I should have learned my lesson from all the problems I've had with Articulate Presenter but I thought with SL, this problem would go away. I was editing a screen recording (via the action fine tuning option) and SL froze on me. I gave it a few minutes (left, came back after 15 minutes), and it was still saving. So, I did the dreaded CTRL-ALT-DEL and did a force shutdown. Lo and behold, everything I've been doing the past 6 hours is gone..absolutely gone!
I am hoping and praying that SL has my temp files somewhere??? Please???? I'm desperate! Thanks in advance for any help/insight/advice this awesome community can share with me!
Hi Stephen! We do not have any updates on features or release dates for Storyline. Thank you for submitting your feature request though as they do go directly to our development team.
But my questions is and has been. When? When will you guys get a release out? All of my other software vendors do period releases and some even do hot patches when required. I am surprised by the lack of information regarding the sharing of a release date. Why would your company have such a policy? I feel like I bought something that has no future upgrades based on Articulate's lack of action. If this is the case, please let me know. If this not the case please let me know when I can expect an update. If your policy is not to share this information please let me know why you have this policy.
A little backtrack...your reply to me..."We do not have and updates..." Is that true? There are no updates? If that is true, why after one and ahalf years are you still resolving issues by asking people to submit a feature request?
We have been providing free updates to Storyline since we launched the software. The current live release is Update 3. We are actively working on Storyline and we are currently beta testing Update 4. You can review what we fixed or added in previous updates here. We do hope to have Update 4 out soon but I can't provide you with a specific date as to when we will be releasing it.
The reason why we typically do not provide a concrete release date is that we are working to provide a stable release and we wouldn't want to push something out that wasn't stable simply because we tied ourselves to that date.
If you have any other questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to ask.
Do you know if this update when it arrives ( I am putting $5 on December 25 on the "guess the release date" game) be a free update, or only a purchasable new version?
Product updates are free. The feature requested in this thread is something we are aware of but I honestly can't tell you when or if this feature will be included in either a product update or a version update.
This is very frustrating. While recording audio from a mic Storyline crashed. I lost over 2 hours worth of work. From this thread I can tell that others have voiced concern (and frustration) with your tool lacking the Autosave feature. What shocks me is that even after all these new releases, you neglect this aspect. I'll be saving my work every change going forward. I would stronly recommend that you add a dialog box to your startup that states "Storyline does not have an Autosave feature, save your work often to avoid work loss when our program crashes."
All of the reasons for not having autosave are fantastic IF Storyline itself was not "buggy" and did not crash every other hour. So very frustrating. Either implement autosave or fix the bugs that make this software crash!
Just my 2 cents after a frustrating few weeks working with storyline
I've been using the trial version and the company I work for are still deciding whether they will purchase a few seats of Storyline or not. The way I see it, this program has the best features around but the lack of an autosave feature is a total deal-breaker. Not to mention that the program is very slow and feels 'heavy' (yes, my computer surpasses the system requirements) and crashes WAY more frequently than any of the other ~10 pieces of software I use daily at work....and it's the ONLY ONE without an autosave feature.
I can say, without any exaggeration, that out of my last 20 hours of work on Storyline, a good 4-5 have been completely wasted on re-doing work after crashes, manually saving work (which, holy crap, takes long ~30 secs to save a project??) and general slowness.
I don't have any information to offer regarding when and if features will be included in future updates or versions. I know autosave is a commonly discussed feature request, but in regards to Storyline crashing, there are a few things you may want to check into that could cause odd or erratic behavior in Storyline:
I've been using the trial version and the company I work for are still deciding whether they will purchase a few seats of Storyline or not. The way I see it, this program has the best features around but the lack of an autosave feature is a total deal-breaker. Not to mention that the program is very slow and feels 'heavy' (yes, my computer surpasses the system requirements) and crashes WAY more frequently than any of the other ~10 pieces of software I use daily at work....and it's the ONLY ONE without an autosave feature.
