Macromedia Beaten Again

It's always nice to see a product that you've invested significant time and effort in come out ahead of the big dogs. Articulate's "Presenter" product (which is one of those products that I have invested quite a bit of time in) just took 1st place going up against Macromedia's Breeze at a very respected e-learning conference, which leaves me feeling pretty good right now.

SNAG

[1]  http://blog.articulate.com/2004/10/27/articulate_wins_brandon_hall_powerpoint_to_elearning_shootout/index.php

3 Comments

  • If the "author in powerpoint" thing is such a small subset of what Breeze does as you seem to be implying, then why did Macromedia waste their time going there and taking part in this thing in the first place? Calling this a "subset" of what Breeze does is a little deceiving, as it implies that this is only a small part of what Breeze actually does, when in reality it is the main thing that Breeze does.



    You probably don't spend much time in the e-Learning marketplace, but converting PowerPoint to Flash is a very hot topic right now. In fact, this simple task's impact on the e-Learning industry is the very reason that Macromedia spent all the money to acquire Presedia (it's not like they offered any other products). A huge number of people evaluating Breeze, Articulate's products, and the others in this space base their buying decisions solely on how these products enable authoring of courses and e-Learning materials through PowerPoint. As such, this is actually a pretty big deal.

  • <em>"...converting PowerPoint to Flash is a very hot topic right now."</em> Yes, such an aiblity has been hot for a few years now, and I'd agree this has increased recently as we see a greater variety of distance-learning curricula and an increasing reliance in general on the multi-environment Macromedia Flash Player.



    Using Microsoft PowerPoint as an authoring tool makes sense, because lots of people own it, and lots of people know how to use it. Delivering this content to a disparate audience is another issue, which is where the conversion to SWF becomes useful. I've been sort of surprised that the PowerPoint team hasn't included an "Export to SWF" option for the last few versions, but I don't know their total situation as well as they do.

  • Yes, this perplexes me as well... especially, since I know for a fact that a few companies that I have been in contact with have approached Microsoft with offers for this type of thing, so it's not like they haven't had the chance to acquire the technology. They spent all the work to create their HTML output, which has to be just as complex (if not more than) doing the same type of thing with SWF, but in the end SWF offers a far better user experience.

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