Disappearing Graphics

[mfreedman3]

I have jpg images which display just fine, then for no apparent reason they disappear, only showing the file name.  Is this a bug? Am I doing something wrong?

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

 @mfreedman3 ‌, there are numerous variables that might account for this: where the images reside, how they were added to the item, where they appear within the course. Canvas Support would need to have a look within the course itself to determine why this might be occurring in each case, so if this is happening to you, please initiate a support case (How do I get help with Canvas as an instructor?‌) 

[c_murphy]

I was with a professor yesterday and witnessed the disappearing graphics on his course home page in Safari. Clearing cache was required to restore them as per the usual scenario with this issue. These were 4 very small images (less than 50kb). Since the graphics for that course act as the navigation menu this is not a cosmetic issue and I hate to disadvantage the students in this way. This problem actually means that course design will have to reflect concerns about this and be limited, so now we have a bug driving instructional design. And that doesn't even begin to touch on the issue this poses for quizzes. It's not happening in other systems, just Canvas, so it's clearly a Canvas issue.

[mfreedman3]

There have been attempts, but Canvas asks that you file a ticket through

your system admin... M

On Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 6:29 AM c.murphy@gsa.ac.uk <instructure@jiveon.com>

[saekow]

I am having the same issue, it is frustrating to build a site with images and then sometimes images do not load. The images I put into my site are important content, not just decoration. 

[sarawells]

Is anyone from Canvas monitoring this thread? The graphics issue is clearly an ongoing problem that needs to be addressed by Canvas technicians in a way that far surpasses the advice to clear one's cache. I've loaded graphics directly in a given course, and the issue persists. If someone from Canvas would reply here, that would be helpful. Many thanks for your assistance. 

[mfreedman3]

Sara,

I opened this thread a while ago. Here's what I know:

- Canvas has told me that they do not monitor the community forums, which I

think is a big mistake - a sign of a company that is not being proactive.

- They ask that we open tickets through our Admins, with a link to the page

and a screen shot of the issue (I use the MS snipping tool)

- If you like, reference my case # 03211628

- They've tried to fix it, but I still see folks posting in this thread.

And i just saw it again a week or so ago.

Good luck... Michael

On Thu, Feb 7, 2019 at 11:34 AM sarawells@fuller.edu <instructure@jiveon.com>

[sarawells]

Thanks, Michael! I am a Canvas admin and also teach courses. I'll open a new ticket, and I'll reference your case number. Thank you for your quick response!

[mfreedman3]

I also just posted in the admin forum... (I are one too

https://community.canvaslms.com/message/135548-disappearing-graphics

On Thu, Feb 7, 2019 at 12:56 PM sarawells@fuller.edu <instructure@jiveon.com>

[Renee_Carney]

 @mfreedman3  

- Canvas has told me that they do not monitor the community forums, which I think is a big mistake - a sign of a company that is not being proactive.

• Michael.  I wanted to begin by addressing this.  I think you may have taken the support individuals words out of context.  Our friends in support that are working tickets are very focused on tickets and do not read Community posts.  We have an entire Community team that does monitor the community, actively engages, and provides important feedback, user stories, and perspective across the company.

- They ask that we open tickets through our Admins, with a link to the page and a screen shot of the issue (I use the MS snipping tool)

• It is actually up to the school how they structure their support.  We do not make that choice.  When i worked for a school our users had a direct line to support.  There are schools though that for their own good reasons want their users to submit support cases through their local admins first.

- They've tried to fix it, but I still see folks posting in this thread. And i just saw it again a week or so ago.

• The cause of broken images is hard to chase down.  There are so many factors that come into play, including browser.  So this does need to be handled through support.  And it is important to initiate your support case from where you are experiencing the problem (go to the page with the broken images, click help, click support a ticket).  Our support friends are able to pull important information from that submission.  If they ask for screenshots, that means they need them, so please do help them help you!

[mfreedman3]

Renee, thanks for addressing this. Your response feels harsh to me.

I don't lightly say this. I was actually told that Canvas does not monitor

forums directly. I raised this to my support team in a friendly way and

had that confirmed. If that has changed, then that's good to hear.

I was told a few times to have users go trough their admins, so I should

have been given better information. It also would have been helpful if

someone from Canvas had made comments in the community thread.

If you see my responses in this thread and in the ticket, you will see that

I recognize the difficulty of trouble shooting this, am complying with

support team requirements, and am being helpful.

Michael

On Thu, Feb 7, 2019 at 1:12 PM rcarney@instructure.com <

[Renee_Carney]

Hey  @mfreedman3 

Sorry if my response felt harsh, that wasn't the intention at all.  I just recognized that there were a few misconceptions in your text that we needed to clear up and I wanted to make sure to do so as directly as possible!

Thanks so much for continuing to work with support on this!

If you want to see our Community team, you can check us out here. 

[mfreedman3]

Thanks Renee, let's move past that and focus on the disappearing graphics

issue.

