Guess what....? I've been laying out a large project over the weekend, and the topic is going to be so big I really need to get away and think it through. So I was planning to ride my motorbike from UK down through France to Lake Como and work there for a few days. Your weather is much nicer now the winter is approaching in the UK (and the wine is better!).
One of my animators is in Tuscany right now, so a really flimsy excuse for a meet-up!
The joys of being Freelance!
But on-topic....I do a lot of consulting on Business Continuity and Information Assurance......so I have to practice what I preach. Flaky systems, sensitive info. in the 'cloud' in unknown places, unencrypted transmissions, single-point-of-failures, project hold-ups etc.etc.....
Hi Helena,
We don't have an active beta testing right now but if you'd like to be
included in the future please let us know by emailing beta@articulate.com.
Hi Mike, I can recognize the mentality! Big scary project due: why not embark in a roadtrip across Europe? :) Writing from deep southern Tuscany here, warm sun this morning!
However, looks like Articulate made the difficult choice for me! 360 looks good, but not nearly worth the really expensive subscription (not a big fan of subscriptions anyway), at least for me and for now. To be honest, looks a bit like commercial suicide to me, but man who am I to judge? :)
Ciao Dario, but you're really making us travel fanatics jealous over here. Enjoy your Tuscan countryside! :) And thanks for putting eyes on Articulate 360, even if it was just a glance for now. ;)
Hi Dario, from the Welsh mountain of Snowdonia....where I am this week.
Got my A360launch email along with others no doubt...and went straight to pricing of course and disappointed to see cost of ownership for me will be 2.5x increase.
No doubt, subscription pricing has been carefully worked out by the Articulate finance team, factoring in how many single users will defect vs. how many corporations will convert. It will be interesting to see how it settles.
Of course, as expected...the signal is too weak to download the demo version, but I got a sense of what it it by the website.
Yes, definitely not blaming Articulate folks here, I just think there was a mistake in communication with the community, this is the next big thing in corporate e-learning, not e-learning in general: half of the software in the suite is not of immediate utility for the medium / small e-learning shops and freelancers.
However, looks like this discussion is still on-topic, as no SL3 is out. And since Articulate hears us, well, we'd like the next version of SL to be well suited also for the freelancin' cheapskatin' backbone of the e-learning scene out here! :)
I would disagree that most of Articulate 360 is not of immediate use to freelancers.
I already have 10 Storyline 360 courses out there being used by end users, and have a contract for 6 medium sized Rise courses.
There is also a great feature to upload videos and download them as scorm packages with percentage viewed marking completion, I have a client who has commissioned 6 videos for this.
It is off topic I do believe this is a great one-stop shop for the one man developer.
Hi Phil, surely you know the product better and have been beta-testing so I highly respect your opinion. The problem is that I'm pretty sure I don't need Preso, Peek, Studio and Replay, and if I will decide to upgrade to 360, I will be obliged to pay also for them. I have other solutions for video and screencasts. I also don't need a content library because we have a graphic person in our team that likes to do original things. Review may turn useful, Storyline 360 is a slightly enhanced version of Storyline 2.
Usually a freelance is on a tight budget, but that's not the major issue: an ordinary customer (in this case a freelance) wants to pay for what he/she considers useful, at a grocery shop or on the Articulate website. If I go the market to buy oranges, I would be surprised if the salesman tells me that oranges are sold only bundled with kiwis, even if he assures that kiwis are wonderful this week.
The case is slightly different for corporations and big businesses, interested in uniformity (everyone using the same products) and not so budget-wise as freelancers. As long as the budget is authorized, the management does not care too much (or even knows, for that matter) that a particular app is not being used. That's personal experience in a few big corporations, for which 500 or 1000 dollars in a year are something that go un-noticed.
Again, no blaming Articulate here: that's a legitimate choice, but I stay convinced that this product is not for freelancers, and I will happily stay with Storyline 2 for a while.
