Articulate: A Complete 360

by Kal Hadi, CTT, COTP  

 

The long anticipated Articulate Storyline upgrade was announced recently by Articulate and came not as Storyline 3 (as many expected) but rather in the form of the subscription-based Articulate 360, a suite of tools that includes every tool that Articulate makes.

Articulate has decided to change the way upgrades to their products are going to work in the future. There will no longer be traditional upgrades to the licensed products that one has purchased and installed on their desktop. Upgrades will be made to the Articulate 360 tools. You can continue using the desktop version of Storyline 2 and Studio '13, but don't expect any future upgrades to these tools.

With the new subscription model, you pay an annual fee of $999 ($599 for the first year if you are an existing Storyline or Studio customer). To edit existing projects, or create new content, you will need to keep your subscription active. Although the pricing seems a bit steep, consider what you get. For instance, there is a robust Content Library that has a vast array of professional templates and a huge number of characters and other eLearning assets.

Other components include access to Replay 360 (a screen recording tool useful for making video demos), Rise (a template based online authoring tool for creating very simple and responsive courses), Articulate Review (online based course review process where many can comment and provide feedback), Preso (an iPad app that lets you create and annotate slides, add video and turn to a movie), and Peek (a desktop app that let's you record either Mac or PC screens).

And of course there's Storyline 360, which is very similar to the current Storyline 2 in look and feel. However, there are some additional features in the 360 version. For instance, there's a major focus on support for mobile output by, among other things, making HTML5 the primary output and support for touchscreen and gesture interfaces. There is also a new dial control similar to a slider and a couple of new trigger events.

One thing to think about before taking the plunge and going with 360 is backward compatibility--there is none. If you upgrade a project from Storyline 2 to 360, there's no going backward to version 2. This can be a major issue if you share files with other developers or content creators who cannot or will not upgrade from version 2 to 360.

In the coming weeks I'll be showing you some of the ins and outs of the 360 tools I mentioned below. And keep in mind that if you need training or help with Articulate Storyline or Studio, we've got you covered with these awesome live, online Articulate classes.

Comments

[FYI]

Articulate community staff have indicated periodically that Storyline 3 should be released as a standalone (albeit also available through their subscription service), eta "some time" in 2017.

Since they fairly hush-hush on development we'll of course have to see, but hold the faith on a standalone option, it very much still could happen; Their subscription model is very expensive, and I doubt all of its constituent users are interested in jumping to that model. Adobe CC it is not.

[Kevin Siegel]

I also hope that Storyline 3 (Perpetual... or affordable subscription for just that one tool) is in the works... but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.