Authoring Tools: Choosing the Right One for Your Design Needs Part 3

published by Dan in Tools & Resources | Web Development with No Comments

The last two posts gave the following factors when considering the most appropriate authoring tool when designing a website and/or e-learning tool:

• Level of competency needed
• Need for customisation
• Interoperability
• Media and file support; and
• Cost

If you DO consider each factor you will realise that though your choices will be more easily narrowed down you will likely end up having to compromise something…especially if cost is a big factor. Because of this what you really need to do before choosing a authoring tool is already have a design direction in mind. What this means is knowing the desired look, capabilities, and other specifications of your end product, whether that be a website or an e-learning software.

After you have conceptualised the product you can then base your decision for choosing the authoring tool on the existing specifications. Choose which factor will be the most important in order to achieve the quality of the end product and start crossing out options in order of priority.

Again remember that if cost is a big factor and your budget is REALLY limited then you might want to make that the first criterion for weeding out the unlikely authoring tools. Note too that in cases like this you might want to canvass the price of hiring professional web designers because they might come in cheaper than having to buy a powerful authoring software.

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