I recognize that some problems are difficult to trouble shoot, and continue

to support your efforts to resolve this. If Canvas could provide the

followers of this thread some sense of progress, I think that would be

helpful and believe the users would be glad to provide support for the

effort.

M

On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 7:27 AM rcarney@instructure.com <

[Renee_Carney]

 @mfreedman3 

When it is a bug, we usually do not provide updates in a community thread, for we want and need people to use their support tickets.  We have no problem with people using a thread like this to communicate about what they discover through their support tickets though.

We do have a space called Canvas Labs‌ where we post some of the most widespread known issues.  This space is accessible to admins.  I just searched it for a broken images post and do not see one there, so we don't have any additional information posted in the community at this time.

Please feel free to keep conversing with others in this thread!  You've shared your ticket number, which is helpful to others as well, but the support troubleshooting and communications will be going through your ticket!

[Amanda_L_Albrig]

Renee,

Who exactly has access to the Canvas Labs site. I, for example, am one of many Admins on my Campus for Canvas; however, I just tried to access Canvas Labs and received an Unauthorized message.

Amanda

Sent from my iPad

[Renee_Carney]

 @Amanda_L_Albrig ‌ it is usually the primary admin.   They speak with your CSM if there should be a different designee.

[sarawells]

Hi Renee, 

I echo Amanda's issue--I also have admin access but am unable to access the site. Do you depend on the "primary admin" for a given institution to use this particular location in order to post debilitating issues with Canvas? 

[Renee_Carney]

 @sarawells 

Please speak with your CSM.  The labs space is not for posting.  It is for consuming information.

[josuecarames]

Hi @Sara and @Renee, 

I have the same issue and I am the primary admin and I do not have access to the site. On another note, the solution about clearing the cache is on a user basis, which is not a solution to the problem. The issue should be fixed in Canva's code so pictures are reretrieved everytime they are needed or are updated . It is not a viable solution if we need to ask thousands of our users to clear the cache everytime they cannot see images. How do you think they are going to react? Do they/we have these issues when we access pages such as Google, Apple, and so on? Again, the problem is not on the user end.

P.S. image not loading · Issue #1413 · instructure/canvas-lms · GitHub 

[jal18]

Agreed. This has been an issue for far too long.

[s_carter]

Dear Josue,

You are exactly right - Canvas needs to fix this problem. The current answers given to tickets are not a viable solution.

[s_carter]

Couldn’t agree more

I have just submitted yet another ticket and been told yet again to clear my cache and change browser- to the browser I am using. This issue is so widespread it cannot be an issue with individual users

Sent from my iPhone

[jknippers]

Hello everyone,

To throw our two cents in- we are having the same issue! We were in the middle of preparing to do a redesign of our Canvas courses that would have a much better look and feel to it, but one that was also graphic heavy. As an institution, we design and layout all of our online courses for our professors. So the primary way we have done this is to create what we call a "primary" (i.e. template) and then import from this primary when building out each course. Canvas support did help me to find an issue that the graphics need to be loaded into the actual course and not just point back to the template. We fixed that and I loaded each graphic into the course itself, but now even this morning I still have disappearing graphics. Also, with only two IDs on my team to build all of our courses, it is not feasible to have them load all of the graphics for every single course. So, I guess we are on to plan #B. I am very interested to hear if this issue is ever resolved because from reading everything on here it is obviously a Canvas wide issue and not only our problem.

[Renee_Carney]

 @jknippers  

It's very hard to compare one broken image issue to another, which is why we need you to submit this through support.  While the symptom looks the same, the root cause could be very different?  We can't know unless you submit a support ticket so our engineers can dig in.

[jknippers]

Hi Renee,

The issue has been submitted to support.

[acompton · Accepted solution]

We are also battling this problem and it is getting more prevalent. We've submitted multiple tickets, and our faculty have also submitted individual tickets. The popular response is to clear the cache or use another browser. Neither of these are appropriate fixes. One of our IDs is clearing her cache a minimum of once a week. She also teaches as an adjunct at another university and is having the same issue with her courses there as well. We were initially told that Instructure wasn't aware of any problems with missing/disappearing images, that there was something a couple of years ago that had long been resolved. It is getting frustrating.

Some of our faculty have removed all images from their courses because of this, and that cannot continue to happen. My next fear is that it will happen to a student taking an exam/quiz where they have to identify something in an image, but the image doesn't show up (many of our science faculty use images in this manner). For an online class, this is a one attempt assessment that is normally timed. When this happens, this student is panicked. Bottom line...this is happening in multiple browsers (all supported), at multiple institutions, on multiple networks, on multiple devices. I understand there can be many reasons for why it is happening, but I'd like for support to acknowledge that it is a real issue and they are working to resolve it. Canvas is such a great LMS and has had such great support. This particular issue is causing frustration, and we're hearing it from our faculty and feeling it ourselves.

