Demo / tutorial maker tools?
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Hey, guys. I'm looking for a good tool to create those nifty, animated popup tutorials for an application. For example, the user clicks a "How do I add a record?" button, a little window pops up showing an animation of a mouse selecting Record / Add from the main menu, types in text, hits save, etc., preferably with an option for accompanying audio for verbal explanation. What's neat and groovy for this sort of stuff these days? Don't want to write a new tool, just want to find one that works and use it. :) Christopher Duncan Practical Strategy Consulting Author of The Career Programmer Unite the Tribes
I can vouch for Captivate. It's incredible. Also, if you can swing the academic qualifications, you can get it for half-price. Tom Archer (blog) Program Manager MSDN Online (Windows Vista and Visual C++) MICROSOFT
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Back in the Windows 3.1 days, when I had my software company, one of our gigs was writing a bunch of Word macros to help automate their help system stuff. Man, talk about primative. I'm sure it's much better these days. Probably don't even need stone tablets and a chisel anymore. :) Christopher Duncan Practical Strategy Consulting Author of The Career Programmer Unite the Tribes
At least now it's simple text (well, HTML) you're generating, instead of RTF X| .
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I can vouch for Captivate. It's incredible. Also, if you can swing the academic qualifications, you can get it for half-price. Tom Archer (blog) Program Manager MSDN Online (Windows Vista and Visual C++) MICROSOFT
Excellent. My client had originally wanted to send out a trainer for two weeks to each new customer, which I thought was an extremely cool attitude in terms of taking care of the customer. I wish more companies felt that way. However, in this case it wasn't really practical from a financial perspective, so I'm thinking that a really good set of tutorials can offer the next best thing in terms of a quality experience. Played with the Captivate eval for a few minutes tonight. It looks like a nice piece of work. Christopher Duncan Practical Strategy Consulting Author of The Career Programmer Unite the Tribes
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That's cool. I just would've prefered more output options so I could fancy up the video clip and import it into Flash for the voiceovers. I'm not a big fan of using SWFs on top of SWFs anyway. Jeremy Falcon
Yahhh... It's not quite Macromedia Director. :) I use it for quick demos when i want feedback on a UI, but don't care to deal with users dealing with the pitfalls of a prototype.
---- Scripts i've known... CPhog 0.9.9 - make CP better. Forum Bookmark 0.2.5 - bookmark forum posts on Pensieve Print forum 0.1.1 - printer-friendly forums
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Thanks, man. This looks interesting, both for the tutorial stuff and for some web based classes I'm thinking about putting together - unless you have even more neat & groovy suggestions for the latter :) Christopher Duncan Practical Strategy Consulting Author of The Career Programmer Unite the Tribes
I own captivate and I must say it's an excellent tool. Worth the $ in my opinion.
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At least now it's simple text (well, HTML) you're generating, instead of RTF X| .
Software Zen:
delete this;And what exactly is wrong with RTF? Technically, I would say that RTF and HTML, both being text-based representations using tags, are similar in concept and complexity. Ah, I remember being given a Windows 3.0 SDK manual, and being told "write a help file". I spent a week or two reading about RTF tags, before I discovered you could do it all "the easy way" in Word 2.0.
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And what exactly is wrong with RTF? Technically, I would say that RTF and HTML, both being text-based representations using tags, are similar in concept and complexity. Ah, I remember being given a Windows 3.0 SDK manual, and being told "write a help file". I spent a week or two reading about RTF tags, before I discovered you could do it all "the easy way" in Word 2.0.
normanS wrote:
And what exactly is wrong with RTF?
RTF is a good format, but very time consuming to try and understand or write by hand. IMO, HTML is much easier for a human to use, particularly if you're new to it. If you had never seen any explanations of RTF before, would you understand what
\fs10means? Compare with<font size="10pt">Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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take a look at demoshield. http://www.macrovision.com/products/demoshield/index.shtml[^]
It's slow when I view its samples. http://www.installshield.com/products/demoshield/info/sales\_show.asp
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Thanks. Show Programming was started back in 2001 when I was writing DMX concert lighting control software. It didn't make much sense in the context of my current strategy consulting business! Christopher Duncan Practical Strategy Consulting Author of The Career Programmer Unite the Tribes
I like stage lights. :)
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normanS wrote:
And what exactly is wrong with RTF?
