Re: "Canning" a Software Demonstration

[Bill Burns <BillDB -at- ILE -dot- COM>]

Dan writes:

> At a previous employ I used
> Macromedia Authorware for this task and was at first disappointed that it
> would not be available to me any longer, but DemoShield surprised me; it's
> not Authoware but it is quite powerful and the interface is rather well
> designed (better designed than the InstallShield imho).
>
I really can't agree with the last comment on DemoShield's UI. Although I
like what I can get out of DemoShield, I find the methods and application
behaviors pretty odd. For example, to place a graphic, you have to draw a
shape, then import an image into the application and "fill" the shape with
it. That doesn't seem to be a very intuitive way to place a graphic to me.
Setting object timing is also an exercise in frustration. Once you've set
the timing for an object, that object disappears from view. Yeah, you can
get it to reappear (by advancing the scene's timing), but why hide it to
begin with? And the various editing windows, which are nonmodular in most
cases, completely disappear from view when you click on objects in the
scene. I'd be less frustrated learning the advanced features of an
application if they were well documented, but DemoShield's documentation is
pretty spotty.

I could go on, and I have elsewhere (the latest STC chapter newsletter, in
fact). I agree that you can do some pretty cool things with DemoShield, and
I'm not going to dump it yet. I'm still holding out that the developers will
listen to user feedback. Unfortunately, the signals I'm getting from the
company are not promising.

Bill  Burns - Eccentric Technology Consultant
ILE Communications Group
billdb -at- ile -dot- com
Call me fishmeal.

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