Well, I'm finally working myself into a pretty good position to
comment on the differences between MetaCard and Authorware.
I was sort a chief architect of some pretty hairy Authorware
interaction models over the last few years, aimed at streamlining the
mass-production of new content for CD/online training based on the
modular assembly of prefabbed Authorware chunks.
I was responsible for choosing Authorware as the authoring platform
at the beginning. We subsequently tried to push it farther than it
was capable of going, in spite of having thrown a few pots of
doubloons in its general direction.
Basically, the fundamental paradigms for Authorware, Director, and
MetaCard are about as far apart as they could possible be. Authorware
uses a flowline metaphor, Director has the media score metaphor, and
MetaCard has the scripted stack of cards metaphor.
Of all of them, Authorware appears to be the most frustrating, and is
occasionally known as Awfulware for various reasons.
Since Macromedia scuttled all Authorware development for Macintosh
over a year ago, except for some spasmodic support for a Mac player,
I have been extremely disillusioned with Macromedia's reliability
generally. With Authorware, they basically dove off the cliff into
the ocean of ActiveX and DLLs, and I don't expect them to ever be
able to climb back out for any other platform than Windows.
Considering recent events where they have started adding bits and
pieces of Authorware-related stuff into DreamWeaver, I tend to
believe that they are in fact secretly trying to figure out how to
eventually kill off Authorware in favor of DreamWeaver. I'm guessing
the Authorware code snarl is just too difficult to wrassle into
whatever it needs to become.
With regard to the general appropriateness of Authorware for
interactive training products beyond some pretty limited
button-clickers, you're basically looking at spending most of your
time trying to work around the fact that you're stuck in a flowline
metaphor in the first place. That's a huge waste of time. And it can
be very expensive time.
That leaves Director. I haven't used it. But in the last few weeks of
using MetaCard, I have managed to perfect a bunch of interactive
emulations of the Windows 95 GUI that took over a year of struggling
with Authorware to refine. And then I added a bunch more. And I have
been able to include so many more features and subtleties that my
wife is getting used to hearing me whoop and holler from the Computer
Room (I do most of my work at home).
On top of that, I am totally convinced that in the next few months,
I'll be able to build a monster of a system for streamlining the
development of series of courses and providing some nice tools for
translation of all of those courses. This was not doable in
Authorware. And I seriously doubt that Director has enough agility to
do it either, although as I hasten to reiterate, I have not used it.
The openness of MetaCard in terms of an environment created in
MetaCard itself, the ease of scripting, the ease of using external
files located anywhere in the world for not only the text and
graphical content but the scripting itself, and the cross-platform
capabilities at a time when Macs and Unix/Linux/BSD systems are
gaining in popularity...
Given everything I've been through, I am evangelizing MetaCard like crazy.
The only caveats might be learning curve issues and the very
flexibility of MetaCard.
I used to do some pretty fancy HyperCard scripting, so for me the
learning curve with MetaCard is pretty slight. But it also makes it
hard for me to estimate how long it would take someone without that
advantage to get up to speed on scripting. Like they say, your
mileage may vary. As to MetaCard's flexibility, the problem boils
down to the fact that it's really easy, perhaps too easy, to just get
something to work on a one-time-only basis in a project, and have it
so hardwired into a spaghetti of messages and handlers that it's
impossible to reuse the scripts or objects somewhere else.
But I'd rather have the flexibility and risks of MetaCard than the
safe limitations of virtually everything else.
It's no joke that the MetaCard slogan is "You know...there's an
easier way to do that."
In fact, with MetaCard, there are probably several!
Regards,
David
At 10:30 AM -0800 1/16/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>From: Geoff Canyon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: MetaCard vs. Director, Authorware
>Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2000 22:05:18 -0800
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
>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
--
David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street
PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4
Corporate Office Research & Development Canada
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