First project completed on Storyline - first impressions

Having just completed my first project on Storyline I thought I would share my thoughts in case they are useful to someone just starting...

Overall I was very impressed with Storyline - as a version 1.0 product.

I used powerpoint as a basis for the design work as I needed to send docs for review (pdf) and use in classroom training.

Although importing from powerpoint was simple I soon discovered that not all my powerpoint work would import. There are no tables or animated motion paths in Storyline and the picture and shape formatting is limited compared to powerpoint (e.g. no 3D shape formating). I had to reformat all my pictures and text boxes, but that was easy using the format paint brush to copy and paste.

I also noticed that every time I imported new slides into Storyline my slide masters were duplicated. I tidied them up each time.

Once in Storyline I loved the ease of use, particularly the ability to split the project up into scenes. I had 8 scenes, about 170 slides and the file size got to 130MB. With no auto-save I found I was being cautious and saving manually as well as creating versions as I worked. But, I have to say I never had a crash that lost work (the electricity failed once but not Articulate's fault ..and the project worked fine after power returned).

I used layers, states, quizzing, numeric variables to track quiz results (and change graphics states to tick when passed). I added audio to each slide and I removed the standard play controls to insert my own previous/pause/play/next controls within the active video area, using the slide master. Watching and reading the tutorials and the intuitive interface made it all so easy to learn and work with.

I used the iPad export option as well as the standard flash. Very impressed with the iPad operation and I like the fact that whether you are on laptop or iPad you are asked if you want to resume from where you left the training when you re-launch it.

A couple of bugs I came up against were:

The  undo operation started behaving strangely as it seemed to be working on operations 5-10 steps before.

Occasionally moving slides around (quiz slides) caused an error that threw up the window to report the error to Articulate. The app didnt crash though, I could save, restart and the error went away.

The preview output starting cropping the top and bottom of my video frame. Searching the forums I discovered a fix was to add a timer to my quiz questions (but dont have to show the timer). Bizarre - but that fixed the cropping!

All said and done a big thumbs up to Articulate for this product!

Thank you

Adrian