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Packt Publishing Holiday Sale Offers Titles for $5 Each!

Learning Articulate Storyline CoverIf you’re in the market for programming or some eLearning tool “how-to” eBooks or videos, Packt Publishing is offering all of their eBooks and training videos for $5 each from December 19th through January 3rd only.

Packt Publishing offers more than 1700 titles, so it’s very likely they’ll have a couple that might be useful on your eBookshelf.  And you can’t beat the price!  Stephanie Hartnett’s book Learning Articulate Storyline is one title well worth snapping up if you don’t already have it.

To take advantage of this special offer, you must use this link:  bit.ly/1jdCr2W

And remember: the $5 holiday sale is only in effect from 12/19 through 1/3/14.

Columbus Day eBook and Video Sale at Packt Publishing: Storyline, Captivate, and More

Learning Articulate Storyline CovereLearning folks: Today through Thursday 10/17 only, Packt Publishing is offering 50% off its entire catalog of eBooks and Videos, including the very good book on Articulate Storyline that I recently reviewed, as well as titles on Adobe Captivate and other products. Use this link: bit.ly/1bqvB29 and enter this code at checkout: COL50 to obtain the sale pricing.  The link and special pricing are only good through 10/17.

 

 

Book Review: “Learning Articulate Storyline” from Packt Publishing
Learning Articulate Storyline CoverI have been developing eLearning content with Articulate Storyline, a programming-free rapid development software, since its beta development phase, prior to its launch in May of 2012.  I was asked by Packt Publishing (www.PacktPub.com) to review their new title, Learning Articulate Storyline by Stephanie Harnett, which is available in both book or eBook format, alone or as part of their online library subscription.  In going through this book, I find all the important topics are there, and presented in a logical order.  While someone already working with Storyline may also find a few things they didn’t know, the book seems clearly aimed at the new Storyline user. A key element throughout this book is hands-on, step-by-step exercises you can try, using your own copy of Storyline and sample files available for download.  For a beginner, this may make the book especially valuable; someone already using Storyline may not find these exercises a good use of the book’s space.  Here are my other thoughts, in brief:
 
PROS: The writing style is straightforward, and most topics receive a sufficient amount of attention.  Illustrations are plentiful and well used.  The Tips throughout are well-chosen and should be genuinely useful for all audiences.  More complex topics are usually laid out simply, step-by-step, so that a beginner can grasp the process more easily.
 
CONS:  The book contains a large number of typos, grammatical missteps, and other oversights that should have been caught by the proofreader and copy editor.   For example, on Page 40, there’s an incomplete sentence: “Slide numbering and scene numbering does not affect when navigational structure.” (sic)  On page 92, for Step 14 of the exercise, I suspect that the text “Not sure what each topic is about?  Here’s a quick explanation”  should appear after  the instruction: “Select Insert / Sound / Record Mic…and record the following narration:”  There are many more little mistakes like these.  Also, at times, the sequence of instructions for some topics (for example: cue points) is awkward.
 
Overall, though, the book is clear and thorough, and sufficiently robust to represent a comprehensive introduction to Storyline.  It should serve a beginning Storyline user well–provided they are willing to overlook the proofreading and copy editing errors.  Given that Storyline has now been on the market for 18 months, version 2 of the software should be due out in the coming months.  The release of the next version of Storyline offers Packt Publishing an excellent opportunity to create a new edition of this book, with more thorough copy editing and proofreading.  Then it has the potential to be a home run.

Copyright 2015 by Andrew Sellon, Sellon Solutions LLC. All Rights Reserved.