Articulate for Mac? Please!!!!!

Hi all,

I just wanted to share this article, as it may have become buried in this longer thread but here is a great article on how to work within Storyline in a Mac. 

The horse is dead, but I hope the idea has life. I was about to test Storyline 2 (to say I despise Captivate doesn't do justice to the word 'despise') and was stunned to find there is no OS X version. 

It is 2016 and I read through 4 years of the same requests over and over with Articulate staff repeating the same bland patronizing responses over and over.

I'm not sure how long it took Articulate to produce Storyline, but I'm pretty sure it was done in less than 4 years. 

And the 'road map' response is simply disingenuous on its face. It's not a 'road map' question to ask IF Articulate will come out with a Mac-based product, and it's not a 'road map' response to confirm or deny this product will come out at some point. 

Blithely saying, "Oh...you want to buy the $1300 software but you're going to have to spend another $200..." for Parallels and a Win OS,  to essentially go back in time to be subjected to he hated windows software you likely escaped by converting to Mac in the first place...

It's not good enough, Articulate. It's really patronizing and annoying. You're losing customers, business and stature with the attitude...and it's beyond frustrating to read 4 years of 1970s Soviet-style non responses. 

Get it together please...I hope you're as embarrassed by your responses as you should be regarding 4 years of inaction.

...and yes I made a feature request...

Yeah they're never going to do it. Which is why the government agency I
work for has decided to start using captivate 9 because we all have
MacBooks and no one wants to carry around two laptops or give up half the
space on their mac to accommodate a company that refuses to release a Mac
version. They lost a lot of money.

Oh - I have to apologize (see Articulate, it's easy) for my mistake. It's not 4 years - I just found a different thread that goes back to September 2007. 

So it's 8.5 years. 

http://blogs.articulate.com/word-of-mouth/how-to-run-articulate-on-macs/

Mac users = Charlie Brown.
Articulate = Lucy.
Storyline 2 for Mac = Football

Ashley, I like most people don't want a workaround for mac. I want a mac version and will be forced to use Captivate, which makes a Mac version until you guys catch up. I'm not giving up a chunk of my hard drive to install windows, to install parallels, to run storyline. I was going to try to convince my agency to move to storyline, but until you offer a Mac version that request is as dead in the water as the request we keep making to articulate for a mac version. 

Hugh,

Well said.  I went through a nightmare last week as I migrated from a personal to corporate Apple machine.  In the process, I also had to switch from Parallels to Oracle Virtual Box and getting a proper corporate Windows image running on the bloody thing was hell....all for one single Windows application (Articulate Storyline).

I totally get the frustration of not having a Mac version, and the aversion to Windows. I feel the same way. Nonetheless, I work in a company that is Microsoft-centric and PC-exclusive.

I run Articulate products on my company-issued PC (Win 7) and tether it to my own Mac via an Ethernet cable and VNC software. (Virtual Network Computing).  VNC software is built into MacOS. However, I use TeamViewer VNC software because it adds features and is easy to set up. There are numerous VNC software solutions out there, a number of them free.

I get the full native speed of the PC and I don't have to compromise my Mac's hard disk or RAM--unlike Parallels and VMware emulators. It's truly the best of both worlds. The PC sits on the floor under my desk, lid closed, while I work on my iMac. In fact, I can do Mac work while the PC is grinding away publishing a Storyline file or doing its virus checking (ahem)--no Mac slowdown! And, I'm using my favorite Mac keyboard and mouse for both devices.

If your company doesn't support Windows, maybe you can diplomatically position the PC as a 'peripheral' needed to run your custom software (Articulate products), like needing a DVD burner or dongle or USB drive. Used PCs cost less than some peripherals and still have reasonable horsepower. 

Anyway, here's a screenshot of my iMac display. You'll see the VNC window in the middle, showing the PC's display (Win 7 and Storyline are running). The rest of the display shows a Finder window, Safari web browser, and System Preferences pane. The MacOS dock along the bottom highlights the VNC software app being used, TeamViewer.

I like that idea!  

It's been a really long time since I used VNC. This is a brilliant way to go if the artifacting and latency issues I had with VNC have been taken care of. May need to try this out later in the week. I do like having SL in a VM as I take my Mac everywhere. But freeing up those resources is attractive.

That's a hella cool setup.  If my corporate Windows desktop wasn't such a piece of garbage, I think I'd go this route instead of Oracle Virtual Box (it still sits under my desk).  However, for a 5-year old iMac with 16 GB of RAM, it does still run everything well between both OS.

Thx. It has run very well on a 10Mbps Ethernet connection for the past couple years. I recently upgraded my switch and cabling to 100Mbps and there is *NO* latency or drag. Fantastic. That's not even gigabit Ethernet and it's rock solid.

And now that's got me thinking...maybe with newer Wifi standards (802.11n, 802.11ac, etc.) that are so good, you could even do this over Wifi rather than cabled Ethernet.

I second his request. Parallels works, but it is horrible. 

