The Logical Blog by IconLogic

Articulate Storyline 360: Modern and Legacy Players

by Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP

If you're an Articulate Storyline 360 developer, you’ve likely grown familiar with the publishing choices found in the Publish dialog box. Most notably, you can elect to publish as HTML5 only, HTML5 with a Flash fallback, Flash with an HTML5 fallback, or Flash only.

However, if you’ve just recently updated Storyline, you’ve likely noticed that when publishing, HTML5 is the only option.

The publish options you see has everything to do with the project’s playbar (the playbar is the frame around the slide content and contains such features as menu, seekbar, and previous and next buttons). Storyline 360 users have a choice of two players: Modern and Classic. The Modern playbar does not work with Flash (hence the reason that HTML5 is the only publish option. The Classic playbar (which is the only playbar available in Storyline 3), supports both HTML5 and Flash.

 

Switching between players is easy. From within the Publish dialog box, click the Player link.

 

 

From the Player drop-down menu, choose the player you'd like. Note that you can also switch players outside of the Publish dialog box by clicking the Player tool on the toolbar. 

 

 

 

To learn about the specific differences between the Modern and Classic players, visit the Articulate website.

ELEARNING AND PRESENTATIONS: In Search Of Free-to-Use Images

by Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP

When trying to find quality images for use in PowerPoint presentations or eLearning projects created with any development tool such as Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, or TechSmith Camtasia, most people turn to Google. And why not? With a quick search you are sure to find the image you’re looking for.

 

For instance, I recently wanted to find an image of a puppy for use in an eLearning project. (I know, I know, I was enthralled with puppies in my last article... but come on, puppies!)

 

Check out some of the awesome puppy images Google found for me. It's unreal that these images are now mine, all mine!

 

 

As tempting as it might be to use images found via a Google search in your project, I’d caution against it. Most of the images you’ll find on the Internet while using any search engine are protected by copyright law. Using that adorable puppy on your web page, promotional materials, or even your eLearning project without permission from the copyright holder can lead to some hefty fines. In fact, according to Purdue University, “the law provides a range from $200 to $150,000 for each work infringed.”

 

Still wanting to search the web for an image of a puppy to use in a work project? There’s hope. Go to Google's advanced search page. In the all these words area, type puppy.

 

 

Scroll down to the usage rights area and, from the drop-down menu, choose free to use, share or modify, even commercially.

 

 

After clicking the Advanced Search button, plenty of images appear, just like a regular search. However, this time your search results are full of results you can actually use! But, not so fast! Be sure to put in the legwork. Click through to the image you'd like to use and check its usage rights. Some images will be labeled Creative Commons Zero. This means you can truly use, share, or modify the work, even commercially, without crediting the owner. But a lot of these results, while available for you to use, will still have some use restrictions like citing your source. Failure to do so could result in copyright fines.

 

 

But what if you already have an image on your computer or in a PowerPoint presentation or on a Storyline slide (perhaps the image was already being used in your project when you took it over)? How can you ensure that the image wasn’t “borrowed” from a website “accidentally?” For instance, I’d like to use the king-of-all-cuteness image shown below in my project. My friend Biff gave it to me. And nobody knows where he found it. (Biff, for his part, isn't talking.)

 

 

In this scenario, you can perform what is known as a “reverse lookup” that will find similar images and/or websites that are already using the image (a possible indicator that the image is protected by copyright).

 

To begin, go to https://images.google.com and click the search by image icon.

 

 

Click the Upload an image tab and then upload the image from your computer or server. In my example of puppy cuteness, the mighty Google took just seconds to burst my bubble. My puppy image was being used by a site selling images for use on a phone. While the website owning the image might have granted me permission to use their image, it just wasn’t worth the time or effort (so off I went to perform an advanced Google search for free-to-use puppies).

 

 

 

Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

 

 

 

 

ARTICULATE STORYLINE: Dial-Up Interactivity with Custom Dials

by Kevin Siegel, COTP

With Articulate Storyline, adding a high-level of interactivity is pretty easy if you begin with some of the built-in Interactive Objects. Take dials for instance. If you visit the Storyline 360 Insert tab on the Ribbon, Interactive Objects area, you'll find Button, Slider, Dial, Hotspot, Input, and Marker. If you click the Dial tool, you'll find three built-in Dials that are totally drag-and-drop ready. (You won't need to add any Triggers to the object to allow learners to drag the dial.)

 

 

The first image below shows one of the default dials that was added to a Storyline slide. The second image is an animated GIF that demonstrates how a learner can interact with the dial. (I've included a link to a video of the interaction if the animated gif does not play in your email application. Click the second image below to see the video.)

 

 

Dials are cool, but wouldn't it be better if you could make any image or shape a dial (essentially create your own interactive object) without the need for programming? It turns out that custom dials in Storyline are a snap. In the image below, I've added an image to a Storyline slide. It's a simple character that can be added via Insert > Characters.

