Digital Workshop Opus Pro review

Opus Pro is the only viable alternative to Macromedia's Flash and Shockwave formats when it comes to delivering interactive, sophisticated content on the Web. It's simpler to create interactive presentations in Opus Pro than in Flash or Director. Opus Pro doesn't have the animation credentials of either of those formats, neither does it have cross-platform capability, yet for many purposes, including online presentations, it's the ideal choice.

Up against Mediator EXP, Opus Pro has one huge advantage: its price. If you don't want to spend £649 on Mediator EXP or you're creating for the Internet, Opus Pro is your only choice. For more traditional CD-ROM/DVD-ROM development, price is less of an issue as multimedia tools are traditionally expensive.

Mediator EXP is still more stable than Opus Pro, and this reason, more than any other, is why I'll be using EXP for commercial work at the moment. MatchWare's choice of VBScript means that bugs and documentation errors aren't an issue and, until Opus' problems in this area are sorted out, OpusScript remains a frustrating experience - not least because there's clearly a great tool in there somewhere.

At present, Opus Pro is a tool with huge potential hampered by a documentation disaster and lingering, although lessening, stability problems. Digital Workshop assures me that these issues will be sorted out with the release of Service Pack 3, which should be available by the time you read this. Assuming it's right, Opus Pro represents phenomenal value for money and the ideal entry point into multimedia programming.

Author: Kevin Partner