Hi, Marcos -- Your input is appreciated, and for others who might come across this post seeking advice and assistance, I thought I might stop in to share the following, as well: How to Use Articulate Storyline on a Mac (with Videos!). 

I run a Boot Camp dual boot Mac Pro (new in April).  I've tried to edit a Storyline project previously done in Windows on a Windows laptop.  All the fonts are spilling out of the text boxes both in the editable files and when viewing as a published file from the VLE/LMS.

There doesn't seem to be any advice on what do to when running Storyline in a dedicated Windows partition.  Please advise.  I've just invested heavily in my new Mac and this is going to cause me major problems.  Short of spending more money on a Windows machine it seems there are continued problems, which, after such a long time, should have been ironed out by now.

Hopefully

Laura

Hi, Laura - 

Windows running in a partition in Boot Camp is a Windows machine;) A couple of years ago,a Macbook Pro was the fastest Windows machine on the market. Your Mac Pro should be similarly powerful. 

Can you post screenshots of what you're seeing? Also, consider submitting a support request. This isn't normal and should be easy to remedy.

As Steve Flowers said in his reply to you, a Boot Camp system running Windows is a full-fledged Windows computer in every way; no emulation mode or anything like that. It's as Windowsy as it gets and it runs faster than most 'PC' Windows computers.

You might consider checking the set of fonts you have installed in your Boot Camp-based Windows system. Fonts spilling over and other text/font anomalies often are rooted in the set of fonts actually installed in the system. (Don't confuse this with the fonts installed on the MacOS system running on your computer.)

Additionally, you might tinker with your Mac's display settings: resolution and scaling. My guess is that your Mac Pro (is it really a Mac Pro as you stated, or a MacBook Pro?  BIG difference!) has a retina display with very high resolution; maybe the Windows system isn't handling such a high res display so well. I don't have first-hand experience, so it's a guess.

If all else fails, here's the Boot Camp Support page on Apple's site.
http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the reply.  I'm new to Mac (April) so am still figuring things out.  I've attached a screen shot to show you what is happening with the fonts.

I decided to go with the Boot Camp purely because I understood it to, essentially, be Windows.

I've read Bob Wiker's post too and will take a look at the link he shared and the resolution settings.

Thanks for your help - really appreciate it :)

Thanks Bob,

It's a Macbook Pro retina early 2016 model.   Thanks for the suggestions - I'll try these out and let you know.

Really appreciate the help :)

Hi Laura,

We don't have specific steps for Boot Camp, but there are steps here for Parallels and VMWare (the latter which I use with my Articulate set up) so you may want to double check similar settings in terms of display and scaling. Storyline does need to work with a DPI setting of 96 in the Windows environment which on a really high resolution display can make elements of the UI appear tiny, but if not using that set up can cause difficulty with the file itself. 

Hope that helps, and as others mentioned if you want to workk directly with our Support engineers you can reach out to them here. 

Your problem is , actually very common. If you use Powerpoint you will also
have the same issues.
You have to start and finished the project in the same computer.

Thanks Marcos.  I don't have any problems with the dispays any MS Office 2016.  I've  worked in PowerPoints which have been created not only on my old Windows laptop but those which others have created.  It's only Storyline unfortunately.

After some hours of troubleshooting, I have found the problem and the solution.  I'll add this to a separate post.

Hi all

We seem to have found the cause and the solution to why the text is spilling out of text boxes in my Storyline project.

Just to recap, this problem also occurs when viewing the final published module from our LMS.

The weird thing is that this module was fully team and user tested over the past few months. There were only a few small snagging tasks to do which is why I've gone back to the module now and is when I came across this current problem with the text.

The cause:
The problem is only when using 'exactly' point line spacing. If using multiple and putting in a ratio number, the line spacing scales fine. If using 'exactly' point size line spacing, then a fixed value pixel size rather than a ratio seems to be used to calculate the line spacing.

There may be a bug in Storyline where a hard pixel value is being stored when the exactly option is used rather than a ratio being calculated and stored. By switching to multiple line spacing and finding the correct ratio then this allows Storyline project to be viewed equally correctly on any screen display.

The solution (short term for me):
I will have to go back through the elearning module and change how I set the line spacing.

Further investigation results:
Since discovering the cause of the problem, I've since gone back to test the module on my old Windows laptop and have the same problem with the text. I then launched the module from the LMS on my Windows laptop and the same thing happens.  So no wonder other Mac users on here haven't had this particular problem before.

I then asked others in the team who had been part of the user testing to launch this from the LMS - they, too are getting the same problem.

I had thought it was a Mac/Storyine incompatibility but it clearly isn't. But, this is a relatively recent problem as we haven't had any customers on the elearning course get in touch about it so far.

Does any of the community adjust line spacing in their projects? If so, do you do this by using the 'exactly' + point size or the 'multiple' + ratio? If you use the former, have you recently had any issues with text not displaying in the module?

Has anyone got any ideas why this is a recent issue? I think it might be something to do with recent Flash updates!

Thanks again for your help.

I shall copy this post to the support team now - I just wanted to let everyone know  and thank you all for your help.