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?‌) 

[Renee_Carney]

 @mfreedman3  

I'm sorry this feels like a struggle to you, but I can assure you that we're all here to help find the best solution.  Making your CSM aware is great, but I'd also encourage you to follow up with the support ticket and help them escalate and research/troubleshoot further.

To you're point #2, I have found that it is very common to try/recommend a cache clear as the first troubleshooting activity; browsers do funny things.

Support folks have a baseline of troubleshooting questions that they start with, so what the support person sent you wasn't for lack of trying, they have to start somewhere.  What I haven't seen in this thread is if you have actually tried a different browser or a different computer when you are seeing this issue yourself?  I know that your students are experiencing this sometimes, and it's more difficult to troubleshoot with them.  This is why I ask if you have tried it?

There is also a chrome add-on that you might want to try?  Stefanie found this tool not too long ago and it has worked fabulous when we've needed to troubleshoot cache/cookie issues with Jive for our community users.  EditThisCookie - Chrome Web Store 

[mfreedman3]

Rene, thanks for mediating.

I am copying progress to both sources: keeping those in this

thread informed of tech support's suggestions, and sharing comments from

this group in the ticket (#03211628). Are you able to see the ticket?

I am not playing one group against the other but trying to bridge the

structural divide that exists between the community forum and the help desk.

You can see in the community thread some frustration (help desk is

stonewalling). Please understand that I am pursuing this from a 'we're in it

together' posture. We both, collectively, have the same customers and want

Canvas to be flawless.

My take is that this is a tricky, occasional issue that needs attention.

Consider this argument: even if clearing the cache is the solution, do we

(Canvas and Canvas customers) want to have to periodically tell our users

that this is the solution? It is a significant inconvenience. As I said, I

know of no other Saas Application that has this problem. So, even if it is

the nature of JPGs on Canvas to occasionally disappear, then it is a design

opportunity to solve. As the provider, I believe Canvas has to take

ownership of this and ferret out the solution or come up with an alternate

design.

Michael

On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 7:57 AM, Renee Carney <instructure@jiveon.com>

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @mfreedman3 

Part of me wants to side with Instructure on this, and just because the major browsers seem to update about every 49 seconds, and I don't know how an app programmer could ever keep up.

However, I also note that I (and many other folks) use a great many web-apps, and I don't think I have ever had to switch browsers to keep any of those other web apps working. And, out of all the many apps I use, there are only a few that are not totally browser agnostic. So somewhere in the world of web-app development, there is a coding formula that keeps the app current with any browser with any current revision - yes, I recognize that some apps will not perform well on some outdated browsers.

I hate telling my users that if Canvas starts performing poorly on one browser, they should try another one. I also hate telling my users that they really should avoid IE and Edge, despite being listed as supported browsers, because Canvas really does perform very poorly on both of them. I have users who will ask me what I mean when I say "browser", so the thought of switching browsers is a true inconvenience for them.

I am not a coder, so I have no understanding of what it takes to make things work as expected on a browser, but I still trust Instructure's Canvas engineers to work it out. I am, however, becoming a tad bit uneasy about Canvas Support. I have experienced a couple brush-offs and incorrect answers recently, I know our entire state CTC system had to sic our guard-dog CSMs on them recently to get an issue fixed, and I hear other similar stories in here. I suspect that may be an effect of the very rapid growth of Canvas over the last couple years. Perhaps training issues, or perhaps just not a sufficient access to engineers, I don't know, but I hope that improves, as it has always been one of the very best things about working with Instructure.

Kelley

[mfreedman3]

Kelly, thanks for your comments.

I see this as a management issue. When Instructure was smaller, as with any

start-up, they were hungrier, more customer focused. As organizations grow,

it is natural to systematize processes and add layers; and for lower level

employees to hide in their silos. It is up to the management to sustain the

customer-focus value, to grab ahold of any quality issue and chase it down.

It doesn't matter to me where the fix is - if it's pilot error, great.

Re-educate the users. But Canvas needs to own this, directly respond to the

users, and not let it fester in the community.

Michael

On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 8:39 AM, Kelley L. Meeusen <instructure@jiveon.com>

[jal18]

As numerous individuals have commented, many of us have tried multiple browsers, different computers, cache clearing etc... These efforts only provide a temporary fix. Clearly, this issue goes well beyond one individual, one computer or one browser. We cannot ask our learners to continually clear cache or add third-party add-ons to browsers. This seems to be a prolonged systemic problem within the Canvas LMS that needs to addressed globally.

