The Magwitch View

Today's post is simply to update anybody reading my almost daily battles with Storyline 360. The real positives so far have been how easy the programme is to use, animations are simple, design is simple and the trigger system is great. I completed a voice over yesterday, with imported sound effects and video. My only problem was that I couldn't stop laughing. My real struggle comes with the Quizmaker. OK, so I created one the other day and it all went awry. It took as long to put it right once imported, as it did to create it. I should have learned some kind of lesson. But that lesson is not how to use the progamme, that lesson should instead be the old Einstein maxim of insanity, repeating the same thing and expecting a different result. This time I thought I had it mastered. I chose a ready made template, instead of using my own design. There were only three questions, yep, just three. All I changed was the colour scheme. OK, I admit I added some animations, but hey...

So officially, Microsoft owe me one mouse. They can have the remains of the one I hurled across the room in total, utter and complete frustration. Why? I spent some time creating a quiz in Quizmaker, and I don't mind saying myself it was truly a thing of beauty. Illustrated, animated, and superbly designed (at least I think so, and I think the dogs liked it too). But then it all started to go wrong. After finding both video and written instructions on how to import such a creation in to Storyline 360, which I followed to the letter, I found that some of the formatting in the quiz did not come through, some of the questions disappeared and some of the responses were changed. On top of that,  some of the formatting in the unrelated content also seems to have been changed. Putting it right took the better part of the day, I even started to manufacture the quiz within Storyline before realizing that doing it that way excludes some of the functionality and formatting I u...

After an extended sabbatical, I am happy to return to this blog. Work, TW5212, EL6072 and a dissertation take a toll, and let's not forget a gaggle of children suddenly permanently at home. Question, how do you convince children that this is not a holiday? In any case, after making fairly ludicrous promices in my EL6072 proposal I set about Storyline 360 this week in an attempt to rescue some credibility. First impressions, on a Lee & Owens scale of touch and feel, this is a delicious software package. It's colouring, typeface and delivery are all non-challenging, welcoming, genuinely good. There are help buttons and videos on constant and massive supply. The interface is typical Microsoft, it will be very familiar to anyone who has switched a computer on. OK, some of the concepts are a little alien, but that is true of any new thing. I'm not keen on masses of instructions, except when it comes to flat pack furniture, and it was good to be able to jump strai...