[ARCHIVED] Embedding or displaying .xhtml page in Canvas?

[amorriso]

I would like to post an xhtml file to my course page, but when I upload it I don't get a preview of it, and no matter how I try embedding it (iframe, etc) I always get the page downloaded back to the computer and not displayed on a Canvas page.  Is it possible to diplay within Canvas?

Thanks.

[jared · Accepted solution]

Hi Andrew,

For context, XHTML (HTML written in XML) was the preferred standard for web pages -- before HTML 5. XHTML web pages typically just use the extension .htm or .html -- the same as regular HTML web pages.

If you actually use .xhtml as the file extension, web browsers may misinterpret what the file is meant to be (application/xhtml+xml as opposed to text/html).

If you use .html on your XHTML files, your browser will render them properly when uploaded into a Canvas course's Files area.

[amorriso]

Jared,

Thanks for the reply.  To be specific, I'll share what I was trying to do.

There are simulations posted in an online book here: Waves: An Interactive Tutorial​.  The authors of that book have provided embed codes to be able to post the simulations to webpages.  Unfortunately, they are not using SSL so when I try embedding on Canvas, the material is blocked because it is insecure and students have to explicitly unblock the content.  This causes confusion with the students and I don't like doing it.

Alternatively, the authors have made many of the simulations available for download.  The pages come in the .xhtml form that I was asking about.  I have had success uploading simulation from a different site (Astronomy Simulations and Animations ) to my Canvas courses and embedding the simulations directly on pages for students to access.

When I tried applying the same strategy to the Waves simulations, I got the behavior I originally described above.

When I try renaming the files from .xhtml to .html, they do not work at all on my computer.  I appreciate the helpful suggestion, but it didn't work in my case. For now, I will have to simply link to the externally hosted simulations, even though I would prefer for the students to not have to leave our Canvas course page.

Thanks again!