[Renee_Carney]

Please know, I wasn't suggesting different browsers, computers, or a cache clear as a fix, and I don't think support was either.  It is a first step in troubleshooting and identifying a root of a problem.  As Stefanie and others have said, this problem can present for so many different reasons that it's important to narrow down.

[andrew_sheppard]

Respectfully, why doesn't Instructure try creating several courses within their own instance of Canvas and re-create the problem and troubleshoot it internally? This is such an easily replicable problem. It's clear that this problem is impacting multiple users and multiple institutions. The suggestion to "try clearing your browse" is not helpful given a problem of this scale and severity. 

[wendy_fletcher]

yes couldn't agree more, some of my(distance) students are 5 years old! I can't ask them to clear caches.....issue needs fixing by canvas so its not students having missing images when those images are actually sitting there in correct spots linked or embedded correctly in the course.

[elizabeth_schoe]

I, too, have had this problem intermittently over the last year and half or so, however, it is only the students who have it (I use a Mac, by the way).  I put images in tons of quiz questions, and then this problem shows up occasionally.  When I suggest different browsers to the students, it doesn't work.  I have never heard, nor suggested, the cache issue.  For me, it has always happened with quiz questions that were created in an earlier Canvas course that I then imported into the new course, so the files don't actually exist in the current course.  My fix has been to re-upload the image directly into that course, delete the image from the quiz question, and then re-add it from the file that now exists in the course.  While this works for my issues, it undermines the whole value of importing content into the course if I have to go back and remake it.

[kimberly_smith1]

Hello  @elizabeth_schoe  ,

I could see why the images used in Course A quizzes might not load as images into quizzes that were imported into Course B unless the images in the Course A Files were also imported. In case it helps, I always upload any images that I use in my courses into my Course Files first - before using them in a quiz. Then, when importing content from one course to the next, I always import the Course Files images as well. Even so, I still run into this disappearing images issue periodically. 

[elizabeth_schoe]

This is super helpful! Thank you!

[kmeeusen]

I guess every company has its buggaboo (persistent challenges if you don't speak "Kelley"), and for Canvas it seems to be browsers.

I started using IE when it first came out in 1995. I started teaching online not long after that, and continued to use IE without issue. Over the years I switched LMSs several times and through all those transitions/migrations I continued to use IE. Then in 2012 I/we/our CTC system switched to Canvas. I promptly had to switch to Firefox, because I heard Canvas performance was consistent on it, but was clearly not performing well on IE. Canvas still seems to perform fairly consistently on Firefox and equally so on Chrome (thank God), but it is hit or miss with other browsers. Lately (I hate it when old people say "lately", because that could mean any time in the last decade or two) Canvas has been periodically hinky (another Kelley term) in Firefox, and awhile back it was almost useless to attempt to use Canvas in Chrome.

I think I am going to simply chalk it up to this whole silly age of information technology infancy thing. Go with the flow. Stay flexible, and all that stuff!

He who remains flexible shall not be bent out of shape! Besides, at my age if I don't stay flexible, I could break a hip, or my mind or something!

Kelley

[mfreedman3]

(hope the emoji comes through)

This is the sorry state of our tech marketplace:

1) Interoperability challenges - there are so many moving parts it is

inevitable that there be compatibility issues.

2) Development pushes out patches and releases as quickly as possible in

accordance with Agile methodology: meaning they rely on the customer for

feedback - no QA test lab can do it all.

3) There are all kinds of emotional barriers to escalation. The presumption

is that the tech guys know their stuff. So they drop the first line fix

(clear the cache) on the user, who just goes along. Heck, it must be pilot

error. "I must be an idiot." If I couldn't pull together so social proof

from this thread - other users citing their own experience - that's where

this issue would die: an unresolved minor issue.

Therefore: organizations need to be ever so vigilant in reaching across

barriers to nip little niggling issues in the bud before trust between user

and support is broken. This is how tech companies die. They stay in

their bubbles. Goodwill is squandered.

M

On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 9:26 AM, rcarney@instructure.com <

[Renee_Carney]

 @mfreedman3  

Ok, I took a look at your ticket, and I dove deeper in conversation with one of our support managers - who also looked at your ticket.

