Articulate Storyline 2

Storyline 2 Logo

Storyline is Articulate’s more “Heavy-Hitting” Application

With Articulate offering two of the most popular eLearning authoring tools, Storyline is the more advanced offering versus Studio.

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Where Studio is a PowerPoint add-on with other apps like “Quizmaker” and “Engage”, Storyline is a stand-alone, all-in-one application.

If you’re looking to create more than just basic eLearning presentations, and are willing to put a little more time into their development, you can really create some great courseware with Storyline.

Articulate Storyline 2 makes it easy to create any interactive e-learning you can imagine. Designed for simplicity and power, it’s the only e-learning authoring software that grows with you.

Another advantage of Storyline: there are much more, and better templates available for just about everything; from interactions to gamification (which is difficult to do in Studio, if at all).

Two great resources for free and paid assets are:

  1. E-Learning Heroes Community
  2. The eLearning Brothers

Many people deciding on a tool often come up with the choice, “should I go with Storyline or Captivate?”

Although you will see differing opinions across the web, after having experience with just about all the most popular tools, I would have to say Storyline would be my choice…

I desperately wanted to like Captivate more. I have the full Adobe Creative Suite that I use, and it works on Mac and PC!  However, after using them both myself, and searching out the best presentations created in each, I have to say that the best Storyline presentations blow Captivate out of the water in terms of aesthetics.  In fact I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a Captivate presentation that has really impressed me, and I’ve seen a lot.

It does have a few more “bells and whistles” in certain areas, however, functionally I would only choose it over Storyline if it was required by a client.

I once read somewhere, something to the effect of, “if you gave one person Storyline and another Captivate, after two weeks the Storyline presentation would be better.  After two months of use the Captivate presentation would be better.” In Practice I have never found this to be true.

What Storyline 2 does currently lack is clean HTML5 output, or a responsive player for different device sizes… However, with the release of Articulate 360 and the new responsive player, Storyline 360 will give you all you want and more in terms of functionality and responsive delivery.