Macromedia Breeze

Breeze adds a great quiz feature to PowerPoint - such quizzes are created with a built-in wizard that allows you to provide results to end-users. I created a test quiz for pre-schoolers using this feature. Look here...

Although the quiz I created is a basic counting session for small children, it's easy to see that this concept has so much potential for both the business and education sectors.

Breeze Training, as opposed to Breeze Presentation adds some more features.

1. Email Course Notifications: Automated email notifications provide learners with instructions and a hyperlink directly to each course.
   
   
2. Automated Course Reminders: Reminder policies can be set up that take care of sending out customizable reminder emails to learners ensuring complete follow through.
   
   
3. Instantly Notify Enrollees: Easily notify learners enrolled on a course based on their status (e.g. send an email to all enrollees who have not yet taken a course).
   
   
4. Allow Learners to Register Themselves: Courses can optionally be set up to allow learners to register themselves and create their own logins.
   
   
5. Support for Large User Directories: Large user directories can be managed using facilities such as groups, bulk import, filter and search.
   
   
6. Track Data Appropriate to Your Specific Application: Capture and track organization specific information using custom fields completed when users are created or register.
   
   
7. Unique Course Certificate Numbers: Unique course certificates provided in reports for passing enrollees.

Back

Breeze is one of the those products that does not have a published price label since it comprises a wide range depending on specific needs. Macromedia suggests prospective clients contact them directly for more information.

Support is through email and phone - you'll also find more info including technical notes on the Macromedia site.

First, the pros - Breeze is good at what it does. It performs well and has a great interface that makes the entire concept a breeze to use. It has few features but does what it sets out to do so well.

Now, the cons - Breeze provides so many workarounds that you can't help wondering why they were not provided complete functionality in the first place. To add a sound score to play across a Breeze presentation is possible as long as you use Sound Forge to insert markers within the WAV file. It is also possible to include video in a presentation if you convert it first into a Flash MX movie. If these two limitations to the workflow were ironed out, Breeze would be brilliant - as it stands, the program is still a great performer.

These two weak points aside, Breeze is one of those products that make life and work so much simpler - and inserting videos or sound across slides are not features that one would use very often.

I love the interface and view controls of finished Breeze presentations - everything is easily accessible and customizable. You can play full screen presentations from your browser over a live net connection and incorporate surveys and quizzes within the finished product. This in itself makes it possible to train thousands of people in a few hours - and of course, you can use your existing PowerPoint content.

In addition, Macromedia has added a whole level of control to manage your Breeze account. You can add users to your Breeze account - and provide them permissions to publish, edit and access content from wherever in the world they are - this alone makes Breeze a power presenting solution.