Before looking at the tickets she had many anecdotal cases similar to what people have posted in this thread, including: 

there's _usually_ a good reason for this happening. One I saw the other day was linking directly to pictures hosted on another site that required a login, and thus the images were not accessible for viewing anywhere else. The same is true for images hosted somewhere with site settings keeping them from being allowed to be viewed anywhere else.

We've also seen that for users who have somehow (because of settings on their computer image used for all school computers) viewed the page using old stored info on the machine - i.e. their machine sent the wrong time in its communication with the web browser and it couldn't pull up the correct, updated info.
_sometimes_ there's a bug ... but I haven't seen a recent one
need examples! links!

And her last sentence there is exactly what we need!  Your ticket keeps referring the support individuals back to this thread, which is good for context, but there is no solid example (link to a course) in this thread or in the ticket.  In order to take the next steps in troubleshooting our support friends need to have access to examples.  

[mfreedman3]

The initial ticket included a screenshot of the missing graphic.

See also the post from Kimberly Smith @ Jun 21, 2018 10:04 PM

<https://community.canvaslms.com/message/106965-re-disappearing-graphics?commentID=106965&et=notification.mention#comment-106809>

All, please post screenshots of missing graphics here as you find them...

On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 9:33 AM, Renee Carney <instructure@jiveon.com>

[Renee_Carney]

We saw those, Michael, but a screenshot doesn't help us troubleshoot this issue - so doing an all call for more screenshots will not help us solve this.  We need a link to the course with the problem element, and we need to know who was having the problem and if possible what tech they were using.  The ideal way to submit this ticket is to go to (or have the user go to) the problem element and use the help menu to 'submit a ticket' from that location.  It gives our support team invaluable information.

[mfreedman3]

Thanks, Renee. I will work to assist with these guidelines...

[John_Lowe]

In the ~20 minute phone call regarding case 03578688 (as just one example from our institution), this faculty member reported numerous questions in several quizzes in a few different courses.  There are many specific examples being reported to Instructure Support.  I think  @mfreedman3 ‌ is just trying to illustrate that there are numerous reports of these problems coming in over the last several months.  Until Instructure support seems to realize that there is a larger problem, bringing attention to the many examples here in the community is helpful to hopefully change the mindset of the support agent from troubleshooting these as isolated incidents to realizing that there is an underlying systemic problem.  Yes, specific details help, but those specific details alone don't change the support agent's mindset beyond those specific case details to viewing this as a larger, widespread problem.  The numerous isolated cases need to be tagged by Support under a common Jira so that they can be collected, analyzed, and properly resolved rather than every single open support case being viewed as an independent and isolated problem blamed on improper caching or other such nonsense.  I understand that each support agent needs to start somewhere, and browser issues are a great place to start with individual, isolated problems.  However, starting there is a sure sign that this particular issue still isn't being viewed as anything more than individual, isolated problems.  If the support agent started with a Jira about a wide-spread issue (which this clearly is as supported by so many different threads here in the community), people would likely be less frustrated by the "clear your cache" solutions being offered.

[mfreedman3]

The net result of my ticket and this thread so far:

- Instructure support does not monitor these threads, so we are only

increasing our awareness in the community, not Instructure's.

- Instructure recognized the problem and released a fix a few months ago.

Based on the comments here, the problem continues.

- Instructure asked that we all report these instances through our admins

so that our actions fit their process. I have not seen reports of any other

tickets posted in this thread.

I am not aware that Instructure considers this an open issue. If other

users post their ticket #'s here, perhaps we could be a big picture view.

If this does look widespread, we could then refer this data to our account

team for escalation.

Michael

[kimberly_smith1]

Hello   @mfreedman3  

This does appear to be a widespread issue. I actually spent time in the past trying to do exactly as you suggest - by requesting that others post their case numbers here in the Community, and then copy/pasting the posted ticket numbers posted into the various locations where comments about this issue have been posted. Sadly, that was enough to get this resolved more permanently  Our institution does not have a CMS - so I do not know how else to increase Instructure's awareness. Thus, I now just cross my fingers and hope that the issue doesn't reappear during one of my online exams (which will often include images that are needed to answer the exam question). Even so... here are some links to places where others have posted those case/ticket #s that have been submitted to Canvas on this issue - in case it helps. You will note, however, that these have all been marked as 'Answered' - so (unfortunately) likely not considered an 'open issue' in Canvas. 

Broken Images After Uploading 

Images not Posting on Canvas Quizzes 

Images embedded in Pages disappear/reappear at random?