I can say, without any exaggeration, that out of my last 20 hours of work on Storyline, a good 4-5 have been completely wasted on re-doing work after crashes, manually saving work (which, holy crap, takes long ~30 secs to save a project??) and general slowness.
Anyway, any updates on autosave?
Hi Camilo, ithe two closest competitors to Storyline do not have Autosave (lector, captivate). I would vote for auto recovery over autosave as I don't want to be interrupted whilst I work. Getting into a good habit of saving regularly will solve this ssue.
The slow program. may be an issue with your installation, I am sure support can help you with this
Thank you for your reply. I will try repairing the software and will contact your team with log errors if the problem persists, I really appreciate your help with this.
Judging from this thread alone it looks like autosave implementation requests have been there for at least 18 months. I really don't mean to be rude, but after 18 months (at least) of customer requests, backed by stories of how the lack of this feature negatively impacted their work, maybe it's time for your product managers to actually implement this or at least give your customers their official stance on the issue instead of continuously sending customers to what seems to be a "feature request black hole".
Phil, I haven't tried lector or captivate. I was referring to other software I use for different activities at work. By the way, I think you make an excellent point, autorecovery would be even better than an autosave feature
I wanted to let you know that we are aware of this request. Feature requests are reviewed by a group of people at Articulate, including myself, and I can assure that we do take them very seriously.
Regarding this particular request, I can tell you that an auto-save or auto-recovery feature is not something we are looking at implementing in the current version of Storyline but is certainly something we will consider for a future release.
I would agree that with how long saves take, I would not want to be interrupted by auto save.
But no plans at this time for auto-recovery either? I think that is a real mistake, I at least have that in Lectora and Captivate. I work only on my hard drive, and do save often, but just when I get into a groove and forget to save for 30-40 minutes is when things seem to crash on me.
I have to be honest, I prefer Storyline to the other two tools for numerous reasons. However, as an independent contractor, who must closely track all time spent, if I have to keep redoing my work, my current boss might have me and the rest of the team switch back to other tools.
This thread annoys me. Suddenly Storyline is crashing and people whine about it on a forum rather than talk to Articulate's technical support, or community? Sick and unfair.
I have NEVER had Storyline crash, even with 300MB video heavy files. It IS stable, and if it's not there will be a way to MAKE it stable. Give the support team a chance, please.
Two rules I learned back in Windows 3.1 days (yes, I'm that old):
1) If you're working on something IMPORTANT, shut down all other programs, and
2) Manually save every few minutes.
I have actually had auto-save crash other Windows programs at critical moments, so I can't say I'm a fan of it. It seems to start up irrespective of whether your PC processor is already running at 99% processing a video file or whatever. I hate it.
In saying that, if people want it I guess it would be worthwhile. Won't stop their computer from crashing though, for whatever reason that might be (maybe we will never know.....).
Hi Justin, when you say "Current Version" do you mean in the version 1 stream, or are you referring to the elusive, occasionally referenced and soon (we hope) to be released Storyline Version 2.
I trained myself (or my computers and software trained me!) many moons ago to save often and well. I'm genuinely surprised that this is an issue.
yes, I got myself trained, too. Computers are complex but direct, still, hard to comprehense, sometimes we are too late to know why it crashed, so before that, we just get ourselves more collaborative with PCs. I experienced crash for one time and lost work eg.2 hours. then I learnt smart and manually save my projects everytime I am done with one feature.
but my projects are small, I can't imagine when loads of work disappear.
BTW, @steve, shut down programs that are not necessary is one of my habits, too.
Here it is 2014 and it appears that this feature request is still unfulfilled. I, too, have lost hours of work due to crashes.
Developers: You have several fronts pushing against you on this. (1) Autosave has been part of MS Office for years, and "office people" are accustomed to it; (2) The pervasive spread of Google Docs is making it so that users don't even think about SAVING anymore, EVER - nevermind manually saving every 15 minutes; (3) the nature of the work done in this software is surgical and time consuming. It lends itself to periodic preservation simply because we don't have the capacity to remember every detail in retrospect as we move forward.
This problem has been addressed and mastered by other developers. You need to make this work. You have competitors.
