My experience with Connect Pro Mobile
After speaking with Randah, I set up a Connect meeting to experiment. I created a room with an attendee pod, a Chat pod, and a large Share pod with a PowerPoint presentation loaded. I then downloaded the app to my iPhone. My plan was to log in to the Connect meeting over a 5MB/s wireless connection, and to use Voice over IP (VoIP) for the audio.
Figure 4: Log in screen
I started the app, typed in the meeting URL and then my name and attempted to connect. (See Figure 4.) It is not possible in this version of the app to connect by clicking the meeting link from your email — this only takes you to the regular Connect login page rather than invoking the app. I got a “Network Error” message a few times, but after cancelling and trying again, it logged me in to the Connect room.
The presentation slides looked clear and well rendered and in landscape mode you can have them fill the full screen — which I would recommend because it makes it so much easier to see any real detail. (See Figure 5.) You can do a standard pinch-zoom to enlarge the image, although this seemed a little sluggish and it was not as smooth as I would expect. When the presenter advances a slide on a full-screen desktop browser you see the existing slide until the next slide has finished downloading, which typically takes a second or so. On the mobile version you have to wait a little longer, hence there is a progress bar at the top of the screen to keep your mind occupied as the new image downloads.
Figure 5: Full screen in landscape mode
I was pleased to see that PowerPoint animations are supported, although with some minor caveats. All custom animations seem like they are converted to “appear,” so if you have fades and wipes you won’t see them on the iPhone screen. Animation sequences marked as “start after previous” seem to be converted to “start with previous” ? they all appear at once.
I found that the chat is very easy to use; it can be oriented in either portrait or landscape mode. In landscape mode you can see the list of all the attendees on the left and you can scroll through them. (See Figure 6.) Entering chat messages is straightforward. However, the speed at which you can type on an iPhone keyboard is a little limiting if you want to quickly respond to a presenter or to other participants.
Figure 6: Chat pod in landscape
The Camera facility worked really well, but obviously it needs a good bandwidth connection. If you only have 3G access, streaming video may not be advisable. The VoIP audio was reasonably good quality. If you dial in to a conference number instead of using VoIP, the iPhone will let you to listen in on the telephone and view the meeting concurrently.
Summary
The app is simple, easy to use, and a great way to avoid missing online presentations if you are on the move. I would definitely use this app if I cannot attend an important virtual session and when I’m without a laptop in a bus, in a doctor’s waiting room, sitting on a park bench or having lunch at my favorite sandwich shop. I think of this as a kind of emergency app for when I am not in front of a large screen. There seem to be some stability issues (my app crashed several times while in a presentation) and I’m hoping that Adobe will soon release an update with some fixes.
Displaying on such a small screen naturally limits the user experience. For a well-designed, media rich, interactive presentation, you’ll never have an experience close to being in front of a large screen. As a presenter, I doubt that I would design a presentation for an audience only part of which was mobile. This would mean taking something away from the desktop users to satisfy a small mobile minority. The primary focus of virtual training should still be those who are at a desktop or laptop so that they get the full experience. Having said that, there is still a huge advantage of being able connect to a live presentation when you are on the move rather than completely missing it, even though the experience is not optimal.
Kudos to Adobe for making the first bold step in porting a Flash-based app to the iPhone. This gives hope for those of us who lament the absence of a Flash player on that platform. I have a feeling this will be the first of many mobile solutions, particularly with AIR and the Packager for the iPhone technologies. I’m hoping the next app Adobe releases will be a mobile version of Adobe Presenter. Being able to easily develop self-paced learning content for the mobile user will be key to having companies further adopt m-Learning solutions in their overall learning strategy. To be able to leverage a great product like Adobe Presenter for the iPhone and other mobile devices would be a huge benefit to m-Learning designers. Creating short learning modules with animations and narration using PowerPoint would open up m-Learning development to a much wider audience.
I’d love to hear your feedback after using the Adobe Connect Mobile Pro app. Download it, try it out in an online session and let me know your opinion in the comments area below. How was your experience using the app, what do you like about it, how would you improve it, and how would you or your organization use it as part of your training or learning strategy?
For more information on Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro Mobile:
