Digital Workshop

I'd like DW to produce a roadmap re the future direction of Opus.

That will make it easier to plan future projects...

cheers
Paul

Hard to do, as I'm sure their competition would also like to see their Opus roadmap. Would have to be very general.

I'd like to see HTML5 play an important role in the future, plus export to Mac, Android or even iPhone (now that Apple have reduced it's tight grip).

Flash was fantastic about 4 years ago, but if it Adobe doesn't fix their power hungry, memory and security leaking player, HTML5 is the future.

It's easy to do... I have roadmaps from some of their "competitors" already...

Paul

I'm not trying to be controversial.
The proliferation of new devices (especially tablets), is raising user expectations with regard to new OS/Hardware features like multitouch.
Also, the increasing number of operating systems is becoming a pain in the a...

cheers
Paul

I'll do my best but with the following caveats. Our most exciting developments are often ones we haven't planned but crop up while working with existing clients, or they are left-field features when Dave Emberton will suddenly introduce something he has been tinkering with just for the fun of it. And sometimes we find planned features don't prove as straightforward as we had hoped.

And as suggested I am not going to reveal our hand too much to competitors.

And for prospective customers - no new version is imminent !! Don't stop buying the current one

Having said that...

There are some new features which Evolution subscribers are already using so I guess they can be "revealed":

SCORM functionality will be provided as standard Opus Actions so you won't need to bother with complex scripts unless you want to do something more complex than the basics.

We have a new Screen Snapshot action which will capture the current screen and save it to a gallery and this can then be printed using Print Snapshots as a record of a test or training piece. (Knowing your inventiveness there will probably be lot more uses this will get put to.)

You can save the page as an image - one people have been requesting for a long time.

Shuffle Object Positions is now an action too - so no scripting

With regard to further developments:

In the short term the current emphasis is on improvements to the CBT aspects of the program and there are changes to tweening and drag and drop. In the longer term...

we have been testing the possibility of (at least) a Mac player and find that it might not be as difficult as it once was

we think HTML5 shows promise and expect to support it

multi-touch and "i-pad" style interactivity is now becoming mainstream enough for us to consider supporting it.

On the latter item let me highlight something. Most of the people on this forum are developers who are familiar with new technologies and are understandably keen to impress customers with new features, or to exploit new opportunities. However, that covers only a tiny fraction of our customers. The majority of our customers never visit this forum they still just want the basics made easier. They want something flashier than Powerpoint and easy ways to create SCORM training, connecting to databases for tests and so forth. The most requested new feature is Powerpoint Import! They know their internal clients don't like new interface technologies or are quite happy with the facilities in the existing version they just want it quicker and easier.

Not sure whether that's what you meant - but it gets the discussion rolling I hope. Anything else you want to know? What does anyone else think is the most important new direction things are going?

Paul Harris

Cheers Paul,

That's very interesting and very welcome news. I'd like to throw three things into the pot starting with making Opus more accessible for the wider, non forum, audience. This wasn't an area that we (Interaktiv), would have considered when our company first started having primarily decided to focus on developing our own software and providing technical solutions for other Opus users. However, we now have a wide selection of customers who simply want the end packaged solution - most of which can be easily built using Opus actions whilst they concentrate on the appearance aspects. The daft thing is, we've found these new clients on sites promoting solutions with other software because Opus doesn't seem to get publicity it deserve. This gets hammered home every time a client or colleague asks me what is possible with Opus and of course we point them back to our site - but to paraphrase, developers on the forum are just small fish in a big pond when it comes to how and who uses Opus. Therefore, it's great that Opus will be made more accessible, but how about something that connects all the dots are shows how easy it is to produce great things but also what is possible when users start to really imagine how they see their solutions.

The second point, follows on from your suggestion of HTML5 and something Onsi has posted in the Evolution Lounge. The web is a primary source of content and making it easy to produce must be key, but in response to my review of Opus 7.5 you talked about solutions for multiple page publications rather than more complex scripted alternatives. However, personally, I think that although making things easier is good, keeping solutions small and open is becoming more and more necessary despite the advances in broadband. Technologies like HTML5 and Onsi's suggestion of allowing dynamically loading content as seen in Flash and other web based solutions as opposed to embedding everything into pages and pages of a publication just seems more professional. Having web publications (both Flex and Plexus) pull in audio / video / image and data from XML and server side databases must be more practical and beneficial regardless of technical expertise with Opus.

Lastly, is the geek point! From a developer's perspective the best thing about alternative products like Flash is the ability to dynamically create on screen objects. Yes, we have clones and yes solutions can be found but on this point - I dare to dream.

Again, thanks for the blue print and given how useful both Opus 6 & 7 have proved to be, I'm sure that it will continue to be a great product to use and I wish DW all the best with future inspiration and endeavors.

Regards,

Mack

Thanks Paul,
I appreciate your reply.
Up to recently, Opus has been one of my favourite dev tools; because it is well designed, works as expected, and it is rock solid.
We are in interesting times; with all of the changes occurring in application development and information delivery...

cheers
Paul

Great feature set, I look forward to developing with Opus for years to come.

[Lar Edit... I have distilled/reframed my earlier 'long' post]

In lieu of a posted roadmap, I'd be happy to sign an NDA and get some glimpse of future direction -- a sort of broad, 'what to expect' and timeline. I'm guessing 'Evolution' is that for some, albeit with a shorter/nearterm scope.

I am probably not typical nor mainstream among Opus developers. I've taken up Opus as more of a hobby with a future vision interest in publishing a set of modules. It has taken me longer than I thought -- as I have been working to separate content from container.

So I was happy to see Mack's highlighting of this facet:
especially this part... the consequences of "embedding everything into pages and pages of a publication". IMO, that makes things difficult to maintain, track, revise. Sure we can bring in external file content, and discrete data elements from a DB or INI. But I struggle with building the mapping (object/containers to sources of content). Actually of course that is EASY when everything is purely in the Opus realm. It is an issue for me when it comes to providing content authors -- with a workflow, with guidelines and some templates.

That is the gap I have been trying to address with SQLite DB for Opus, thinking I could build some front-end authoring/editing and meta-tagging tools for content authors/generators.

As that is proving difficult, I am turning now more toward CMS as a solution. Of course these begin to have the added benefit of publishing to multiple channels and platforms. Even form tools and response handling. So if I can handle the front-end CMS, THEN maybe I can reuse that content in Opus and offer optional modules with extended user interaction and animation etc. via Opus. That would mean Opus is no longer the lead actor.

Consider too that much of the earlier 'buzz' of social-media has grown into a phenomenon that is here to stay. It seems people cannot tolerate too much independent action, in the sense that they seek and thrive on a group context.

Cheers.
ok, still a long post.

I now use Opus occasionally as a prototyping/hobby tool.

While Opus is well designed for what it does, I have some issues with what I consider missing basic functionality.
In 2010 I expect better connectivity. I expect to be able to pull in data/images from the web for display. Text handling is a lot easier with access to XML and Regular Expression functions. I was hoping that this functionality would appear in v7, but I have been forced to use different applications for this now.

IMO, Opus appears to be moving towards being a niche product as a SCORM content editor/packager, while those users that want expanded Windows functionality will not see much new in the near future. The DLL interface has a lot of promise, but the lack of docs and non-trivial examples on how to use it made me waste a lot of time experimenting with various DLL's, including SQLite.

In the end I've just given up and moved on…

Paul