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
I only wanted to post the other side of it as people who are contemplating purchasing Storyline can access this site and I'd hate for them to get the wrong impression from reading this series of posts.
We can agree to disagree on everything else.
Aside from what should or shouldn't be included in an update, and I guess we can all see both sides, in my many years of experience there is no other community like the Articulate community. And that's what separates them.
Storyline is an awesome product that, like may others, does have flaws. But to date, I've not found equivalent support out there.
I agree. I've been in an Adobe world, Lectora world, and Articulate world. The closest to Articulate's support and user community is the Trivantis community (Lectora) and that's a pretty distant second. The number of users who offer their advice, guidance, etc. is amazing.
Hi Cathy,
As far as text resizing on its own, try this:
I usually check this in PowerPoint before I import the file into Storyline.
Check your Master Slides first, so the settings carry over to the individual slides.
That should help,
Judith
What it is is, if you import a Powerpoint slide, it also imports the template and adds it as a slide master. Then if you import another Powerpoint slide (even if it's from the same PPT, I believe) it will add that template as another (3rd) slide master. Now imagine if you import another Powerpoint slide, but this time from another PPT with a different template. Now you have 4 different slide masters, which can really screw up the formatting of the entire project, I've discovered.
Mind you, a lot of this was from my early days using the software, but even in a recent .story I was working on, I have two different slide masters (one from a .PPT slide I imported), and whenever I start a new scene it's defaulting to that second slide master. Is it easy to fix? Yeah, but it's still a pain anyways.
Also, just encountered the Undo/Redo problem again :(
Is there a problem with installing the updated versio on a system running Windows XP? My co-worker can't get through the install and I am reluctant to try because I am in the middle of a project using the old version. I would like to take advantage of the features of the new version also.
Hey Alicia, welcome!
There shouldn't be any issue installing Storyline on an XP system. Was she sure to follow the steps listed here? And is she installing Storyline locally, or trying to install it on a network drive? If you can give us any more details about the environment, we should be able to get this resolved for her, and you
We have these issues too. This is a pain, cause we have to import Powerpoint projects, and then correct ALL texts in slides for bad positions.
Next, when we animate the texts, some parts gets missing, or dont behave normaly (text of a second or thrid bullets coming with the first....) We have to deal with the bullets problems too.
We too had some problems with sound corruption, some times, without any clue on why it happens.
But the worse thing is the articulate player HTML5: ours clients can't install the app on theyr Ipad for security reasons, so we have to make it work with html5 on safari mobile.
We experienced quiz content disapearing when user click "submit", extremely long loading time, and multiples other bugs.
We have modified the HTML5 players javascript code to improve it's loading speed and make it more responsive. but it's still unefficient.
I can't believe that other users did not experience these bugs.
More : I didn't see any difference before and after the upgrade 2. Not at all.
Last issue : Storyline not working anymore after upgrading to Window 8...
Storyline is probably the less worse (the only ?) software to publish courses to html5. But it's still an expensive software and I expected much more upgrades and very less bugs since the Beta test. We shouldn't have to submit tickets anymore at this time.
Sorry to hear about your frustrations, Frederic.
Although most features in PowerPoint are supported in Storyline, some are not. If you haven't already, please review this article for details. And if you're able to provide any more specific details about your audio issues, we'd be happy to help troubleshoot why it's happening.
And we're aware of the current limitations inherent to HTML5. While our engineers continue working hard to offer the best possible HTML5 experience, they remain at the mercy of what is still a relatively immature platform, so as HTML5 matures, look for a smoother Storyline experience in HTML5. Here's a great tool that outlines those limitations.
As for the Windows 8 upgrade, we'd be interested in learning more about the issues you're experiencing, as authoring and publishing Articulate Storyline content is indeed supported on computers running Windows 8, but not Windows RT.
Storyline is less than a year old, so relying on our users to submit tickets is how we improve it. If you're willing to share any further details of the issues you've described, we'd be happy to look into them in an effort to continue making Storyline the best product out there.
Thanks for your feedback!
Cathy, you said "text resizing all on its own".
This is actually a feature that is set in every text box (just as it is in PowerPoint). You can keep control of the text size by using these settings:
In that dialog, under Autofit, you have the options to keep the text from resizing (or shrinking).
BTW, I always do this in my slide master rather than individually on each slide.
Hope this helps with at least one of your problems!
And I love Storyline!
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