(very) odd embedded image behavior 

 Quiz images not displaying 

Images sometimes appearing as broken, sometimes not 

Why are my jpeg images disappearing?!!! 

[John_Lowe]

This is our most recent case: 03578688

[jonesn16]

Just to help illustrate the scope of this issue, images will sporadically fail to load. It happens:

-across different browsers

-across different networks

-across different computers, Mac and PC

-across different instances of Canvas ( I use Canvas for my job at one institution and I am a grad student using Canvas at a different institution)

-across different Canvas logins (my coworkers/faculty I work with have also experienced this)

Clearly this is an issue inherent to Canvas. What was upsetting is when I contacted Canvas tech support I was told that I should expect to clear my caches as a regular part of Canvas as a regular part of use. Which is ridiculous. My school just transitioned from Blackboard, and  trying to imagine how the initial sales pitch would have gone if the Instructure guy giving a demo had said “also, you’ll need to teach all your students and faculty how to manually clear their caches.”

I’m salty for two reasons: first, because in so many ways I think Canvas is a dramatic improvement over our old LMS, so this problem stands out even more. Second, I’m really surprised by the lack of an effective reaction from Canvas support. 

[karen_bowden]

In reply to "Renee Carney@ Michael Freedman on Jun 22, 2018 12:59 PM

We saw those, Michael, but a screenshot doesn't help us troubleshoot this issue - so doing an all call for more screenshots will not help us solve this.  We need a link to the course with the problem element, and we need to know who was having the problem and if possible what tech they were using.  The ideal way to submit this ticket is to go to (or have the user go to) the problem element and use the help menu to 'submit a ticket' from that location.  It gives our support team invaluable information."

Unfortunately, Renee, it won't help to send a link to the course each time because within moments the image is sometimes "magically" there again.

A possible solution to help Canvas Support see this intermittent problem is to call (on the phone) Canvas Support when we see the issue on our screen. Then connect via a web conference and share our screen so they can see the problem as it happens. What they will probably see (finally) is what we see.

The image is not there.

Then it's there. 

We've been experiencing this problem where I work, too. To help stop the problem we are doing two things:

1. We stopped using images connected to Flickr. Instead, we upload our own or they are added during a course import. (I read the above post where it is now advisable to then go in to the new course, delete the images and re-upload them.)

2. If it's a "button" I've shown and offered our department team the option to use HTML instead of an image. 

Regarding support, I'd be curious to know if anyone has pulled a report showing the number of incidents related to the problem.

How many times has this problem already been reported from various customers?

What is the root cause in each situation?

Has a pattern been discerned yet?

I'm sure the people working on the Support team are just as frustrated by this problem as we are. However, the elusiveness of the issue is the obstacle.

Canvas is already a great product. We are trying to help make Canvas the best product possible. 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello everyone...

I'd like to re-summarize my post from last week.  It seems like many of you are saying this is an issue on Instructure's end.  While I cannot say for certain one way or the other if this is the case, I can tell you that working with our IT staff on-campus resolved broken image issues that cropped up for us recently.  And, it may be worth investigation on your end to talk with your IT folks to see if there are similar issues that need to be addressed.  The information I'm providing here is from one of our IT networking staff, so I won't be able to answer a lot of questions about this...I'm only providing the information.  I provided him with a Canvas page URL where broken images were occurring.

Conversation on June 18, 2018

• It's possible that a related HOST was tagged as malicious by the IPS system.
• s3.amazonaws.com was tagged as DNS malicious
  and I see one of the lookup addresses is instructure-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com.
  The information comes from Cisco Talos (threat logging intelligence groups), based on their security intelligence
  likely another host on the amazon web services s3 cluster was causing problems
  and the whole domain got tagged
• Whitelisted the following: instructure-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com and s3.amazonaws.com in our IPS, because Cisco was reporting these DNS names as DNS Malware.
• FYI - https://www.talosintelligence.com/reputation_center/lookup?search=s3.amazonaws.com
  About 3/4 of the way down the page: Blacklists
  Talos Security Intelligence Blacklist
  Blacklisted Yes
  Classification malware
  First Seen 2016-09-14T23:00:00 UTC
  Expiration Date 2018-06-18T16:46:24 UTC

Once he whitelisted these, our images re-appeared in our courses and on the Canvas Dashboard.

[tuk03990]

Has this continued to work?

[Chris_Hofer]

So far, so good,  @tuk03990 .  

