5 Best Improvements in Articulate Presenter 09
January 17, 2009 16 Comments
I’ve been using Articulate Presenter 09 for a couple of months now and have come up with the five things I like best about the new version. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen my posts about having problems with the new version. Articulate has released two updates to Presenter 09 and most of the problems I had have been cleared up, or I’ve found workarounds. Even with the issues, I wouldn’t go back to the previous version.
So, my top 5 improvements:
1. Articulate Tab – Easily the best thing about the new version, Articulate integrates Presenter into PowerPoint 2007’s ribbon bar. All the functions are in a tab on the ribbon, making them easy to find. The button are grouped logically to improve your work flow so you don’t have to hunt around for menu options.
2. Improved Quizmaker Integration – I was never happy with the integration of Quizmaker and Presenter, but Articulate has fixed the issues. Now you can seamlessly jump from Presenter into Quizmaker and back with no errors. You also see a thumbnail of the first question (or instruction) and the quiz options on the placeholder slide. Thank you, Articulate.
3. Video – I’ve only used this for one project so far, but it was completely painless. Video needs to be in the FLV format, but Articulate supplies a conversion tool just in case your video editing software doesn’t convert to FLV. Inserting video uses the Insert Flash tool and has the same options as SWF files.
4. Improved Previewing – Now you can preview the current slide, the next three slides, or a range of slides. I use this feature a lot. It comes in handy for seeing how well a series of slides flow without having to publish the entire course.
5. Articulate Branding Removed – This is actually an option in the presentation template; the Articulate logo is still there by default. You just have to un-check the box to remove the branding. Obviously this has nothing to do with improved functionality, but the forced branding in the old version drove me crazy. No other development tool does that, nor should they.
Presenter 09 has several other features that have been improved, but I wanted to highlight the five that I like best. It’s a good tool and has definitely sped up development for me. You do need to plan carefully and make sure you don’t just put up a bunch of text slides that will put you learners to sleep. Remember, rapid development is not necessarily good development.
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Good list. I like the annotations and branching features. BTW, the branding didn’t change. You were always able to disable the branding. That’s been the case for a while.
I hope Articulate will address accessibility concerns soon. We can’t really use it because Articulate is truly doesn’t create accessible content and the law requires content to be accessible.
Doofdaddy, I didn’t see the function to remove branding before, guess I should have looked around more carefully. The annotations tool is handy, and along with the improved slide sync tool is the next item on my list.
Sanjay, I understand your concerns. I don’t have to worry about Section 508. I think the accessibility issue has more to do with Flash limitations. It is easy to include a text version with each slide (Notes), but that can’t be read aloud my screen readers. If it were in HTML it would help.
Gary,
Articulate released a patch some time ago that allowed you to remove the branding (as you see it today).
I’m sure there are/were tons of people that didn’t see you could do that before ’09 because they didn’t install the patch.
One of my favorite additions in the ’09 version are the Annotations and how they integrated them into the recording and animation sycn window.
I am also anxiously awaiting the arrival of additional community interactions!
but how do we remove the logo on the upper-left hand corner that says a r t i c u l a t e??
@Nidhi: replace it with your own logo in the presentation options, or deselect logo in the template settings.
hey thanks Tom!!
Good post.
A colleague recently posted some workarounds for few of the bugs that remain in Articulate 09. You could check them out at: http://www.upsidelearning.com/blog/?p=309
Amit,
Thanks for posting the link. I haven’t run into any of those issues yet. I have worked around the Exit tab issue by creating a custom tab. I need to blog that and send it to Sonal.
Gary
Gary
Please post your workaround Exit tab issue. Would really be helpful.
Could use workaround for Exit problem.
Ellen, No problem. I’ll pull together a blog post on it. One note, it does require the Presenter SDK. You’ll need to check with Articulate to see if you have access.
@Nidhi & Tom
I can only see the option to remove the lower left logo in player templates.
I want to swap / remove the upper-left logo, but cannot see how to do this in presentation options.
Thanks
Antony
Go to presentation options to add a logo for use.
When you publish or customize your template, you have the option to swap logos. You’ll be able to select the logo from a list (if you added one via presentation options).
http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=1473
Please can you assist.
I downloaded a trial version of Articulate’s products. The only problem is that when I open Atriculate Presenter, I dont have the Articulate tab. What could be the problem?
Regards
Di
Hello Di, if you’ve installed the software but aren’t seeing the Articulate tab, it sounds like your Presenter menu is just disabled. See if this knowledgebase article helps: http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=1060