Are Adobe, Apple and Microsoft Making all the Decisions for Us?

The Wall Street Journal reported on November 9^th that “Adobe is going to throwing in the towel when it comes to getting Flash to run on mobile devices, after a years-long battle with Apple over the validity of Flash versus HTML 5”. ComputerWorld talked about how Microsoft will not support Flash in their Windows 8 Metro style Internet Explorer 10 browser.

Where does that leave us who want to create interactive e-learning which uses Flash, especially since HTML5 standards are still changing? I want to make interactive learning and do more than play videos on Apple mobile devices with quizzes at the end.

I feel a sense of urgency, because I know tablets are being purchased more than laptops and I do not want to create the training twice. We need to start creating training using authoring tools that can publish in HTML5, especially since we have been given fair warning by Adobe, Apple and Microsoft. We want to create training in such a way that it can be updated and changed as the standards evolve.

Here are a couple of my thoughts on how to do that:

• Start by developing your storyboard in PowerPoint (PPT) as I talked about in earlier blog called PowerPoint Virtual Training Secret Weapon
• Choose an authoring tool that supports importing PPT slides, so you do not have to start all over if you:
• Change authoring tools as new ones are coming out regularly with new features
• Need or want to recreate the training since the standards are not completely established
• Only purchase one or two licenses of the authoring tool you think you are going to use until the standards for HTML5 are more established
• Our company could easily need 20 licenses in the future. If we purchase that many license now we are pretty much committed to staying with that authoring tool. It might be too early to make that type of commitment to one product.
• Purchase an authoring tool from a major vendor that has money to put money into R&D and will keep up with the changing standards. Possible vendors to look at are Clario by DominKnow, Lectora by Trivantis, or Intuition, which all have already released HTML5 tools. Adobe Edge (beta) and Articulate Storyline (releasing Dec. 2011 or Jan 2012) are also strong choices.
• I have tested each of these am leaning toward Storyline for the following reasons:
• Price being around $1,400 per license is nice, instead of approximately $2,500 for Clario or Lectora.
• I did like Clario feature of developing in the cloud, which allows for a content management of assets. If the price came down and it was not a yearly fee it would be a stronger contender.
• Lectora is a very nice tool and will is coming out with new enhancements all the time. You can bet that Lectora is going to keep coming out with cooler and cooler features. I will definitely keep reviewing Lectora with each new enhancement. I hear rumors that they have an on-line version that is less expensive. I am looking at that tool in the next few weeks.

What are you thinking about as it relates to build mobile courses and purchasing an authoring tool?