[John_Lowe]

The problem with that solution is that it assumes all of your users are accessing Canvas from the same location.  That may be true in K-12, but it is certainly not true in Higher Ed.  We cannot expect users around the globe to speak with their Internet service providers to whitelist specific Instructure resources.

[stelpstra]

Chrome, Firefox and other browsers offer out of the box the ability to view and export underlying network traffic of a specific webpage. To understand this stuff and make sense of it you (or a helpful colleague) have to be quite an experienced techie (Instructure has lots of those :smileygrin:)

Here is an example of what you could see:

See Network Monitor - Firefox Developer Tools | MDN 

This way you can see all the traffic that make up the page.

It is also possible to export this to a HAR file to be analysed in different tools.

This illustrates how that would work:

To analyse a HAR file in full detail you can use this viewer: http://www.softwareishard.com/har/viewer/ 

Also take a look at HTTP response status codes - HTTP | MDN.

Note that 304 Not Modified is related to browser cache.

Note that this only works locally on the browser in which the page is loaded, as nobody can access this remotely due to browser security.

Be aware that this HAR file can contain sensitive data such as tokens and possibly privacy related data, so be careful who you send the HAR file (or screenshots of it) to.

[stelpstra]

In March 2017 I posted Did you experience missing content display or buttons not working, related to browser cache? 

Back then it seemed I was the only one, apparently not. It is good to share these experiences! And possible solutions too, or at least properly investigatable!

[b_w_reid]

We too have intermittently experienced this issue. I use chrome, and some days the pictures load, and others they don't. I'll post this to support when it occurs again!

[dholton]

Here's some guidance I wrote up for our school about this issue until better, more permanent fixes are found:

Circles of Innovation » Images Not Showing Up in Canvas? Here’s What You Can Do 

[Stef_retired]

 @dholton  Thank You so much for sharing this resource with the Community! Doug has received a thank-you badge and 100 points for helping others resolve this. 

[tellison]

Thank you  @dholton  for the tips‌.  I had this happen to me yesterday when copying a page over to another course.  I exported and tried to load the page.  It looked great and then I hit Save and it was similar images to what  @mfreedman3 ‌ posted.  Very frustrating.  I did get them to work through trial and error and reloading.

[cfelton1]

I'm not sure how accurate this is (I haven't seen it posted on Canvas sites), but I was told that with heavy network traffic, Canvas will sometimes load content and dump images. We have seen this happen to us. Sometimes switching a browser works, but not always. Usually (as other people have reported) the images come back after a while. 

[sue_valdeck]

This has been happening to us on and off for 2 years now. It disappears after a while but we can't fix it. It's not great because teachers new to the platform get really worried when it happens.

[kimberly_smith1]

I would say that instructors are rightfully worried when this happens - especially those of us who use images/graphics in our quiz questions. Last year this created chaos for both me and my students during an exam.

[s_carter]

This is a problem we have been experiencing as well - so good to know we are not the only ones struggling with this issue.

A partial fix for us was to make sure that all the images were loaded separately on each page from files, and not copied across from another page, but this has still not been a total fix.

One of the advantages of Canvas is that it offers the opportunity to provide an attractive learning environment for students - made much more difficult of course if images don't load!!

[thatcher_bohrma]

More information related to this topic.

We submitted ticket 02821817 1/29/18 for a teacher with missing images (multiple reports from the same person) and got a message that Canvas deployed a fix for the issue 2/21/18. Case was closed. We have recently received new reports from other teachers.

[Amanda_L_Albrig]

I ran into this in December 2017 and was told the issue was fixed. I'm wondering if something was done in the background again to break it.

----------message from 2017-----------------

Subject: Canvas Support: Images not appearing in Quizzes - Case #02668867

Hello:

Thank you for contacting Canvas Support. I understand that file links within the Final Quiz are showing as broken when students take the Quiz. In looking into this it appears that this may have been in relation to a previous bug that has since been fixed. I can see that when I try resetting the links by embedding the image from the course files at this time it displays the image correctly. Please follow the steps in THIS guide to get those image links reset and please let us know if users are still reporting trouble with this so we can take a closer look if needed.

Thank you!

[c_murphy]

Just adding in our voice to this - we have had this issue as well and it is a tremendous disadvantage when planning online and blended courses which rely on images which are informational rather than decorative. As a workaround we've offered a link to the graphic as well as embedding it, but this is not ideal. Something is definitely going on here.