 

 

To convert an object to a dial, ensure that the object is selected and choose Insert > Interactive Objects > Convert to Dial.

 

 

The selected image is instantly converted to an interactive dial.

 

 

I added a few more shapes and some text to my slide, implemented a few states (the smiley face you see is actually three states: Normal, Tired, and Sad), added a few Triggers, and the results appear in the animated GIF below. (Please don't judge the example below on appearance or silliness, I quickly threw it together as a proof of concept for you... plus I'm no designer. With a little TLC from a designer, there's no limits to the awesomeness you can create.)

 

 

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If you'd like to learn more about Storyline, Triggers, States, and Interactive objects, check out our live, online Articulate Storyline classes.

 

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

eLearning: Compare Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and TechSmith Camtasia

Welcome to the eLearning tool slug-fest. In this corner, it's Adobe Captivate. Over there? It's Articulate Storyline. And because this isn't a two-tool fight, look over there and you'll see TechSmith Camtasia. Attend this power hour and see demonstrations of all three tools. If you'd like to follow-along with your instructor, install trial versions of Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and TechSmith Camtasia (Mac or PC). Watch as your instructor, a seasoned eLearning developer and certified online training professional, puts each of these tools through its paces, compares their strengths and weaknesses, and helps you pick the tool that is right for you!

If you'd like to attend this live, online class, you can sign up here: https://www.iconlogic.com/compare-elearning-tools.html

The video below is a sample from a recent class.

 

ARTICULATE STORYLINE 360: Publishing to Video

by Kal Hadi, COTP

When teaching my students how to publish Articulate Storyline projects during my beginner class, I often get the following question:

 

Student: “How do I publish my project as a video (MP4)?”

 

Me: “You can’t.”

 

Cue the crickets along with disappointed comments in the chat pod, especially from Adobe Captivate users (Captivate has been able to publish projects as a video for years). 

 

Why would a Storyline developer want to publish a project as a video (especially when you lose any interactivity you've built into the slides)? Video files are self-contained. They can be viewed on just about any device without the need for a web browser. You can email the video output to a colleague who does not have Storyline, so they can view your slides. And published videos can be uploaded into video streaming servers such as YouTube and Vimeo. 

 

Given that publishing as a video has been a requested Storyline feature for some time, I’m happy to report that Articulate Storyline 360 now allows you to publish a single video of a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course. 

 

There are some settings and best practice options in the Publish to Video dialog box we’ll discuss.

 

Under Size and Quality, there are a few choices:

• Dimensions. This is where you can select a size for video from a drop-down menu. If video size is not a factor, you can go as high as full 1080p HD for nice quality.
  
  
• You have two sliders for Video and Audio Quality that ranges from Low to Very High. There is of course a tradeoff between quality and file size. High is usually a good choice.
  
  
• “Set the same volume level for all audio” makes all sounds volume consistent throughout the project. If you want to keep the volume the same as you originally had it in the Storyline project, deselect this option.
  
  
• Prior to publishing, you can also control how the slides flow (or the Navigation). You can either follow the “next” button actions in your course, or show the slides sequentially based on their slide number (1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, and so on).

If you need to publish a course to video, I suggest that you duplicate the project and prepare a copy for video output that automatically goes through all content flow without missing main content stored in layers. You’ll likely need to adjust the Triggers so they execute automatically. For example, if a user needs to click a button to show a specific layer, you can adjust the Triggers so one layer shows when the timeline of a previous layer end. 

 

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Looking for Storyline training? Check out these live, hands-on, online classes.

 

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Kal Hadi, COTP, is a Certified Adobe Instructor with CompTIA CTT+ credentials. He has over 15 years of experience in the field of computer graphics, imaging, and electronic publishing. He was recognized by Adobe as one of the top five trainers worldwide in 2009. He is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology Electronic Publishing graduate program. He is also the author of many books and papers in the fields of graphics and web publishing including IconLogic's Articulate Storyline books.

 

 

ARTICULATE STORYLINE 360: Three Cheers for Text-to-Speech

by Kevin Siegel, CTT+, COTP

During our live, online Articulate Storyline Beginner classes, we teach students how to import and record voiceover audio. The most common question we get about voiceover audio is “Can Storyline convert text to audio files?” The answer has always been "no." However, “no” became “yes” thanks to a recent Storyline 360 update.

 

If you select the Insert tab on the Ribbon and click the Audiotool (located in the Media group), you’ll find Text-to-Speech. Yayyyy! (If you don't see Text-to-Speech as shown below, and you're using Storyline 360, start Articulate 360 and see if updates are available.)

 

 

Before using Text-to-Speech, I suggest a little pre-work. If you’ve created a voiceover script (or have access to it), you will save yourself a lot of extra work in Storyline because you can copy and paste the script text into Storyline’s Notes area (instead of typing). The Notes can easily be converted to Speech.

