In one of the recent emails to iSpring subscribers, they mentioned a major update to come sometime this year. From my previous review, I prefer iSpring’s HTML5 output and style over Articulate Presenter; even “360” which is supposed to be fully HTML5 compliant, but still does not integrate nearly as well with PPT… and there are still bugs in the HTML5 output.
iSpring version 8.7 has a targeted date of February 28th 2017…
However, this will be a standard update. So what’s to come with iSpring 9, and what would this user like to see?
Better Video Integration:
iSpring does a great job with its HTML5 output, however, I find Articulate makes it easier to bring in videos to slides for regular use, where with iSpring, you must import slide videos using PowerPoint (not terrible, but requires a few extra steps if you don’t want user’s throwing off slide timing when pausing videos). It’s great that it does such a good job pulling video and audio from PPT presentations, however, there are some advantages to being able to import video using the plugin itself.
iSpring does give some more options for video use in conjunction with the player, such as lecture view, presenter, etc.
As of now, you can only import Flash video using the iSpring ribbon (which then converts to HTML5). Here’s to hoping that the next release will allow for .mp4 video import through the iSpring plugin.
Improved Quizmaker:
iSpring’s Quizmaker tool is already pretty nice, and does a decent job of rivaling Articulate, however, it could be improved upon in a major release to be a little more “heavy hitting” in terms of ability to design and customize.
Improved Interactions:
More so than Quizmaker, iSpring could make significant improvements to their built-in interactions. There really aren’t many options here, and there’s no ability to customize the look and feel of them, so if you do like using pre-made interactions, there’s not a lot of choice. I’ve given them feedback on this, and assuming other users have as well, so this would be huge.
Depart from Flash Altogether:
During a recent webinar, it was raised that iSpring (as well as many other applications, including Articulate and Captivate) still require Adobe Flash for using the application itself. This is not at all unique to iSpring, but I think it’s time to phase out of this as much as possible, even if this is just required for the authoring tool itself, and the HTML5 output is still great.
CONCLUSION:
Unfortunately, I can’t find any hard data on what will be included with the new major release, or when it might be expected, except for the hint that it will come sometime in 2017. That said, it’s a good application with great promise, if they could give it some feature improvements to make it a more “heavy-hitting” authoring tool. Yes, there is only so much you can do with a PPT integration, however, Articulate still tops iSpring in terms of raw features, even if that may come at the expense of stability or integration with PPT.
Is there anything that other iSpringers would like to see included in the next major release of this tool? I’d love to hear about it. Please leave your comments!
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