Steve, I understand your frustration at losing data, but autosave is NOT going to stop crashes. I use Storyline on Windows 7 connected to a corporate LAN, with billions of junk software apps installed, and Storyline has NEVER crashed. Perhaps something about your using patterns or environment is causing it to crash, so check that:
You are only working with projects on your PC hard drive, DON'T save and work from the server
Make sure your computer isn't running programs in the background, such as archiving or virus scans. These are often automated in corporate environments.
Make sure your PC RAM and graphics capability is suitable for the file types/sizes you are using. I was working with Inkscape last night (Open source Vector graphics program) and was wondering why my iMac was so slow. After I zoomed out (making the image smaller on the screen), everything sped up. I put it down to my iMac's RAM and graphics rendering capability, NOT Inkscape.
It has also been said in this thread before, but I'll say it again.
CTRL + S. CTRL + S. CTRL + S.
This is the rule of thumb for anyone in the publishing industry. In fact, when you are working with large files, you DON'T want autosave because it may start at the same time as a graphic is being rendered, or an e-learning being converted to a SWF. The end result is that your computer is over-taxed and you end up with a lockup/crash (been there, done that, lesson learned). I have been publishing manuals for 15-years, and the first thing I do when ever I get a new computer is switch off auto-save.
Using CTRL + S is a preference thing, I know. But please don't diss a great product when the problem is not with the product, it is most likely with the environment/way with which it is being used.
Steve, I understand your frustration at losing data, but autosave is NOT going to stop crashes. I use Storyline on Windows 7 connected to a corporate LAN, with billions of junk software apps installed, and Storyline has NEVER crashed. Perhaps something about your using patterns or environment is causing it to crash, so check that:
You are only working with projects on your PC hard drive, DON'T save and work from the server
Make sure your computer isn't running programs in the background, such as archiving or virus scans. These are often automated in corporate environments.
Make sure your PC RAM and graphics capability is suitable for the file types/sizes you are using. I was working with Inkscape last night (Open source Vector graphics program) and was wondering why my iMac was so slow. After I zoomed out (making the image smaller on the screen), everything sped up. I put it down to my iMac's RAM and graphics rendering capability, NOT Inkscape.
It has also been said in this thread before, but I'll say it again.
CTRL + S. CTRL + S. CTRL + S.
This is the rule of thumb for anyone in the publishing industry. In fact, when you are working with large files, you DON'T want autosave because it may start at the same time as a graphic is being rendered, or an e-learning being converted to a SWF. The end result is that your computer is over-taxed and you end up with a lockup/crash (been there, done that, lesson learned). I have been publishing manuals for 15-years, and the first thing I do when ever I get a new computer is switch off auto-save.
Using CTRL + S is a preference thing, I know. But please don't diss a great product when the problem is not with the product, it is most likely with the environment/way with which it is being used.
I agree with this completely autosave is intrusive in something like storyline. Auto recovery would make a nice feature though
Just an FYI, that Storyline 2 now includes an auto recovery feature to help you retrieve your work if the application crashes for any reason. You can read more about how to set that up here.
54 Replies
Hi Stephen! We do not have any updates on features or release dates for Storyline. Thank you for submitting your feature request though as they do go directly to our development team.
For updates, be sure to follow along:
Word of Mouth Blog
Facebook
Twitter
But my questions is and has been. When? When will you guys get a release out? All of my other software vendors do period releases and some even do hot patches when required. I am surprised by the lack of information regarding the sharing of a release date. Why would your company have such a policy? I feel like I bought something that has no future upgrades based on Articulate's lack of action. If this is the case, please let me know. If this not the case please let me know when I can expect an update. If your policy is not to share this information please let me know why you have this policy.
A little backtrack...your reply to me..."We do not have and updates..." Is that true? There are no updates? If that is true, why after one and ahalf years are you still resolving issues by asking people to submit a feature request?
Feeling a little neglected out here.
Hi Stephen.
