Single SCO Mini-Runtime
by Claude Ostyn
© 2007 Claude Ostyn

Overview

Sometimes it is desirable to launch a SCO in a context other than a LMS. Many SCOs, however, are coded in such a way that they show error messages if no LMS is present when they are run. The Single SCO Mini-Runtime is a fully self-contained web page that solves this problem. It is a self-contained SCORM runtime environment for a single SCO.

Description

The Single SCO mini run-time is a single web page. When you launch that page, you need to provide a parameter that specifies the URL of the SCO to launch. You can also hard-wire the URL of the SCO in a variable in the script of the page if launching the page with a parameter is not practical.

The page itself is invisible. It just shows as a borderless frame that is as big as the browser window. The SCO is launched in that frame. The SCO will find a SCORM API object and most of the runtime data model support that it would find in a real SCORM LMS. No Java, Flash or ActiveX component is required, since the mini run-time is entirely coded in cross-platform JavaScript.

If you need to embed the SCO in another web page, you can do this by launching the Mini-Runtime in a frameset or in an iframe. In fact, the live demo below uses an iframe to display the Mini-Runtime and its SCO.

Live demo

The interactive demo below launches a diagnostic SCO in a Single SCO Mini-Runtime web page. The Mini-Runtime web page itself is invisible. For more information about the diagnostic SCO used in this demo, see Diagnostic SCO for SCORM. You can poke around the diagnostic SCO to verify that it does indeed believe that it is running in a SCORM runtime environment.

How to use the Single SCO Mini-Runtime

Unless you hard-wire the Mini-Runtime page by presetting a SCO's URL, the Mini-Runtime needs a launch parameter named "sco" whose value is the URL for the SCO. For example, let us assume that the Single SCO Mini-Runtime and the SCO are in the same directory at http://www.example.com/stuff/, and that the name of the file to launch the SCO is "sco1.htm". The entire URL to use would be

If you need to hard-wire the SCO's URL because using a parameter is not practical, look in the script of the page for the variable g_SCO_to_Launch. Its initial value is "" (an empty string). Just change the value to the URL of the SCO.

Launching a SCORM 1.2 SCO

If you need to launch a SCORM 1.2 SCO, you can use the free SCORM 1.2 to SCORM 2004 adapter available elsewhere on this web site. Instead of launching the SCO directly, you launch the adapter, and the adapter in turn launches the SCO. The parameters to the adapter must be URL escaped. The URL to launch a SCO named "sco1.htm" through the SCORM 1.2 to SCORM 2004 adapter looks like this:

Once that URL is encoded for use as a parameter to launch the Mini-Runtime, the complete URL will look like this:

(without the line break)

Known issues and limitations

Because of security constraints, the SCO and the Mini Runtime must come from the save server. If they don't, the SCO will launch but will not be able to communicate with the Mini Runtime and it is then likely to show an error message stating that it cannot find a LMS or the API object.

The Mini Runtime web page is truly standalone. There is no way to capture the tracking data from the SCO to send it to a LMS or other tracking system.

Download

Please read the no nonsense License and terms of use below before downloading or using this tool.

Right-click here to download the Single SCO Mini-Runtime only (.htm file).

License and terms of use

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike2.5 License.
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.