Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Lectora Releases Snap!, PowerPoint to Flash Tool

One of the easiest ways to generate Flash especially for eLearning is by converting PowerPoint to Flash. This cuts down costs of flash e-learning content development hugely and I can see why there are so many tools in this.

In the crowded PPT to Flash market which already has established players like Adobe Presenter, iSpring Presenter, PowerFlashPoint, Articulate Presenter another brand new product breaks in. Its called Snap! by Lectora (www.trivantis.com/snap). I have played with the trial, after initial glitches I finally managed to get it working.  Interface looks simillar to existing tools. Simple PowerPoint converted fine without issues. But did not work quite right for many of the animations. I know its the first release, long way to go to reach the heights and quality of existing tools available.

Do we really need another product  for PPT to Flash tool, I don't know. In no way its a replacement to market leading PPT to Flash products like Adobe presenter, PowerFlashPoint or iSpring. This might trigger a pricing war as what I like about the snap product is the price if it does what it is supposed to do correctly. Will others follow?, we have to wait and see.

In my opinion it would have been better if Lectora came up with the revamp of its current authoring tool set rather than something else as I haven't seen any changes since years. Key to maintain customer loyalty is to innovate continuously. I really hope they are working on that as well as that will benefit me and others.