RTF is a good format, but very time consuming to try and understand or write by hand. IMO, HTML is much easier for a human to use, particularly if you're new to it. If you had never seen any explanations of RTF before, would you understand what
\fs10means? Compare with<font size="10pt">Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
An excellent point. I used raw RTF in 1991 / 1992 (to write Help files like a real man) and I had forgotten these little details. But the RTF representation is much more efficient than the HTML representation - less than one third the number of characters! ;)
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An excellent point. I used raw RTF in 1991 / 1992 (to write Help files like a real man) and I had forgotten these little details. But the RTF representation is much more efficient than the HTML representation - less than one third the number of characters! ;)
normanS wrote:
the RTF representation is much more efficient than the HTML representation - less than one third the number of characters!
Good for computers, bad for humans ;)
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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I like stage lights. :)
Wanna buy some software? :D Christopher Duncan Practical Strategy Consulting Author of The Career Programmer Unite the Tribes
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Hey, guys. I'm looking for a good tool to create those nifty, animated popup tutorials for an application. For example, the user clicks a "How do I add a record?" button, a little window pops up showing an animation of a mouse selecting Record / Add from the main menu, types in text, hits save, etc., preferably with an option for accompanying audio for verbal explanation. What's neat and groovy for this sort of stuff these days? Don't want to write a new tool, just want to find one that works and use it. :) Christopher Duncan Practical Strategy Consulting Author of The Career Programmer Unite the Tribes
You may want to try these tools: http://www.turbodemo.com[^] http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp[^] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Petr Palas is founder of Kentico Software, the producer of professional solutions for web developers. Kentico Software is focused on development and marketing of Kentico CMS for ASP.NET. Our goal is to create the most flexible and easy-to-use web content management solution for ASP.NET developers.
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Hey, guys. I'm looking for a good tool to create those nifty, animated popup tutorials for an application. For example, the user clicks a "How do I add a record?" button, a little window pops up showing an animation of a mouse selecting Record / Add from the main menu, types in text, hits save, etc., preferably with an option for accompanying audio for verbal explanation. What's neat and groovy for this sort of stuff these days? Don't want to write a new tool, just want to find one that works and use it. :) Christopher Duncan Practical Strategy Consulting Author of The Career Programmer Unite the Tribes
Another popular package: http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp[^] David Veeneman www.veeneman.com
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And what exactly is wrong with RTF? Technically, I would say that RTF and HTML, both being text-based representations using tags, are similar in concept and complexity. Ah, I remember being given a Windows 3.0 SDK manual, and being told "write a help file". I spent a week or two reading about RTF tags, before I discovered you could do it all "the easy way" in Word 2.0.
The first time I was trying to build a Windows Help file, RTF wasn't documented at all, and the markers required to create links, topic headings, and so on weren't the most intuitive thing in the world. Also, it was possible with a single press of the back space key to completely destroy the structure of the RTF by deleting a single marker. The whole mess was extremely fragile, and a monumental PITA.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Hey, guys. I'm looking for a good tool to create those nifty, animated popup tutorials for an application. For example, the user clicks a "How do I add a record?" button, a little window pops up showing an animation of a mouse selecting Record / Add from the main menu, types in text, hits save, etc., preferably with an option for accompanying audio for verbal explanation. What's neat and groovy for this sort of stuff these days? Don't want to write a new tool, just want to find one that works and use it. :) Christopher Duncan Practical Strategy Consulting Author of The Career Programmer Unite the Tribes
For info, I personally used a software called 'Wink' in the past. It was working quite well and was entirely free. It also generate a flash SWF file that you can embed in your application or within a webpage or a help system. http://www.debugmode.com/wink/[^]
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Hey, guys. I'm looking for a good tool to create those nifty, animated popup tutorials for an application. For example, the user clicks a "How do I add a record?" button, a little window pops up showing an animation of a mouse selecting Record / Add from the main menu, types in text, hits save, etc., preferably with an option for accompanying audio for verbal explanation. What's neat and groovy for this sort of stuff these days? Don't want to write a new tool, just want to find one that works and use it. :) Christopher Duncan Practical Strategy Consulting Author of The Career Programmer Unite the Tribes
I surprised no one has mentioned Camtasia from Tech Smith. It's a great product for creating software demos. You can add audio and/or a talking head to the animated screens shots easily and quickly. It's from the same folks that brought you Snag-it and you can purchase the two as a bundle for somewhere around $350. Camtasia alone is just under $300. -- modified at 10:59 Wednesday 1st March, 2006 http://www.techsmith.com/[^]