Has Articulate abandoned Storyline?

Dec 13, 2012

We haven't seen an update to Storyline since August. It's commendable that the program creates flawlessly publishable content, but everyone reading this forum knows (so I don't have to rehash it here) that the software is riddled with dozens of small annoyances that add up significantly from a workflow perspective.

Less expensive software like Photoshop and Microsoft Office get patched continuously. Their designers actually act on the issues brought up in their forums. Even submitting a support ticket to Articulate goes nowhere. The only response to any issue I've brought up is a form email, saying my personal support assistant will get back to me--which never happens.

We who've purchased Storyline have beta-tested your software for months. Before any paid upgrade comes along, the least we're owed is a nice, fat series of patches. Just saying...

61 Replies
Adrian Dean

Hi Charles,

I apologize for the trouble you have been having. I took over one of your cases: 00298494 back in October and sent an email asking for your .story project file to be uploaded so that I could test the issue you were having with the fuzzy logo. Did you ever receive the email? It would have been on 10/7/2012.

Always Happy to Help,

Adrian

Carlito Tomas

That is awesome, Daniel. Maybe I should get a Mac. I didn't want to get into specific bugs, as there are hundreds of pages in the forum dedicated to usability issues. So that's an easy place to discover the troubles people are having.

On an upbeat note, Adrian from Articulate has reached out to me, and I'll be uploading a .story file for him to look at, for one of my issues.

I'm still awaiting news of the next update to the software...

Carlito Tomas

Hi Adrian,

Yes, I did get an automated email. Here's what it says (is this what you sent?):

Hi!

It looks like you might've replied to a notification message regarding an E-Learning Heroes forum or private message. Your reply won't get posted automatically. Instead, you'll need to click the link in the message you received, so that you can post your reply online.

If, on the other hand, you've sent us a message about login trouble, we'll follow up with you as soon as we can, so that we can help you out.

Thanks!

The E-Learning Heroes Team

Adrian Dean

Hi Charles,

Nope that's not the one I sent. It looks like its either getting blocked or going to your spam folder. I'm not getting any indication of what is happening on our end. The email address is support@articulate.com.

If you wouldn't mind seeing about getting that address allowed so that we are able to communicate via the case, that would be great.

Thanks,

Adrian

Bill Harnage

Daniel Brigham said:

Hi, Charles:

I've been using Storyline for six months now (running it on a Mac, no less) I haven't run into many bugs.


How are you running it on a mac since there is no mac version available?

Unless you mean you're running a version of Windows via Bootcamp or a VM.  In which case, you're running it in Windows.

Simon Perkins

Bill Harnage said:

Daniel Brigham said:

Hi, Charles:

I've been using Storyline for six months now (running it on a Mac, no less) I haven't run into many bugs.


How are you running it on a mac since there is no mac version available?

Unless you mean you're running a version of Windows via Bootcamp or a VM.  In which case, you're running it in Windows.


Yep, it'll be on either of those of something like Parallels ...

Carlito Tomas

Adrian Dean said:

Hi Charles,

Since I don't know if you are receiving my emails from within the case, I thought I would give you an update here. I have sent this onto our Quality Assurance team for further review. As soon as I know something more, I'll be sure to let you know.

Thanks,

Adrian

Thanks, Adrian! I'll stand by!
Simon Perkins

@ Charles: I agree SL has a fair few bugs and some of them are longstanding, e.g. the way the "Undo" feature works (or rather, doesn't quite work).  But none of these are IMO a deal breaker ... nor do they go unnoticed because this forum is by far the most responsive I've ever experienced in terms of "free" technical/customer support AND community support.  

Support cases do get actioned.  Maybe they don't all get resolved - if you don't receive a reply in a couple of days then follow up.  Likewise bugs and feature requests are (by and large) acknowledge and acted upon too.  Maybe not all, but certainly a majority of those deemed important to the customers.

And in defense of Articulate, I think they've created one of the most ambitious pieces of software in our industry - and they've done it with what I suspect is an infinitely smaller team/budget/resource than the likes of Microsoft would throw at it.  They 

Speaking of MS, I've been running Office 2013 for a couple of weeks and every app kept freezing.  This rendered the whole suite unusable and I was not happy.  It turns out a lot of people have experienced this and MS are aware of it.  Thankfully I also found this registry hack that gets it running properly.  

Just my tuppence so read into that what you will ...

Phil Mayor

I agree with Simon, yes there are bugs, but none are a deal breaker.

This is only version 1, and it is a great product.  It is rare these days to even see a version 1 software we are used to very mature or extended open betas that never reach version 1. software 

They have just released an update that will fix many issues.  I run it using parallels and a Mac and works great, I do have issues at times

I also have been using Office 2013 and suffered freeze after freeze when using it.

Although this forum does have a lot of issues related to Storyline, I believe there is a common theme of about five or six main issues, some of these are related to modern browsers, and also how Storyline does not behave like Presenter, others are real problems.  

Carlito Tomas

Bruce, the word "abandoning" was used on December 13, the day before the update. So, I agree with you: 44+ issues fixed is indeed not "abandoning," but before the patches on December 14, what were we to think?

For those who say that for a Version 1 issue, Storyline is wonderful, I agree. Please refer back to the first sentence in my post: "It's commendable that the program creates flawlessly publishable content..." Of course, it's $1400 Version 1 software, so expectations are and should be high.

Remarkably, only the undo/redo patch fixes an issue affecting me. But it's nice to see the update nonetheless. If I had only waited one more day before complaining...

Lynda Claspy

I'm excited about the update.  It looks like Articulate has been busy working out the bugs.  I am disappointed, though, that one bug didn't get fixed.  Bullets are still changing size.  I just added a list of bulleted sentences and the last 2 bullets are still smaller than the other ones.  I was hoping that would be addressed!  But, I'm not giving up!  I do wish I could find a way around that so I can continue to use bulleted lists in my courses.  My editor catches the size differnce every time!!

Judith Blackbourn

Me again, I downloaded the update but can't get the install going.

The first time, I saved the file to my harddrive, but then couldn't find the Setup.exe. So I tried just running the file from the download page. Each time I try to run the file, I get a message that another setup is running.

This is going around in circles! Can anyone find the end for me?

Thanks,

Judith

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