-disabled {opacity:.2;}

You can extend this behavior using Bright hooks:

EnableLaunchButtons Hook

It is also included in an error popup under the title 'Bright Health:'.

A loss of network connectivity can be difficult for non-technical users to effectively troubleshoot.

Some useful steps may be:

  • direct site IT support to this document.
  • restart the browser in question
  • try a different browser. If one browser works, and the other doesn't, restarting the failing browser should be effective.
  • try a different device on the same network
  • try the same device on a different network

If the problems persists on a specific network, the following steps may be helpful:

  • restart the network router and try again
  • failing that, contact the network provider and a report a connectictivity failure. The Bright server URL can be found from
    the browser javascript console by running:
    Bright.urlBase()

or by contacting Bright support.

Still not working? Give us a shout!