 

 

Next, choose Insert > Media > Audio > Text-to-Speech to open the Insert Text-to-Speech dialog box. From the upper left of the dialog box, you can select from an awesome number of languages.

 

 

Choose your narrator and, if you'd like, use the Preview Voice option to get a feel for how your narrator is going to sound.

 

 

 

You can type the script text manually if you're into that sort of thing (the typing I mean). But remember the Notes I encouraged you to create earlier? Click the Copy From Slide Notes button and those notes will instantly appear in the panel (there's no extra typing required... I love that).

 

Click the Insert button and you're done, done, done. The resulting audio file appears at the bottom left of the slide.

 

 

If you'd like to hear the resulting audio (and who wouldn't?), right-click the speaker icon and choose Preview.

 

 

After you've added the Text-to-Speech, you can change to a different language or Narrator by visiting the Audio Tools tab and clicking Text-to-Speech and clicking the Update button.

 

Thanks, Articulate for making the whole Text-to-Speech thing so fast and easy!

 

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If you are looking to learn all things eLearning, including Articulate Storyline, check out these live, online and awesomely interactive classes.

 

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

ARTICULATE STORYLINE: Removing Built-In Slide Navigation

by Kevin Siegel, COTP, CTT

I received an email from an Articulate Storyline developer who was adding interactivity to her project via buttons. She wanted learners to click on the buttons for slide-to-slide navigation.

 

The developer easily added the buttons she needed to the desired slides (via the Insert tab on the Ribbon, Interactive Objects). She then added the appropriate Triggers to each of the buttons so that when learners clicked the buttons, they moved forward, backward, or jumped to different slides.

 

Upon previewing the project, she was dismayed to see built-in Prev and Next navigation buttons that weren’t on her slides when she was working on the project. (The image below is a slide I created for demonstration purposes... the developer mentioned above created slides far more elegant, but she was not able to share them.)

 

 

The developer wanted to know if there was an easy way to quickly hide the navigation buttons on a slide-by-slide basis? The answer? Yup!

 

Right-click a Storyline slide and choose Properties. From the Buttons area, deselect Prev, Next, or both, and then click the OK button.

 

 

Preview the content and you'll notice that the built-in slide navigation is gone.

 

 

If you'd like to remove the navigation buttons from multiple slides, that's easy too. From Story View, select as many slides as you like (you can shift-click to select contiguous slides; control-click to skip around). On the Slide Properties panel you'll find Multiple slide navigation controls allowing you to show/hide the buttons for the selected slides.

 

 

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Looking to learn the hottest eLearning tools such as Articulate Storyline or Adobe Captivate? Check out these live, online, and highly interactive classes.

 

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

ARTICULATE STORYLINE 360 VERSUS 3: Clear up the Version Confusion

Articulate recently released Storyline 360, an update to its awesome eLearning devleopment tool. Even more recently, Articulate released Storyline 3. And then came version confusion when eLearning developers pondred the choice between subscribing to Storyline 360 or purchasing Storyline 3 outright. Developers wanted to know the difference between the two versions.

 

In a nutshell, Storyline 360 and 3 are almost identical. Here's a short list of the features you'll see in 360 that you won't see in version 3:

• Articulate 360 Content Library Integration
• Content Library Templates
• Content Library Characters
• More than a million Content Library Photos, Illustrations, Icons, and Videos
• Integration with Articulate Review for Stakeholder Reviews

If you're still confused about the differences between the Storyline versions, check out this handy chart provided by Articulate.

Articulate Storyline: Enhanced Multiscreen Support

by Kevin Siegel, COTP Articulate recently released Storyline 360, part of the Articulate 360 suite of products available through a subscription on Articulate's website. If you've spent any time using Storyline 2, you'll find that Storyline 360 is just about identical. And while it's true that little has changed between Storyline 2 and 360, there are some subtle improvements in the new version. For instance, there's access to the Content Library (I wrote about the Content Library last week). There is also enhanced support for multiple screens. In the image below, check out the five icons in the upper right of the preview window. By default, projects preview as a desktop user. However, Storyline 360 projects can be used by learners on several types of devices (such as desktops, tablets, and mobile devices). You can now use the Preview window to get an idea of how your content will look on those devices.

I'm curious to see what my layout will look like for tablet users. All I need to do is click the Tablet Landscape icon.

Not only does the slide resize to accommodate a Tablet, the Player (which was at the bottom of the Desktop version of the slide) becomes a mobile Player (it’s smaller and changes screen position).

I love the fact that it's now an easy process to get a reasonable peek at what my slides will look like on multiple screens/devices. I'm also happy to see the Player behave so responsively and reposition appropriately on different devices.

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Looking for training on your favorite eLearning tool? We've got you covered with an assortment of half-day and multi-day courses.

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the US Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

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.