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Macromedia Breeze

Reviewed: Geetesh Bajaj

Date Created: May 24th 2003
Last Updated: February 25th 2009

Quizzes with 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.

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Breeze Training

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.

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Pricing & Support

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.

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Pros and Cons

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.

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