My back-of-the-napkin observations of Storyline vs Captivate 5.0

Jul 12, 2012

I would love for a more knowledgeable product evangelist to respond to any of my observations and to correct me where I am wrong. I've only been experimenting with the product for a few days, thank you!

Pro’s

The Articulate community is great. For years I’ve used the “Rapid elearning Blog” Tom Kulhman puts out for elearning and PPT inspiration and tips
Easy to use, PPT like, interface. This would be better if it incorporated more of the PPT 2010 features.
Ability to Pan and zoom, something Captivate users have asked for, for a long long time!
Access to ‘people characters’ that have many different poses and expressions to make a tutorial more engaging
Built-in alignment guides that help place objects around on a slide (a PowerPoint 2010 feature would like to see more like more transition animation)
Access to good looking and engaging templates - a real time saver. Access to additional free templates outside of what comes with Articulate.
Easier way to convert scorm to HTML5 for mobile device playing
Built-in TOC frame on the module

Con’s

Memory hog? – delayed reactions to working within Storyline, moving objects around or editing elements has delayed reaction, which will make building modules very tedious.
Don’t see a way to set project preferences. A big loss for me! For example, I can't control how long an object shows on a slide when adding a new object. The default duration is the entire slide - ouch! Requiring me to adjust the duration for every inserted object, very time consuming!
The captions don't automatically fade in as they do in Captivate which looks the most professional. I have to manually add this animation effect, this is time consuming.
Doesn’t automatically zip the published file, another step to do
No preset captions to use like Captivate offers – the caption shapes are just PPT shapes that you format, this is time consuming.
No preset highlight object available – I use these frequently to point out important information on slides, again time consuming to have to build and format this shape for each project.
Very limited animation functionality to apply to objects. I have a choice of 5 animations ONLY for any object – Fade, Grow, Fly In, Spin, Spin and Grow. Captivate offers numerous (see screen shot of some not all animations below). For example, I cannot add a glow animation effect in Articulate to specific text in a caption unless it’s done in PPT then imported in. I cannot make text appear to be typed in only faded in.

29 Replies

Gerry Wasiluk
Hero

almost 12 years ago07/13/12 at 12:52 pm (UTC)

Thanks, Carolyn.

I'm not a power developer, I don't develop in power tools, so from my viewpoint, I've gained a lot. I agree--it comes from where you are coming from. I was supporting a lot of beginning e-learning developers at my old company so I often look at things through their eyes.

A lot of the things you mention as needs came up during the beta. Will be interesting to see which ones Articulate addresses or not. Many of us have urged Articulate to mature Storyline at a more rapid rate then they have in the past with other products. And Articulate has said they plan to. I'd be expecting more goodness sooner as opposed to later.

As for defaults, sometimes folks do a lot with slide masters, including setting some fonts, which are like PowerPoint slide masters and then can be saved out as your templates. I think Articulate has relied on that, for now, in creating many of your defaults. Hopefully David will show you those.

David Anderson
Staff

almost 12 years ago07/13/12 at 1:07 pm (UTC)

That's great, Carolyn - send me a note via DM or email and we can figure out what works best for you. Basically, I'd like to take a typical project you build and re-build it with you in Storyline.

Steve Flowers

almost 12 years ago07/13/12 at 1:28 pm (UTC)

On your cons list:

Memory hog? – Actually not seeing this one. I'm on a Mac working some pretty complex and bulky files and it's smooth like butter.
Don’t see a way to set project preferences. This would be nice but it's not a showstopper for me, personally. It's not a bad idea to throw in a feature request.
The captions don't automatically fade in as they do in Captivate which looks the most professional. I have to manually add this animation effect, this is time consuming. Animations are my biggest complaint with Storyline. I like the idea of having an option to fade in / out every object but I don't think it's always appropriate. More fodder for a feature request
Doesn’t automatically zip the published file - There's a button to zip the file after you publish. I prefer having things NOT zipped for me. To each his / her own:)
No preset captions to use like Captivate offers – I've never been a fan of the default shapes of Captivate. But I can see how this would be a nice feature. I create most of my own graphics, so I rarely use default shapes for much except blocking stuff in. One of the ways I get around custom objects is by adding them to a template library - that way I can copy / paste in common elements. The format painter is pretty hotsauce for creating object states if you haven't tried it.
No preset highlight object available – Not sure what you mean here. You mean spotlight? I think the annotation tools could use some work. But not a big show stopper here either. Creating the shape is pretty quick - adding it to a template library is even quicker:)
Very limited animation functionality to apply to objects. I totally agree on this one. The animation types are a little bit of a letdown. I would like some more subtle entry types and more control over the easing time / type.

I've used them both. Adobe's tool has some really great features, better with 6.0. I was intrigued by the previews but when I went to use the trial for 6.0 it seemed to offer the same feel as previous versions. I've never liked any of Captivate's defaults or styles, so I'm not really missing much in that neighborhood when I use Storyline. Unfortunately, Captivate never grabbed me but I can see how some folks would like it. I'm quite sure it gets the job done in many contexts.

Given the choice between Captivate and Storyline for the features and target output, I'd choose Storyline. But that's just me:) Given the choice in other contexts of output (performance support, text heavy assemblies) I'd choose neither. For some more complex outputs and polished presentation elements I still fallback to my other toolsets (Flash, AfterEffects, Keynote.)

It's hard to see a different competing tool in a positive light when you like the one your using. Nothing wrong with that:) I'm just glad that there's competition. It motivates folks to make better tools.