Articulate Storyline

User friendly even for inexperienced elearning administrators

Easy to use

Creates all kinds of published content (applicable for mobile and desktops)

Content interaction with user

Able to use all sorts of multimedia

More animation options

Better internet explorer compability of published content

More publishing options

Better preview options

Easy to learn. The learning curve to get going with Articulate Storyline and produce something usable is very short. But once you're ready for more depth - it's there.

It's stable. I can rely on it to be there when I need it and don't spend time having to deal with support issues.

It's a product that comes with its own community of users who are always offering up great ideas, free course assets, and great peer interaction. Is the community built into the software itself? No. Does using the community help you make far better courses in Storyline because it helps you be a better designer? You bet.

It would be great to have more than one Storyline file open at once. You can technically do it, but it involves opening an additional instance of the program for each additional Storyline file you want open simultaneously. Not a big deal, but it would be a nice feature to add.

Storyline is highly flexible, regarding its support for layers, the powerful yet easy to use concepts of triggers and helpful interactive elements such as lightbox slides and markers. These make creating interactive and attractive content easy and even fun!

The use of variables allows for another great deal of freedom in designing a course. Whether you only want to store the user's name and gender, or want to keep track of decisions or score is up to you. Storyline also lets you modify the content of slides based on the values of the variables, so you do not have to duplicate content but can simply vary it (hiding, showing, or modifying content) based on the value of some variable(s).

The integrated photographic character (more can be bought) and the sketched characters are highly flexible, provided in different poses and facial expressions. Adapting them to look as you want them to is done in a snap - and can, again, be changed based on a variable that tracked what the user has done before.

The main drawback for me personally is that there is no Mac OS X version of Storyline, forcing me to start up a VM (which slows down the computer) whenever I work on my content. I understand that developing a Mac version would be a lot of work - but having one would make my life that much easier.

Online community for support is amazing (eLearning hero's).

Content is made interesting by using customised interactions.

Really easy to pick up and use.

Videos are not as clear as they could be.

Use of variables

Freedom of design

Easy to use

It is easy to use.

Interactions are simple to make.

It has good built-in features.

It has limiting factors when it comes to built-in functions.

It can be hard to debug.

You cant select multiple variables to copy and paste or delete.

Enables you to create complex interactions using states, triggers, variables, and layers.

Provides excellent tutorials, free templates, blogs, and more via the Articulate Community.

Excellent customer support.

I'd like to see more animation options. I'm spoiled by the variety in PowerPoint and would love more of that type of animation.

I'd like to have the capability to show the Notes for each layer in the Notes tab. Now we have to put the Notes for the main layer and all other layers into one and that confuses learners.

Most of all I like interactive opportunities (states, triggers, variables) which allow me to develop a rich learning experience.

The ability to modify the look and feel of the player is also a great feature.

Recent upgrades to Storyline 2 brought lots of new animation features and triggers. Sliders give the more natural control for users.

I need more capable design tools built in Storyline. For example, there is no blurring option or deleting picture background.

Articulate should bring more opportunities for mobile learning design.

In order to create more powerful user experiance I need additional options to operate variables, for example to process formulas (not only "-" and "+")

The online community for support is the best in the industry.

Customized interactions make the content interesting for participants.

The learning curve is not too steep. You can be up and running in a reasonable amount of time.

Access to system variables

Accuracy of screen capturing. (it captures subtle animations in software very well)

Relatively easy to pick up and start using

Scenes make it easy to collate and manage a variety of course resources.

Screen captures can take a very long time to save

Sometimes the connection s between slides between scenes are not always clear

Captivate hides the windows tool bar at full screen

Storyline is incredibly flexible. It incorporates a wide range of media formats (images, videos, etc), if you want to add a quiz you have a wide range of question formats (drag and drop, text, etc), and the Triggers and States features let you customize what happens based on the user's actions. You can basically build a choose-your-own-adventure activity.

The basics of Storyline are easy to learn. When you open Storyline for the first time, you can immediately start building simple activities with minimal training. That said, you'll want to refer to the online video tutorials to learn the advanced features.

Once you've created an activity, you can publish it in multiple formats, including web format, mobile, SCORM, and Word. I usually publish an activity to both web format and Word (which I then convert to PDF). The Word/PDF version serves as a transcript of the interactive version for people with auditory disabilities.

Learning the more advanced features of Storyline does take some time. When I was learning Storyline, I was able to set aside about 45 minutes at the beginning of each day to watch 1 or 2 tutorial videos and then practice what I had just learned. I got up to speed very quickly this way! And once you have some advanced skills with Storyline, that's where the fun really begins!

Some of the output options aren't ideal. For example, you can publish an activity to a DVD, but the output is an exe file, which some computers won't run. Also the Word doc output is fairly terrible looking. (Although, if you have a little skill with Word styles, you can easily fit it up.)

You can easily and quickly create a presentation, course or software simulation.

You can learn this tool quickly from video tutorials posted on the forum.

You can download free templates.

More options and triggers on timeline.

As a novice with software authoring tools and no coding ability, Storyline's basic platform was easy to learn. It has a PowerPoint type look and feel so it's less intimidating than many other tools.

The tutorials provided on the Articulate website quickly helped me move from basic slides to interactive visuals and question elements. They are available any time I am which was perfect!

While not part of the software itself, the Articulate community is beyond what I have ever seen for software I use. Other users answer questions, share their work, create templates, and give out information that helps me be successful with my eLearning courses.

While it is easy to use, there is still ramp up time for the non-technical person like myself. Seeing others' cool work and realizing how many elements are in it can be daunting. It just takes time and some study to get some of the more complicated interactions down.

