Advice on whether storyline 3 all-non-flash publishing is possible yet please...
Oct 01, 2018
Hi
I'm an ex-Storyline 1 and 2 user and I haven't looked in on here for years perhaps now. After 360 was launched I took myself off all Articulate lists and stopped following anyone relevant. There's still no way we can justify the price for our needs (our SL assets are free extras with live courses and due to health issues our business model is that our live courses are licensed out to others to deliver, and we just get a small commission). That's ok, that's old news. I also wasn't prepared to upgrade to SL3 and feel like a 2nd class citizen and also not get the flash publishing problem resolved. We actually turned our back on elearning resources at the time of the 360 launch, it basically made me leave the industry.
But we are now at final crunch point with our old storyline 2 assets. None of our partners or consumers can open anything any more and no-one seems to be able to tweek browsers to deal with Flash now. I'm fed up of the battle and am out of touch with it all. I finally need to decide whether officially to consign these assets to history or whether to consider purchasing SL3. Anyone got any advice for me please or brief updates on what the publishing status really is with SL3 and how much work it might be to sort out assets which weren't designed with html/5 limitations in mind?
5 Replies
Hi Sarah,
It sounds like you have a unique structure to create and share your Storyline courses, and I can understand how Articulate 360 may be a bit much for your needs. We don't want to sell you something you don't need or won't use, and that's why we released Storyline 3 which has most of the features you'd see in Storyline 360 and all of the bug fixes.
With that, Storyline 3 would allow you to publish for HTML5 only (or HTML5 first/Flash fallback) and prepare for the impending end of Flash support in modern browsers. For any questions about what features are supported in HTML5 vs. Flash, take a look at this chart. It would be good to reference this as you develop new courses in Storyline 3 or look at upgrading any SL1 or SL2 files.
We're also working to remove Flash from our authoring tools; Storyline continues to depend on Flash in 2 additional areas (Timeline Preview and Player Properties Preview). We are targeting Q2 of 2019 to move away from Flash in these areas as well, and you'll see that feature appear first in Storyline 360, and then we'll roll it out to Storyline 3 soon after. This discussion has some more detail about the steps we're taking to move away from Flash.
We're excited about our updates and changes to the HTML5 output, and if you're able to give Storyline 3 a try, that'll be a great way to see how it works with your content. We'll also create a back-up of your SL1/2 files if you choose to open them in Storyline 3 or Storyline 360 so that you will have an original you can still open in those older versions.
Let me know if you have any other questions, and if you'd like to discuss updating our Sales team is at the ready!
Hi Ashley
Many thanks for your comprehensive reply. Thanks for the link to the compatibility chart, that does look as if that is a whole lot more compatible than last time I looked at a similar chart quite a long time back. That's encouraging.
I'll try and clear myself a bit of time to have a play with SL3 and then decide if it will work for us going forward.
Thanks again
Sarah
Not a problem, Sarah!
We're here to help and I know it's a lot of information to digest, so don't hesitate to reach out either in ELH or directly to our Sales team with any other questions.
Just thought I'd add an update here in case anyone else lands here after searching.
So SL3 worked very well to publish our old SL2 assets from 2013-2016 out to HTML5. There were a few minor gremlins and they needed a bit of tweeking but really nothing major. I was impressed.
It wouldn't play with our older engage/studio asstets of course. I guess I could have downloaded the trial for the latest version of Studio to deal with that, but since I know we won't buy that in the future I decided I wouldn't and decided to let those be history.
Also realised how much I enjoyed the SL software. But having got out of including interactive resources in our workflow, the decision isn't made yet whether to add new stuff in the future to justify upgrading permanently :(
Thanks, Sarah for that update. I'm happy to hear things worked well and that the majority of it was a seamless transition.
If you have any other questions about transitioning to Storyline 3 (or Articulate 360) our Sales team is around to talk through the process and any questions you may have. You can reach out to them here.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.