MatchWare Mediator 7 Pro review

Existing Mediator users will be delighted to know that MatchWare has finally solved the problem that meant anti-aliasing and alpha channel effects weren't applied during transitions. This led to many of us having to create text objects as graphics to avoid the dreaded 'jaggies'.

It's not all good news, though. This version includes radical changes to the underlying code, resulting in instability in certain areas. I've been using this version to create a presentation that includes Flash objects and sound files and had major problems with the reliability of the new sound system. On deploying the project, I also found that it crashes on PCs without the Flash Player installed and some Flash objects don't display consistently. However, MatchWare has produced a Service Pack that seems to fix most of the sound-related problems, and its track record suggests it will deal with the remaining instabilities quickly.

Mediator 7 Pro is a first-class authoring tool that combines real sophistication with a simple drag-and-drop development environment. It narrowly misses out on an award because it was released before all the bugs were ironed out.

Author: Kevin Partner