I agree that Rise looks great, though, and I would buy it now if it was available as a single product.
Dario....I've started playing yesterday. Not a good start! Internet connection was so bad I couldn't even play Adam Swartz's 18min. intro. to it as it buffered so bad. Gave up. Tried S360...took so long to up, then down-load....gave up.
Today the connection was much better and I've been playing with Rise .....have to say, it's absolutely great! (as I reflect back on all those hours years ago spent learning and figuring out how to do CSS etc).
As a fast-track responsive authoring tool..for me it's brilliant.
I'm still playing...but now with Articulate Review. This looks totally awesome already and I've only just started on it. For sure, I will use this in core workflow immediately. It makes configuration control look so professional.
Thanks Adam for sharing that here - we tried to update as many of these types of discussion as we can with those type of details, but we probably missed a couple. :)
Storyline 3 is slated for later this year (2017) and I don't have a more exact date yet. A common question we've been hearing after the announcement that there is a Storyline 3, is how will Storyline 3 behave with your Storyline 360 files, and there is a good answer to that in this discussion.
Lou, no news yet on the Mac version - but we know it's something important to folks here in the community so we'll continue to discuss it internally. Once we've got information to share we'll be certain to do so!
100% agree about the need to make triggers faster and easier to use. Collapsable and able to turn on/turn off would help a lot. Also, a better, clearer view of the triggers from the palette. Parts of some triggers are hidden even with the window fully expanded. We should be able to expand a trigger and edit it fully from the palette. We also need a way to run text comparisons between triggers and a more fully realized debugging (instead of the useful, but not as useful as they could be, red text markers). I am also doing heavy lifting in a complex Storyline project. It's cool what I can do, but advanced users need advanced features. Maybe a different view, simple vs advanced so new users or people doing simple courses won't be overwhelmed, but power users can power on.
OK, this is turning into a list of feature requests. (How about a feature that puts "feature request" as a button on these messages? :-) ) But, another thing that would be good is if we could print out the story view as a flow chart. It's tiny on screen and the lines change according to which slide is selected. For testing purposes, it would be great to be able to print out and check off each connection from slide to slide in a course.
All great ideas and things we could look at adding. Although we don't have a feature request button on these pages yet (trust me, we'd like it too!) you can always submit them to our product team here. That helps us monitor and keep track of these things a bit easier than forum discussions, and ensure it gets in the hands of our product team as they don't get to read in the forums as much as they'd like.
I too would really like to have a "Feature Request Button".
FYI: I think the Articulate Team is amazing and has done a GREAT job to bring a great product to the eLearning world, with the most amazing community I've seen.
Here is why I believe the "Feature Request Button" could have bigger value than the Product team may currently realize. I've seen a lot of threads where this is a feature of it's own, that people want to see.
-
I have written down new feature ideas on over 20 sticky notes with feature improvements that has over 26 suggestions that would make my time much more efficient, but I'm not always right. Or my ideas could be really great, but only for 1% of users, so I think that a forum to discuss new features, would allow feedback from the community.
Below, I have an example of 4 wish list features of my own, and I would love to gather feedback from the community (rather than my co-workers that are beginners with SL360).
The value to articulate, would be that we would all act as a free focus group. Maybe Articulate already has a group of Power-Users that are willing to Brainstorm ideas, but I feel that I have been pushing the features of Storyline since version number 1 (which was saved by Storyline 2, because my client was Sheryl Sandberg with FACEBOOK, and the sliders feature was something I was building from scratch. (I got lucky with this new feature)
-
I have a ton of experience using Flash that did not seem to have any limitations, until mobile came out. So maybe my feature requests would not be important to most users, maybe Storyline 3 will have some of the most important features to me. But listing them and sending to an email,(Product team) would not get a dialogue from the community.
