HTML features

Is it possble to include the features of HTML files in Item Type 'Custom', namely using variable references, in HTML files used in Item Type 'HTML' or even better if used as background in any Item Type?

Greetings from Germany.
Henrik

Hi Henrik,

Could you give an example?

Blair

This would be nice for different reason.
At first I want to present some aspects participants entered before in a custom item with 4 fill-in-the-blank fields. Two of these aspects should now be presented on an introductory page to another questionnaire. On this page we only want to have some text and these aspects to be read out from the responses.xls. But when I code the page and use <var01> and <var02> as placeholders and Item Type 'HTML' the placeholders are not substituted. Finally I created a custom-item to display the aspects. The problem is that you need some form elements on the page and have the worse looking html-continue button. Luckily I found a way to include some no-harming form elements (a drop-down form with only one possibilitie). But it would be nicer to realize this without a workaround. Or to have some invisibile form elements...

The second situation was also in the same questionnaire. We want participants to rate words, and use the 'scale response' item type: A word on top and a 7-point response scale below. Because we like some elaborated Layout (i.e. different fontsize for the word and for the response button labels; the word centered on the screen) we used a html background. We centered the html file with the word and used the medialab way to label the buttons. Unfortunately we had to create a single html-file for every word. It would be quite nicer if the background html file could read out the variable name (<ml.varname>) so that you can use the same html file throughout the questionnaire.
We didn't use a custom item here because there participants have to make one click more on every page: Select their response and click on continue.

I attach the questionnaire that we finally build with 16 items, but I realized another one with more than 60 items. It was a really unpleasent work to create 60 html-files an name them. Especially because we dropped the questionnaire...

To confirm that I get it--allowing the insertion of variables into HTML items and HTML backgrounds, i.e., the same way you can do so for custom items, would make all of these issues go away?

Yes exactly. I am sorry for my horrible english.

Dein Englisch ist zweifellos besser als mein Deutscher. Ich denke, daß dieses eine große Idee ist und arbeiten wird, um zu sehen, daß es der folgenden Version als neue Eigenschaft hinzugefügt erhält :)

ps., please excuse the awful translation above. for the anglophiles in our audience--we will try to add Henrik's suggestion to the next version.

Hi, it seems that HTML items still (in v2008.1.22) cannot recognise variables from responses.xml. Is that correct or am I doing something wrong?

Basically, I want to be able to display responses back to the users with a nice HTML format. If I use Custom item for this, they cannot proceed by hitting 'space' or clicking 'continue'. If I add the .htm file in the BackImage file the variables are again not recognised. If I put it in the BackDoc I get an empty screen.

Thanks!

Hi. I'm confused about this as well. The help notes in MediaLab for 'variable reference' in 'Custom Items' include the following:

[INDENT][B]Note that you can also substitute calculated values from a [I]responses.xls[/I] values directly by placing the variable name in angular brackets. For example, if you had a calculated value of total in your [I]responses.xls[/I] file, you could enter [I]<total>[/I] in your HTML file and MediaLab would substitute the correct value at the time the HTML is displayed.

[/B][/INDENT]However, when I've try to present a variable like <total> as part of the text in an HTML file presented during an experiement it just isn't displayed. I know my variable name is correct because I've check it in the responses.xls file. Plus when I just use the 'Instructions' item and can display the variable (using <> brackets) without problem. Am I doing something wrong - or is it like stagaz suggests - Medialab can't do this yet?

Willie

Stumbled across this thread tonight...

This is actually possible - just inconvenient. See this sample:
[URL]http://www.empirisoft.com/support/showthread.php?t=3357[/URL]