Storyline 1 vs. 2 and Why I Want It!

When I was first told about Storyline, it was described to me as “PowerPoint on steroids.”  Now I didn’t know much about either of those things, but Storyline certainly sounded like an interesting software to learn!  I’d gotten to the point where any time someone opened up a PowerPoint to present, I would do a deep internal sigh.  Technology today has so many tools to help us amp up our presentations and in many companies, eLearnings have become a preferred way to “teach.”  So if you’ve been using Storyline and have been wondering if it’s worth it to make the switch to Storyline 2, check out Articulate’s round up of reasons below.  I think you’ll be wanting S2 just as much as I do, if not more!  {Scroll to the bottom if you just want a graph with side by side comparisons.}

1.  Every course works on every tablet.

–  Build tablet-ready courses and performance support for learners on the go.
–  With HTML5, iPad, and new Android support in Storyline 2, any tablet will do.

2.  Bring content to life.

–  Interactive Slider:  Put learners in control.  With the new slider interaction, it’s easy to let them manipulate data visually, explore cause-and-effect relationships, and control objects and navigation.
–  Motion Paths:  Make objects move any way you want with motion paths. You can easily control motion paths with triggers, add multiple paths to one object, and begin them from an object’s current or initial position.
–  New Animations and Transitions:  With 11 new transitions and 10 new entrance and exit animations, it’s even easier to add pep to text, objects, slide layers, and slides. Control timing in seconds and apply effects with a few clicks.
–  New Triggers:  Direct the action on your slides in novel ways with new triggers and trigger events. You can now trigger action at a specific time, cue point, or even when an animation ends.

3.  Create the right look.

–  New Text Editor:  The all-new text editor gives you ultimate control over text styling. Customize paragraph alignment and direction, set your own character and line spacing, use custom bullets, and much more.
–  Enhanced Font Support:  Take advantage of all the features in your fonts. You can now use custom characters such as smart quotes and em dashes. And, with support for font ligatures, watch letters shape-shift when they get new neighbors.
–  Enhanced Web Objects:  Build the perfect home for your embedded web content. You can now layer shapes, characters, text, and other objects on top of web objects.
–  Eyedropper Tool:  Finesse your design by picking colors from anything that’s visible on your screen, then applying it to any other objects.

4.  Craft the ideal learning experience.

–  Player Button States:  Easily prevent learners from skipping ahead by applying normal, disabled, and hidden states to the Previous, Next, and Submit buttons on the player.
–  Negative Scoring:  Use more nuanced scoring to assess whether learners really have mastered material. You can now subtract points from a learner’s score for wrong answers.
–  Uncompressed Video:  Storyline 2 only compresses videos when you want it to, giving you more control over video quality and project size.
–  Read-Only Seekbar:  Now you can make course seekbars read-only so learners can see their progress but can’t fast forward through content.

5.  Boost your productivity.

–  New UI:  We’ve cleared out all clutter, introduced eye-catching icons, and simplified the user interface so it’s even easier to find everything you need to create content quickly.
–  Dockable Panels:  Put the tools you need right where you need them. Move triggers, slide layers, states, notes, scenes, and timeline panels anywhere on your desktop or even to a second monitor.
–  Animation Painter:  Format animation effects for one object, then use the animation painter to quickly apply those same effects to other objects.
–  Slide/Form View Toggle:  Update content faster by toggling between Slide view and Form view in one window.
–  Copy/Paste Layers:  Save time by copying and pasting layers from one slide to another.
–  AutoRecovery:  Never lose your work. If Storyline 2 closes unexpectedly, you can reopen your project right where you left off.

6.  Start faster, so you finish sooner.