I even think it would be a great exercise for there to be a contest where the community votes on the top 3 features, that are submitted by us, the end-users (within a contest span). And then get feedback from the amazing Articulate team, to see if these are possible for the next release, or if they would just eat up too much resources to make the next features release.
-
As an test example, I would like to see what people think about the 4 wishlist items I have that are all related to just the Timeline in Storyline. If 99% of people thought these ideas would be game changers and the "Product Team" has not had these requests, or internally they didn't get a chance to let the community give input that could move certain features up the Priority list, then there might be a missed opportunity here.
Here are 4 examples for My Super important features in Storyline, just for the Timeline.
1. I wish that the stage would only show the content that is currently at the timeline marker location. Instead it shows ALL LAYERS that are on the entire Timeline, over a span of 0 sec. to 2+ min. I do the hide layer, and show layer, but if anyone used Flash, they would understand the power of this feature. (I can't even click to alter content on the stage if it's the only item on a cue point that is 20 seconds down the timeline. Because there is an item on 1sec into the timeline that may last .5 seconds (since it's on a layer above.)
2. I want to have triggers that will resume content from a cue point that is farther down the timeline.
3. I would also like to scrub the timeline - the play feature is so slow when rendering on a very fast computer. (Compared to Flash in 2004).
4. I really have trouble with the fact that I can't select 3 items on the timeline AND move them up or down the Timeline layers, but I can move them left and right as a selected bunch. Related is an issue that might already work with a hotkey, but when I select one Timeline layer object and try to re-order to be below other timeline layers, it also can move left or right just a tiny bit, but I would love to just Drag the LAYER Name area on the LEFT - up or down, so there is no movement, that can cause errors based on how the slide is developed (Like a button and cue point at the 10second marker, and the timeline trigger stops here, but when the button is clicked, I can only resume timeline, so if that button moves .10 seconds in the wrong direction, then the stage will stop at the 10sec marker, and the invisible button can not be clicked because it's a hair off (after dragging down.
Thank you Kyle - it's always appreciated and our Product team doesn't always get into the forums to respond to these posts but they are certainly watching/reading. The public facing feature board continues to be a hot topic here in the forums and in our internal discussions - so those additional insights will help us as we continue to work through what they may look like for Articulate.
I'll leave the community to weigh in on your other ideas and feature thoughts. Also feel free to start a new discussion forum to share those and see if that drives a bit more discussion for those in the community as I'd worry that your post here is a bit more buried in this discussion now.
Great news - Storyline 3 launched today! I know there were alot of questions about the different versions and perpetual vs. subscription (Articulate 360) so I included some helpful information below.
How does Storyline 3 compare to older versions of Storyline?
If you’re looking to move from an older version of Storyline to Storyline 3, the things you’ll want to check out are:
The new responsive player, which automatically makes your course look great on any phone or tablet
The ability to add and customize closed captions (and soon structure content with tables!)
Storyline 360 is part of Articulate 360, which has everything you need for the entire course authoring process. An annual subscription service, it’ll provide you with continuous feature updates to Storyline (unlike Storyline 3). Articulate 360 includes the latest version of Storyline, our new web-based responsive authoring tool called Rise, plus all of our other authoring tools. It also includes 1.5+ million course assets, such as templates and stock photos, an easy-to-use project review app, and live online training with industry experts.
I hope that helps clarify, and if you need anything else feel free to let us know here. Our Customer Care team is also at the ready to discuss any questions around upgrading, your existing license/subscription, etc. - so feel free to reach out to them here!
55 Replies
Hey Dario! Too right!
Guess what....? I've been laying out a large project over the weekend, and the topic is going to be so big I really need to get away and think it through. So I was planning to ride my motorbike from UK down through France to Lake Como and work there for a few days. Your weather is much nicer now the winter is approaching in the UK (and the wine is better!).
One of my animators is in Tuscany right now, so a really flimsy excuse for a meet-up!
The joys of being Freelance!
