Instability, corruption and error messages! UGH!!!!!

Jul 11, 2017

Chris Wirick
By Chris Wirick

I've been using Articulate stuff for many years but have never experienced the number of issues I've been having with the new 360 suite. File corruption issues (Storyline 360) have cost me many hours of billable time. After being advised by Articulate that both 1) hosting project files in the cloud (Dropbox, in my case), and 2) interaction between Mac and Windows in my virtual machine could cause file corruption issues, I went with the nuclear option, wiped my Mac clean, reinstalled macOS, reinstalled Parallels, reinstalled Windows 10, reinstalled the Articulate 360 suite. I turned off all connection between Mac and Windows (including copy/paste, which really creates some hassles). I now host my project files on the local drive, not Dropbox. There should be no possibility of corruption via interaction between my Windows VM and macOS. YET...I have still run into file corruption errors. As well as this newest file save issue I experienced today:

"The project file could not be saved. CompressLengthMismatch." There's a classic Windows-esque error message if ever I saw one. So I guess yet again I'll start a fresh project file, import the existing project file and hope for the best.

Then there's the constant application crashing, which leads me to save every few minutes while living in constant fear. How is this happening in 2017?

I also had an issue with Presenter where the published course will not play on any machine I've tested it. "ERROR: Could not load the file 'presentation_content/data.swf." I submitted a trouble ticket with Articulate for that one but have not yet heard back.

I'm running an i7 processor, 24G of RAM, the very latest version of Windows 10, the very latest version of Articulate 360. Yet it's problem after problem.

Have I become cursed or has Articulate software stability hit the skids? It's become more than embarrassing to have to explain all these software-related fiascos to clients. Adobe Captivate performance on Mac is horrific (so I dumped it), no Mac versions of Articulate software have yet seen the (public) light of day, and the Windows versions are one pain point after another. There are no other credible development platforms to turn to. Am I alone in my despair??? ***sobs uncontrollably***

8 Replies
Content Developer
almost 7 years ago07/11/17 at 9:33 pm (UTC)

I must say that I agree, SL360 has some nice features in it, but looks to me a lot less reliable than SL2, in terms of crash and unexpected/odd behaviour. I'm a heavy user, collecting several hours of daily usage of SL360, so I can fairly say that I have not been simply unlucky. I hope that Articulate can do something about it soon, stability is clearly a back-leap from SL2

Content Developer
almost 7 years ago07/12/17 at 8:14 pm (UTC)

Hi Ashley, I think I am one of the major pains in the neck of Articulate Support team, uploading files and chatting with support engineers on (almost) daily basis, so don't worry, I reach out when I need :) I was only adding up to the fact that SL360 crashes more frequently than other Storyline versions, have some "buggier" (it's a word in English? :)) behaviour in some circumstances (e.g. when working with icons downloaded from the CL). The advice here is to save more often and be on the watch when seeing odd behaviour, until 360 (of which I am a big fan indeed) goes his way to become a more stable and mature product. Kudos!

Michele Brooks
6 years ago04/25/18 at 6:42 pm (UTC)

Here's an odd behavior for Storyline 360:  I've just finished repeatedly rebuilding slides that won't respond when you land on them.  They just provide the "spinning wheel of doom".  They worked fine for months and then suddenly they wouldn't anymore.  I've tried resaving the course to a different name.  I've tried copying slides from the old corrupt file into a new one. I've tried just copying objects from the corrupt file. I've tried completely rebuilding slides in a new project, and yet I still am encountering the same issue.  Please remind me of the place to upload a file so your engineers can inspect it.

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