Trivantis Lectora is generally considered a fair competitor to
Authorware and is currently being maintained. I've played with it a
little and, IMO, it simply pales in comparison...but it does allow
decent interaction development and multimedia support.
Outstart...Trainer? I see mentioned here and there. Outstart has an LMS
and authoring tool...I'm not sure of their respective names. I don't
have a good impression of the product but not sure why.
Flash is where we are going with most of our development, but it's not
an easy environment to learn. I believe there are products built on top
of Flash to allow a more friendly authoring experience... RapidBuilder?
I'm not sure of those names either, but a search for something like
'Flash-based media authoring' or somesuch may reveal.
Articulate has some decent tools but mostly for creating super-fancy PPT
files with SCORM tracking and quizzes at the end, as far as I've seen.
When I started in this field, Authorware, Director, Toolbook, Quest, and
TenCore were the primary tools. Kinda interesting how many of those are
still at the top of the field (none).
But there are surely a lot of options out there. May be best to just
search for 'multimedia authoring tools' or something like then post back
here, or any other forum, and see if anyone has experience with such tools.
I'll still use Authorware where I can but, as Amy says, without support
for latest OS, browsers, and Flash - it's becoming less and less likely.
Erik
dwknapp wrote:
> Thanks for the excellent comments. So, given that I am new to this genre of
> software, what other products should I be researching? The purpose would be
> for doing in-house, in-department training developed by a couple of
> subject-matter experts who are not computer programmers. They have no web
> support, but do have experience in non-computer training. The subject matter
> is very technical, health-care related. Doubt that multi-media would play much
> of a part, but perhaps narration would be involved.
>
--
Erik Lord
http://www.capemedia.net
Adobe Community Expert - Authorware
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/
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