A gamechanger

mnotermans5114

I use both Lectora and Storyline. I do prefer Lectora. Main reasons for me are that it is good extendable with Javascript and that it is responsive. Storyline 2 lacks that. I can work with Javascript in it, but it is far more cumbersome then in Lectora and it never was good for responsive courses...

Well then Articulate presented Articulate360 with Rise and a responsive player for Storyline3. At first i thought, great..but soon i got disappointed..both by the fact that Storyline3 wasnot that responsive. Just the player is responsive..you cannot adapt your designs to a mobile view.... and Rise...allthough a promising concept ..adaptive blocks of content that work on every screen, device and size... ( somewhat like Elucidat and Adapt ) , well that disappointed me too, because of the complete lack of customization. You could use what was available...and thats it.

So for me till now Lectora 16 and 17 were the clear winner(s).

Just now however i got mail from Articulate about a new element for Rise.
https://community.articulate.com/articles/new-storyline-block-in-rise

If this works like i think, this might be a big gamechanger. Rise has like Elucidat and Adapt the potential to create courses for all devices and all screensizes. Filling and using the complete screen ! Lectora still is stuck within the presets you define. Further this approach makes it easier for third-party developers ( like me ) to create great partial elements that then can be used/bought by customers without having to do the complete course.

One other thing im noticing lately. In Europe Trivantis is loosing territory to Articulate. I find it tough to find fellow developers/designers to join up for projects. There are no or few usergroups. There are no tradeshows or meetings. Even the official Lectora dealers here in the Netherlands, promote Storyline and Articulate more then Lectora. Something Trivantis should work on.

Math

klaatu

I had a feeling Inspire would start a decline like this when it was sold. No innovation. It's like ToolBook deja vu. Inspire needs a complete re-write to remain competitive. Output should be web standard HTML5, CSS and JS. Responsive design should be handled using Grid.

mnotermans5114

Agree completely with you Darrel. Although im not sure yet whether Rise delivers standardized HTML, they for sure have drawn my attention with this new block. Seeing a lot of great possibilities and for sure gonna try it.

jasonadal

This makes me sad because:

1. I'm just getting into the heavy hitting pieces of Lectora, including extending it through JavaScript/CSS, etc.
2. My supervisor would probably have a conniption fit if I told her now that we need to shift to different software.
3. The fight to get it would be monumental, and likely take much longer than a 30 day trial.
4. I like you all! The folks here have been everything from inspirational to life saving and I would be loathe to see folks migrate en masse.

I truly hope Trivantis does start the ball rolling like a Chris Sale fastball to keep up with or, as they have in the past, exceed Adobe's progress. I view Adobe as the Apple of the eLearning world and would hate to have to be assimilated by Adobe of Borg.

mnotermans5114

No need Jason. Lectora is still my favourite too. But i too keep an open eye to the competitors.

Mostly i try to convince clients to use Lectora. Also because i know i can deliver a top endresult with it. With Storyline2 the hurdle of Flash and no real responsiveness made me choose Lectora time after time. Now i will spent time in the combo of Rise and Storyline, because if that works good enough...well then i could choose that path if applicable.
Actually on reading comments on the post i linked i already noticed quite a few drawbacks, so dont worry too much.
Eg. Storyline content blocked into Rise cannot sent LMS values or scores. Rise handles that. So what that exactly means i cannot predict, have to see and try. But if that means Storyline blocks are just visual, and cannot pass interactions into Rise, well that would be a major drawback.. bringing it back to just a video or image.. we will see.

@Jason - 508 for Rise has its issues.
Due to the fact that basic components are not easily adaptable, Rise had quite some non-compliant 508 things, low contrast and more. Quite a few are fixed is what i read, but definately not all. For the default components that would mean overriding things with CSS or wait till a fix from the developers comes. So on that part you are better off with Lectora for sure.

ahetherington9113

I agree with all of those points Jason (well, maybe not 1 because I'm not there with Javascript or CSS yet, but my skills are constantly improving), and another thing I always liked about Lectora is that you can make courses look more unique and professional. I always feel like I can tell when a course has been developed in Captivate or Storyline, which gives the course less personality.

I also chose Lectora because it has the best translation functionality, still room for improvement there, but better than the others.

I do sometimes find it difficult being in Australia, and another time zone, as my questions are always followed up the next day ...

Having said all that, I haven't looked those other programs, and although I understand the only certainty is change, I would prefer to stay with Lectora for a while longer.

approg

The issue for any company selling software is "how much money will we make if we do blah?"

Every time Trivantis adds a new feature the amount of testing increases by an order of magnitude. For example, if there only 3 features those can interact in 6 possible ways, 4 features in 24 ways... 12 features in 479,001,600 ways!

If Trivantis takes the effort to make Lectora output fully HTML5 compliant how many more sales will that result in, and will the result be more than the effort it will take in design, development and testing?

The counter argument is that if we don't do enough people will leave.

For me the obvious big thing holding Lectora back (and I don't mean full HTML5 compliance, lack of a timeline, difficult to extend/customise...) is that the the UI is so last century. From simple things like the title explorer not opening nodes when I drag and hold an item over the node, to "unnecessary" modal dialog boxes, to a ribbon that's forever changing, to poor table handling, to the inability to set CSS styles for each responsive view, to items in "odd" places (eg how do you insert a variable into some text?)

mnotermans5114

I do agree with most comments i read. A few remarks anyhow though.
Storyline3/Rise now has import/export for XLIF. So localisation is getting better.

Also the look and feel Amanda talks about i have to comment on. It was like she says indeed. You could recognize a Storyline course straight away due to its player, but i see a lot of course made in Lectora too i recognize immediately. With Rise thats however not the case anymore because you use your complete screen and can set it up in any look you want.

Nevertheless i have to admit i still have my doubts about Rise too. Storyline3 as is, is still no competition for Lectora. The combo of Rise with Storyline blocks in it might be. I for sure gonna try it to see what it does good and where it fails.

approg

I've never worked with XLIF but in my experience whenever a non technical person is required to work with XML anything, the thing blows up ("wait... you put a space in the closing tag at line 4196"). What would've been smarter would've been to make an interface to XLIF that did the "grunt" work.

The problem with Captivate is that it looks like it works one way but actually works another (which you can only find out by trawling Google or the forums).

That Storyline's subscription is $3K+ p.a. must be a joke. The idea of a subscription is a low monthly charge that makes the cost reasonable when compared to the buying the product outright. When I look at the videos of the responsive examples of Rise and see one block of text with one picture under it I feel they are being disingenuous about its capabilities.

By contrast Lectora's UI is easy. What I really like, when I work as a maintenance programmer, is that there's no real way to hide code. (In the bad old Flash days some luser would attach actionscript to a sprite embedded multiple levels down that took ages to locate). Sadly the UI is dated both in look and capabilities.

mnotermans5114

@approg i dont know where you got the Storyline $3k subscription from ?

As i can see these are the prices:
If you have Storyline: $599 p/y. If you don't: $999 And thats for Articulate360.
Thats for a personal subscription.

approg

My bad. I just checked the reseller's website and

• Storyline 3 has a "special" price of $1905.
• Articulate 360 individual annual subscription is $1365.
• Articulate Studio 13 pro is $1905

Still, the subscription price is waaaaaaaaaaaaay too expensive.