But on-topic....I do a lot of consulting on Business Continuity and Information Assurance......so I have to practice what I preach. Flaky systems, sensitive info. in the 'cloud' in unknown places, unencrypted transmissions, single-point-of-failures, project hold-ups etc.etc.....
Give me local control any day!
Thanks very much. How can I sign up for BETA testing?
Hi Helena,
We don't have an active beta testing right now but if you'd like to be
included in the future please let us know by emailing beta@articulate.com.
Hi Mike, I can recognize the mentality! Big scary project due: why not embark in a roadtrip across Europe? :) Writing from deep southern Tuscany here, warm sun this morning!
However, looks like Articulate made the difficult choice for me! 360 looks good, but not nearly worth the really expensive subscription (not a big fan of subscriptions anyway), at least for me and for now. To be honest, looks a bit like commercial suicide to me, but man who am I to judge? :)
Ciao Dario, but you're really making us travel fanatics jealous over here. Enjoy your Tuscan countryside! :) And thanks for putting eyes on Articulate 360, even if it was just a glance for now. ;)
Hi Dario, from the Welsh mountain of Snowdonia....where I am this week.
Got my A360launch email along with others no doubt...and went straight to pricing of course and disappointed to see cost of ownership for me will be 2.5x increase.
No doubt, subscription pricing has been carefully worked out by the Articulate finance team, factoring in how many single users will defect vs. how many corporations will convert. It will be interesting to see how it settles.
Of course, as expected...the signal is too weak to download the demo version, but I got a sense of what it it by the website.
Yes, definitely not blaming Articulate folks here, I just think there was a mistake in communication with the community, this is the next big thing in corporate e-learning, not e-learning in general: half of the software in the suite is not of immediate utility for the medium / small e-learning shops and freelancers.
However, looks like this discussion is still on-topic, as no SL3 is out. And since Articulate hears us, well, we'd like the next version of SL to be well suited also for the freelancin' cheapskatin' backbone of the e-learning scene out here! :)
I would disagree that most of Articulate 360 is not of immediate use to freelancers.
I already have 10 Storyline 360 courses out there being used by end users, and have a contract for 6 medium sized Rise courses.
There is also a great feature to upload videos and download them as scorm packages with percentage viewed marking completion, I have a client who has commissioned 6 videos for this.
It is off topic I do believe this is a great one-stop shop for the one man developer.
Fantastic news there Phil.; one has to respect the opinion of such a power-user as your goodself!
Looking forward to playing and seeing it flex its muscles!
Cheers
Hi Phil, surely you know the product better and have been beta-testing so I highly respect your opinion. The problem is that I'm pretty sure I don't need Preso, Peek, Studio and Replay, and if I will decide to upgrade to 360, I will be obliged to pay also for them. I have other solutions for video and screencasts. I also don't need a content library because we have a graphic person in our team that likes to do original things. Review may turn useful, Storyline 360 is a slightly enhanced version of Storyline 2.
Usually a freelance is on a tight budget, but that's not the major issue: an ordinary customer (in this case a freelance) wants to pay for what he/she considers useful, at a grocery shop or on the Articulate website. If I go the market to buy oranges, I would be surprised if the salesman tells me that oranges are sold only bundled with kiwis, even if he assures that kiwis are wonderful this week.
The case is slightly different for corporations and big businesses, interested in uniformity (everyone using the same products) and not so budget-wise as freelancers. As long as the budget is authorized, the management does not care too much (or even knows, for that matter) that a particular app is not being used. That's personal experience in a few big corporations, for which 500 or 1000 dollars in a year are something that go un-noticed.
Again, no blaming Articulate here: that's a legitimate choice, but I stay convinced that this product is not for freelancers, and I will happily stay with Storyline 2 for a while.
I agree that Rise looks great, though, and I would buy it now if it was available as a single product.