We have been providing free updates to Storyline since we launched the software. The current live release is Update 3. We are actively working on Storyline and we are currently beta testing Update 4. You can review what we fixed or added in previous updates here. We do hope to have Update 4 out soon but I can't provide you with a specific date as to when we will be releasing it.
The reason why we typically do not provide a concrete release date is that we are working to provide a stable release and we wouldn't want to push something out that wasn't stable simply because we tied ourselves to that date.
If you have any other questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to ask.
Do you know if this update when it arrives ( I am putting $5 on December 25 on the "guess the release date" game) be a free update, or only a purchasable new version?
Hi Stanton.
Product updates are free. The feature requested in this thread is something we are aware of but I honestly can't tell you when or if this feature will be included in either a product update or a version update.
This is very frustrating. While recording audio from a mic Storyline crashed. I lost over 2 hours worth of work. From this thread I can tell that others have voiced concern (and frustration) with your tool lacking the Autosave feature. What shocks me is that even after all these new releases, you neglect this aspect. I'll be saving my work every change going forward. I would stronly recommend that you add a dialog box to your startup that states "Storyline does not have an Autosave feature, save your work often to avoid work loss when our program crashes."
$5? You are on. I guess February 4th 2014.
All of the reasons for not having autosave are fantastic IF Storyline itself was not "buggy" and did not crash every other hour. So very frustrating. Either implement autosave or fix the bugs that make this software crash!
Just my 2 cents after a frustrating few weeks working with storyline
No autosave? Not very user-friendly for an industry leader. Oh well, guess I'll just get used to hitting CTRL-S every 5 minutes or so
Are there any updates on this?
I've been using the trial version and the company I work for are still deciding whether they will purchase a few seats of Storyline or not. The way I see it, this program has the best features around but the lack of an autosave feature is a total deal-breaker. Not to mention that the program is very slow and feels 'heavy' (yes, my computer surpasses the system requirements) and crashes WAY more frequently than any of the other ~10 pieces of software I use daily at work....and it's the ONLY ONE without an autosave feature.
I can say, without any exaggeration, that out of my last 20 hours of work on Storyline, a good 4-5 have been completely wasted on re-doing work after crashes, manually saving work (which, holy crap, takes long ~30 secs to save a project??) and general slowness.
Anyway, any updates on autosave?
Hi Camilo and welcome to Heroes!
I don't have any information to offer regarding when and if features will be included in future updates or versions. I know autosave is a commonly discussed feature request, but in regards to Storyline crashing, there are a few things you may want to check into that could cause odd or erratic behavior in Storyline:
I hope that those help determine why Storyline may be crashing, and please feel free to keep me updated on what you find.
Hi Camilo, ithe two closest competitors to Storyline do not have Autosave (lector, captivate). I would vote for auto recovery over autosave as I don't want to be interrupted whilst I work. Getting into a good habit of saving regularly will solve this ssue.
The slow program. may be an issue with your installation, I am sure support can help you with this
Hi Ashley,
Thank you for your reply. I will try repairing the software and will contact your team with log errors if the problem persists, I really appreciate your help with this.
Judging from this thread alone it looks like autosave implementation requests have been there for at least 18 months. I really don't mean to be rude, but after 18 months (at least) of customer requests, backed by stories of how the lack of this feature negatively impacted their work, maybe it's time for your product managers to actually implement this or at least give your customers their official stance on the issue instead of continuously sending customers to what seems to be a "feature request black hole".
Phil, I haven't tried lector or captivate. I was referring to other software I use for different activities at work. By the way, I think you make an excellent point, autorecovery would be even better than an autosave feature
Hi Camilo.
I wanted to let you know that we are aware of this request. Feature requests are reviewed by a group of people at Articulate, including myself, and I can assure that we do take them very seriously.
Regarding this particular request, I can tell you that an auto-save or auto-recovery feature is not something we are looking at implementing in the current version of Storyline but is certainly something we will consider for a future release.
Hi Justin,
Thank you for your reply and clarification on where your team stands regarding the implementation of these features.
I'm happy to see how responsive and straightforward your support staff is on the forums, that's great!
