Geoff,
I've used Director a little bit and Authorware quite a bit, so here's my
perspective:
- For someone who has used Authorware, it is certainly easier to work with
at first than learning a new product such as MetaCard. But if you are
already comfortable with MetaCard, and not with Authorware, you will
certainly be able to produce things much faster with MetaCard.
- If you need your product to work cross-platform to UNIX, MetaCard is the
only viable solution of the 3 products.
- If you need your product to run in a browser, you will want to use
Director or Authorware, because there are plug-ins that make this possible,
but only for Mac and Windows. To my knowledge, there are no UNIX plug-ins
for these products.
- Some things for training programs in particular are much quicker to do in
Authorware because it's got certain functionalities built in. For example,
building an interaction, or a multiple-choice question, or a screen
animation, or a hypertext link are much easier to do in Authorware. In
MetaCard, you have to script these items from scratch. Of course, once
you've scripted it once, you can adapt and reuse your code as necessary.
- Things related to interfaces are often much easier to do in MetaCard,
because they are built in. For example, standard button styles (particularly
combo boxes), menus and different kinds of fields are all extremely easy to
create in MetaCard, but can be more problematic or require workarounds in
Authorware.
- The support from MetaCard is MUCH better. You can almost always find
someone to help you with a problem, whether it's here on this list, or over
at MetaCard proper. With Authorware, you will find that there are some
things you simply will not be able to do the way you want, either because of
a lack in the program or a bug that will not be fixed anytime soon. (This is
probably a really good argument, BTW.)
In the end, it will really depend on what the client's needs are. If they
want to maintain and update the training apps themselves after they are
finished, they may prefer a more "accessible" program like Authorware, which
has a pretty extensive user base. The same goes if they want their training
to run online, in a browser. But if those aren't issues, and it's merely a
matter of who can create the best product for them, then show them what you
can do with MetaCard. I created a very impressive training prototype that I
showed to people who had only used authoring programs like Authorware and
Director, and they were suitably impressed.
Good luck, and I hope this helps!
Marni
On Sat, 15 Jan 2000 22:05:18 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I have the opportunity to create several multimedia training applications
> for a client. They have seen many resumes from Director and Authorware
> developers, and none from MetaCard developers (I'm the first to bring it
> up). Understandably, they are reluctant to entrust their products to a
> less-mainstream development environment. I have limited experience with
> Director, and none with Authorware.
>
> Does anyone with experience with both MetaCard and either Director or
> Authorware have any ammunition I can use to convince them that MetaCard
> is the superior solution? They are mostly artists, so better media
> handling would obviously be more comprehensible to them, but
> programming-level arguments might be more mysterious, and therefore
> convincing.
>
> Thanks all!
>
> gc
>
> This is the MetaCard mailing list.
> Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/
> Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
>
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