Dario....I've started playing yesterday. Not a good start! Internet connection was so bad I couldn't even play Adam Swartz's 18min. intro. to it as it buffered so bad. Gave up. Tried S360...took so long to up, then down-load....gave up.
Today the connection was much better and I've been playing with Rise .....have to say, it's absolutely great! (as I reflect back on all those hours years ago spent learning and figuring out how to do CSS etc).
As a fast-track responsive authoring tool..for me it's brilliant.
And I shall sure find some good uses for it.
Agree Mike, this is a great tool to have in the armoury. This tool has so much potential and is so easy to use
Sent from my iPhone
Too right Phil.
I'm still playing...but now with Articulate Review. This looks totally awesome already and I've only just started on it. For sure, I will use this in core workflow immediately. It makes configuration control look so professional.
Looking good.....I'm won-over already!
Spoke with Articulate Storyline staff two days ago. Storyline 3 is coming "later this year."
Thanks Adam for sharing that here - we tried to update as many of these types of discussion as we can with those type of details, but we probably missed a couple. :)
Storyline 3 is slated for later this year (2017) and I don't have a more exact date yet. A common question we've been hearing after the announcement that there is a Storyline 3, is how will Storyline 3 behave with your Storyline 360 files, and there is a good answer to that in this discussion.
Thanks Ashley, for all your help on these items. Much appreciated.
Any news on a mac version for SL3?
Happy to help Adam!
Lou, no news yet on the Mac version - but we know it's something important to folks here in the community so we'll continue to discuss it internally. Once we've got information to share we'll be certain to do so!
100% agree about the need to make triggers faster and easier to use. Collapsable and able to turn on/turn off would help a lot. Also, a better, clearer view of the triggers from the palette. Parts of some triggers are hidden even with the window fully expanded. We should be able to expand a trigger and edit it fully from the palette. We also need a way to run text comparisons between triggers and a more fully realized debugging (instead of the useful, but not as useful as they could be, red text markers). I am also doing heavy lifting in a complex Storyline project. It's cool what I can do, but advanced users need advanced features. Maybe a different view, simple vs advanced so new users or people doing simple courses won't be overwhelmed, but power users can power on.
OK, this is turning into a list of feature requests. (How about a feature that puts "feature request" as a button on these messages? :-) ) But, another thing that would be good is if we could print out the story view as a flow chart. It's tiny on screen and the lines change according to which slide is selected. For testing purposes, it would be great to be able to print out and check off each connection from slide to slide in a course.
Hey Lee-Ann
All great ideas and things we could look at adding. Although we don't have a feature request button on these pages yet (trust me, we'd like it too!) you can always submit them to our product team here. That helps us monitor and keep track of these things a bit easier than forum discussions, and ensure it gets in the hands of our product team as they don't get to read in the forums as much as they'd like.
Let us know if we can assist with anything else!
I too would really like to have a "Feature Request Button".
FYI: I think the Articulate Team is amazing and has done a GREAT job to bring a great product to the eLearning world, with the most amazing community I've seen.
Here is why I believe the "Feature Request Button" could have bigger value than the Product team may currently realize. I've seen a lot of threads where this is a feature of it's own, that people want to see.
-
I have written down new feature ideas on over 20 sticky notes with feature improvements that has over 26 suggestions that would make my time much more efficient, but I'm not always right. Or my ideas could be really great, but only for 1% of users, so I think that a forum to discuss new features, would allow feedback from the community.
Below, I have an example of 4 wish list features of my own, and I would love to gather feedback from the community (rather than my co-workers that are beginners with SL360).
The value to articulate, would be that we would all act as a free focus group. Maybe Articulate already has a group of Power-Users that are willing to Brainstorm ideas, but I feel that I have been pushing the features of Storyline since version number 1 (which was saved by Storyline 2, because my client was Sheryl Sandberg with FACEBOOK, and the sliders feature was something I was building from scratch. (I got lucky with this new feature)
-
I have a ton of experience using Flash that did not seem to have any limitations, until mobile came out. So maybe my feature requests would not be important to most users, maybe Storyline 3 will have some of the most important features to me. But listing them and sending to an email,(Product team) would not get a dialogue from the community.