I would agree that with how long saves take, I would not want to be interrupted by auto save.
But no plans at this time for auto-recovery either? I think that is a real mistake, I at least have that in Lectora and Captivate. I work only on my hard drive, and do save often, but just when I get into a groove and forget to save for 30-40 minutes is when things seem to crash on me.
I have to be honest, I prefer Storyline to the other two tools for numerous reasons. However, as an independent contractor, who must closely track all time spent, if I have to keep redoing my work, my current boss might have me and the rest of the team switch back to other tools.
Just my two cents,
Regina
I trained myself (or my computers and software trained me!) many moons ago to save often and well. I'm genuinely surprised that this is an issue.
This thread annoys me. Suddenly Storyline is crashing and people whine about it on a forum rather than talk to Articulate's technical support, or community? Sick and unfair.
I have NEVER had Storyline crash, even with 300MB video heavy files. It IS stable, and if it's not there will be a way to MAKE it stable. Give the support team a chance, please.
Two rules I learned back in Windows 3.1 days (yes, I'm that old):
1) If you're working on something IMPORTANT, shut down all other programs, and
2) Manually save every few minutes.
I have actually had auto-save crash other Windows programs at critical moments, so I can't say I'm a fan of it. It seems to start up irrespective of whether your PC processor is already running at 99% processing a video file or whatever. I hate it.
In saying that, if people want it I guess it would be worthwhile. Won't stop their computer from crashing though, for whatever reason that might be (maybe we will never know.....).
Hi Justin, when you say "Current Version" do you mean in the version 1 stream, or are you referring to the elusive, occasionally referenced and soon (we hope) to be released Storyline Version 2.
yes, I got myself trained, too. Computers are complex but direct, still, hard to comprehense, sometimes we are too late to know why it crashed, so before that, we just get ourselves more collaborative with PCs. I experienced crash for one time and lost work eg.2 hours. then I learnt smart and manually save my projects everytime I am done with one feature.
but my projects are small, I can't imagine when loads of work disappear.
BTW, @steve, shut down programs that are not necessary is one of my habits, too.
Here it is 2014 and it appears that this feature request is still unfulfilled. I, too, have lost hours of work due to crashes.
Developers: You have several fronts pushing against you on this. (1) Autosave has been part of MS Office for years, and "office people" are accustomed to it; (2) The pervasive spread of Google Docs is making it so that users don't even think about SAVING anymore, EVER - nevermind manually saving every 15 minutes; (3) the nature of the work done in this software is surgical and time consuming. It lends itself to periodic preservation simply because we don't have the capacity to remember every detail in retrospect as we move forward.
This problem has been addressed and mastered by other developers. You need to make this work. You have competitors.
Steve, I understand your frustration at losing data, but autosave is NOT going to stop crashes. I use Storyline on Windows 7 connected to a corporate LAN, with billions of junk software apps installed, and Storyline has NEVER crashed. Perhaps something about your using patterns or environment is causing it to crash, so check that:
It has also been said in this thread before, but I'll say it again.
CTRL + S. CTRL + S. CTRL + S.
This is the rule of thumb for anyone in the publishing industry. In fact, when you are working with large files, you DON'T want autosave because it may start at the same time as a graphic is being rendered, or an e-learning being converted to a SWF. The end result is that your computer is over-taxed and you end up with a lockup/crash (been there, done that, lesson learned). I have been publishing manuals for 15-years, and the first thing I do when ever I get a new computer is switch off auto-save.
Using CTRL + S is a preference thing, I know. But please don't diss a great product when the problem is not with the product, it is most likely with the environment/way with which it is being used.
I agree with this completely autosave is intrusive in something like storyline. Auto recovery would make a nice feature though
Try this piece of freeware. Works like a charm, even in Storyline.
http://www.door2windows.com/autosaver-save-the-file-you-are-working-on-automatically/
Hi Jason,
Just an FYI, that Storyline 2 now includes an auto recovery feature to help you retrieve your work if the application crashes for any reason. You can read more about how to set that up here.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.