[gibbonsd]

I am just curious.  What is the network condition or network performance of the networks the IDs and Adjunct Faculty using?

I always see disappearing graphics on my HughesNet Satellite.  My home is approximately 22,000 miles away from the HughesNet satellite in space.  One of the many reasons why I recommend students not take exams on a satellite ISP if that is possible.

The disappearing graphics on HughesNet Satellite occurs almost clockwork every other weekend.

However, the same time with my Verizon Wireless Hotspot, so far, has never seen disappearing graphics.
I use my Verizon Wireless Hotspot as a backup to verify the technical issue with my HughesNet Satellite.

When my HughesNet Satellite shows issues with Canvas disappearing graphics, I will switch to my Verizon Wireless Hotspot, so far, I have been unable to duplicate the problem on Verizon Wireless Hotspot.

The other time I saw disappearing graphics was dealing with a Firewall's Whitelist issues or fast-food restaurant's Free Wi-Fi network (I have my Verizon Wireless Hotspot as a backup).

[acompton]

Hi Dona,

This issue is happening on our campus, so unfortunately it isn't an issue of connectivity or poor network performance. It is through ethernet connection to the campus network. 

Andrea

[andrew_sheppard]

This issue is being marked as resolved, but the problem persists across multiple devices, and multiple institutions.  

[dwillmore]

I wanted to post the response we received from L2 Canvas Support.    I have removed the technician's name as this is an issue with support and not a single technician.

Thank you again for reaching out to me. In my time with Canvas, I have seen many instances where images were not being displayed in courses. That being said, almost all of the scenarios that I have encountered had to do with image links being in the wrong course. I have also seen instances where image links were added accidentally with verifiers that expired and didn't give users access. I have seen instances where University's were using network caching that reused old verifier links after they had expired. I have seen issues where users have images cached in their browser that they no longer or didn't have access to at the time.

While this doesn't encompass everything I've seen, not every image display issue is equivalent. In the earlier example you provided me, we were seeing an image that was housed in a different course. In the course Jerol sent, that is not the case. I am happy to troubleshoot and get to the root cause of each of the image display issues you are encountering. In the event our developers have made a mistake, which has happened in the past, I am more than happy to get a ticket to them. In order to do this, we do need to be able to replicate and verify incorrect behavior. Currently, I haven't seen an instance of that with this case, but I am hoping Jerol's network traffic logs when trying to view their course banner image will provide more clarity as to what is causing the display discrepancy.

While I stand by for Jerol's network traffic log/screenshot, If you have other image display scenarios that you would like me to investigate, please let me know.

Thank you,

xxxx - L2 Canvas Technical Support

[theresa_mcrae]

This is happening to me ALL THE TIME. And when the graphics disappear, they stay disappeared.

It's a big problem on exams, especially as I usually use question groups, with randomly-assigned questions within the group. If the graphic disappears for one question but not another, some students  will be able to see the graphic for that question but others will not.

EXAMPLE: I might have a question group about tissues and some students would see a picture of cardiac muscle, others of bone, and others of kidney tubules. If even one of these graphics disappears, there's no way to delete the question once students have started to take the test, and trying to be fair in this situation is a nightmare!

I ended up putting anything with a graphic in a standalone question group - but now everybody gets the same graphic, and "sharing" is so prevalent, that there's no point in even asking the question.

[andrew_sheppard]

This problem remains unsolved for countless schools and courses.  

This problem is more wide-spread than most people recognize because the images appear when instructors are creating and editing pages. Instructors will only notice the images are missing if they toggle over to student view.  (And why would an instructor need to toggle to student view to confirm an image appears if it appears for them after they saved the page?)

This problem cannot be over-stated. Imagine if a person came into a classroom and erased images from a whiteboard or chalkboard. The instructor can't tell it has happened, but the students don't see the images. That would be intolerable. Now, imagine a student is taking a quiz and asked to solve a problem based on an image, and the image doesn't appear. They alert their instructor. The instructor looks and sees the image from their perspective and tells the student to call the "help desk."  This is happening at multiple institutions across multiple courses as others here have noted. 

Instructure - *please* take ownership of this problem. Use your internal resources to investigate and resolve this problem. The recurrence of this problem also weakens the overall accessibility of the platform. Images are often necessary to explain complex ideas and concepts. Try to understand that educators have real time constraints and don't have time to investigate these issues independently. We aren't talking about an occasional intermittent error. This is an easily replicable problem. Please do better. 

[TracyBennett]

I'm having the same problem (only with quiz images) and I've done everything that was suggested as a fix. I was able to relocate quiz images in Files and change them from "Only available with link" to "Published". But that only change some of the images from blank boxes with a broken link to blank boxes with a small question mark in the center, and in some cases, just shrunk the box to a small square. This is very frustrating since I have images on every quiz I make. It's also disappointing that several people have been having this problem for so long (back to 2017) and it's still happening!!