I even think it would be a great exercise for there to be a contest where the community votes on the top 3 features, that are submitted by us, the end-users (within a contest span). And then get feedback from the amazing Articulate team, to see if these are possible for the next release, or if they would just eat up too much resources to make the next features release.
-
As an test example, I would like to see what people think about the 4 wishlist items I have that are all related to just the Timeline in Storyline. If 99% of people thought these ideas would be game changers and the "Product Team" has not had these requests, or internally they didn't get a chance to let the community give input that could move certain features up the Priority list, then there might be a missed opportunity here.
Here are 4 examples for My Super important features in Storyline, just for the Timeline.
1. I wish that the stage would only show the content that is currently at the timeline marker location. Instead it shows ALL LAYERS that are on the entire Timeline, over a span of 0 sec. to 2+ min. I do the hide layer, and show layer, but if anyone used Flash, they would understand the power of this feature. (I can't even click to alter content on the stage if it's the only item on a cue point that is 20 seconds down the timeline. Because there is an item on 1sec into the timeline that may last .5 seconds (since it's on a layer above.)
2. I want to have triggers that will resume content from a cue point that is farther down the timeline.
3. I would also like to scrub the timeline - the play feature is so slow when rendering on a very fast computer. (Compared to Flash in 2004).
4. I really have trouble with the fact that I can't select 3 items on the timeline AND move them up or down the Timeline layers, but I can move them left and right as a selected bunch. Related is an issue that might already work with a hotkey, but when I select one Timeline layer object and try to re-order to be below other timeline layers, it also can move left or right just a tiny bit, but I would love to just Drag the LAYER Name area on the LEFT - up or down, so there is no movement, that can cause errors based on how the slide is developed (Like a button and cue point at the 10second marker, and the timeline trigger stops here, but when the button is clicked, I can only resume timeline, so if that button moves .10 seconds in the wrong direction, then the stage will stop at the 10sec marker, and the invisible button can not be clicked because it's a hair off (after dragging down.
Thank you Kyle - it's always appreciated and our Product team doesn't always get into the forums to respond to these posts but they are certainly watching/reading. The public facing feature board continues to be a hot topic here in the forums and in our internal discussions - so those additional insights will help us as we continue to work through what they may look like for Articulate.
I'll leave the community to weigh in on your other ideas and feature thoughts. Also feel free to start a new discussion forum to share those and see if that drives a bit more discussion for those in the community as I'd worry that your post here is a bit more buried in this discussion now.
Hi all!
Great news - Storyline 3 launched today! I know there were alot of questions about the different versions and perpetual vs. subscription (Articulate 360) so I included some helpful information below.
How does Storyline 3 compare to older versions of Storyline?
If you’re looking to move from an older version of Storyline to Storyline 3, the things you’ll want to check out are:
How does Storyline 3 compare to Storyline 360?
Storyline 360 is part of Articulate 360, which has everything you need for the entire course authoring process. An annual subscription service, it’ll provide you with continuous feature updates to Storyline (unlike Storyline 3). Articulate 360 includes the latest version of Storyline, our new web-based responsive authoring tool called Rise, plus all of our other authoring tools. It also includes 1.5+ million course assets, such as templates and stock photos, an easy-to-use project review app, and live online training with industry experts.
Check out this table to see how Storyline 3 compares to Storyline 1, Storyline 2, and Storyline 360. You can try Storyline 360 by signing up for a free trial of Articulate 360.
I hope that helps clarify, and if you need anything else feel free to let us know here. Our Customer Care team is also at the ready to discuss any questions around upgrading, your existing license/subscription, etc. - so feel free to reach out to them here!
Thanks for the information on this, Ashley!
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.