The product is a good value for the price. I would have like a couple more characters to have been included.

Building complex interactions, allowing learners to practice new skills or application of new information, is easy and straightforward.

Creating branching and scenario-based e-learning is also easy and straightforward - I can see the branching overview easily and have the opportunity to use layers within a slide to manage detailed feedback.

If you want to get even more complex, as long as you plan sufficiently and/or have some coding help, Storyline can support a lot of additional functionality.

There's no text-to-speech engine, so we are using a very odd combination of software & strange workflow to sort that out.

There's no way to publish as a movie/video file, so some projects we're still completing in Captivate.

Also we've found that recording audio directly into Storyline limits your options - if you later export that audio, you will get one long file, of the original recording, without any of the edits made within the software.

Simplicity and functionality- the tool is powerful, but the differentiator for the product isn't the power itself, but the fact that users come up to speed and get so productive in the tool in a short time. The learning curve is very low.

Superb support- All software will encounter a problem at some point, so support is key. Articulate support is second-to-none.

Community- beyond support is a large community that offers templates and tutorials that enhance your experience with the tool.

Responsive- this is a matter of perspective. On one hand, responsive sites are becoming the norm, and sites are arranging themselves to better fit on a device's available space and orientation. On the other, if a designer creates a software simulation or a presentation design ("slide") for a specific presentation, rearranging those assets is not following the designer's intent (this is why Articulate scales, but doesn't have true responsiveness). I see both sides, but may want to see some options to set breakpoints to arrange items for different sizes or orientations in future versions.

Articulate is an early adopter of xAPI, and pretty standard features are reporting in xAPI streams, but seeing expansion of xAPI options in triggers would be an amazing feature set to expand

Wish I had more to say, but those are the only things I could think of after building over 100 courses in the tool.

Ease of use.

The features of Storyline such as triggers, variables, and buttons without having to know flash or HTML.

Works great with our LMS.

The ease of importing video and editing all in one location.

Ability to add music that would run the entire course instead of per slide.

When copying and pasting, the bullets do not carry over the same font color.

More characters would be nice.

Ease of use.

Low learning curve.

Adaptability.

SCORM compliance.

Lower price point.

Storyline is versatile. You can create a quick module when starting out with Storyline. Then as you increase your skill level, it grows with you.

Storyline handles variables and conditional statements very well. Being able to build logic into my courses has become standard for me now.

The prebuilt options like buttons, hotspots, zooms, and states makes me look like a whiz. So easy to use.

It would be nice to have the ability to change a quiz question to a different type. For example, change a quiz question from True/False to Multiple Choice without retyping the whole question.

Would be nice if they added advanced video editing features so that it could be done right from within the program.

Would be nice if they added a remove background from an image feature similar to what PowerPoint has. Would make it quicker than taking the image out to another editing program.

Language translations options

Trigger and variable options

Dockable panels

Graphics editing

Applying state changes to multiple objects at once

There are instances in which I need to replace several of the same images on a slide at once. For example, a marker to show a location. If I right-click on an image, I have the option to "change image or picture." It would be great if I could select all those images at once and change them as opposed to replacing each one individually. I can't do that now.

Easy to develop quality content

Customer service

Flexible

I always love more features :)

When recording technical training I love the ability to edit individual slides to show what you want.

The ability to develop in layers provides great flexibility as to the amount of options that you can provide on a single slide.

Triggers and variables allow you to control the user experience and display content/navigate based on the users responses. Leading to much richer solutions.

Editing a movie can be a little labor intensive and slow at times especially when there are a lot of slides to edit

Easy-to-use: it is similar to PowerPoint in terms of interface, but obviously does a lot more from an eLearning point of view.

It publishes content to HTML - this makes it really easy to deploy training to global offices from one site in the UK.

It has some great built in features which make creating interactive/engaging learning really easy.

Great for creating branching scenarios - where certain actions lead to differing results.

Fantastic online help in the form of the eLearning Heroes community run by Articulate - always on hand to help and provide loads of free material to help with projects.

Would benefit from more varied motion options - to enable some cartoon-making ability.

Would like to see a better selection of online shapes to avoid having to create your own.

Make it easier for users to report bugs/suggest changes.

Easy to build interactive objects such as sliders, drag and drops and quizzes.

The interface is designed to be similar to PowerPoint so you immediately feel at home.

All interactions are controlled using trigger and layers, other software makes it difficult to interact with certain elements.

This is a blank canvas approach to development and anything is possible.

Improve the HTML 5 content so it is truly multi browser.

Improve the player.

Some objects could have more customisations (such as the scroll panel).

Articulate Storyline allows video screen capture! This is essential when providing training modules about updated Electronic Health Records software.

Articulate Storyline allows non-programmers (like me) to use elegant tools for complex design elements; variables and states allow branching logic and easy design of custom interactions.

Although the link to product and community help is excellent, in my ideal world, context-sensitive help would be accessible within the program.

Graphical editing (as recommended by Articulate experts within PowerPoint) would be nice within Storyline itself.

Tiny picky thing - In Story View, I would like to be able to reorder and renumber scenes.

Some content imported from Articulate Presenter - interactions and quizzes need significant design tweaking.

Easy to use

Makes great looking and engaging courses

Has many cool features

Easy to publish content and upload to an LMS

Copy paste from Word to Storyline works well but not from Storyline back to Word. I often write in Word and copy into Storyline. I also edit/reshape my images in Word and copy to Storyline.

More stock photos of people with the base version of the software. More cartoon avatars.

Better ability to publish to a Word document for reviewing with SMEs. Published output is wonky.