Monday, March 22, 2004
RoboDemo: first crack at a web-app demo
Picked up a copy of RoboDemo and thought I might have a stab at putting together a few demos to see how it all works. It's not as easy as it looks, at least for web applications.
The results of my maiden effort: Adding News Content (864kb)
I had a few troubles with the way the auto-record features worked for mouse movements in my sample web application -- not quite getting things right and then being devilishly hard to change. However, I started to make great progress once I deactivated some of the automated features and shifted to manual. I'd assumed that this was some sort of non-technical tool for space cadets wanting to build screen-cams but RoboDemo turns out to be quite a bit more sophisticated.
Overall I'm well impressed with the product. My first effort was a result of muddling through the menus and not bothering to read any instructions. I might have a trawl through the new RoboDemo Dev Centre and see if I can't refine my skills :)
Posted by modius at 08:14 PM | Permalink
Trackback: http://blog.daemon.com.au/cgi-bin/dmblog/mt-tb.cgi/224
Been quite interested in thei product and have been trying to find some time to trial it.
Good demo - exactly the sort of thing I have in mind to create.
What was the learning curve like?
Is is worth the $$$?
I've looked at FlashCast by MDM but the results were blurry and indistince - this looked very clear.
Matt
Posted by: Matthew Armstrong on March 23, 2004 10:04 AM
Well I mucked around for about 3-4 hours building that, with a couple of false starts. There's plenty of functionality not represented in my example -- I mean its really *very* much more than a screen capture tool. With a bit of practice I think I could belt out a few of these a day. It's actually things like sorting out your resolution, the order of the presentation and so forth that takes the time. I haven't even started on the learning behaviours that you can integrate.
Posted by: Geoff Bowers on March 23, 2004 10:32 AM
That's cool to hear of your experience. I had the same disappointment at first with the results, so I appreciated hearing your observation of how the "automated features" may be getting the way. I'd revisit it, but my trial has since expired and I imagine it's not easy to install it again.
I wondered why they bother with a time-limited trial, since the watermark so clearly prevents one from using the trial for production use. As your (and Geoff's and my) experience shows, sometimes it takes time to figure out all the power available.
Posted by: charlie arehart on March 24, 2004 12:08 AM
Nice presentation, by the way Far Cry could really do with some of these in addition to the existing documentation which I found to be a bit lacking in places ;-)
Posted by: Kola on April 20, 2004 09:18 PM
Been quite interested in thei product and have been trying to find some time to trial it.
Good demo - exactly the sort of thing I have in mind to create.
What was the learning curve like?
Is is worth the $$$?
I've looked at FlashCast by MDM but the results were blurry and indistince - this looked very clear.
Matt
Posted by: Matthew Armstrong on March 23, 2004 10:04 AM
Well I mucked around for about 3-4 hours building that, with a couple of false starts. There's plenty of functionality not represented in my example -- I mean its really *very* much more than a screen capture tool. With a bit of practice I think I could belt out a few of these a day. It's actually things like sorting out your resolution, the order of the presentation and so forth that takes the time. I haven't even started on the learning behaviours that you can integrate.
Posted by: Geoff Bowers on March 23, 2004 10:32 AM
That's cool to hear of your experience. I had the same disappointment at first with the results, so I appreciated hearing your observation of how the "automated features" may be getting the way. I'd revisit it, but my trial has since expired and I imagine it's not easy to install it again.
I wondered why they bother with a time-limited trial, since the watermark so clearly prevents one from using the trial for production use. As your (and Geoff's and my) experience shows, sometimes it takes time to figure out all the power available.
Posted by: charlie arehart on March 24, 2004 12:08 AM
Nice presentation, by the way Far Cry could really do with some of these in addition to the existing documentation which I found to be a bit lacking in places ;-)
Posted by: Kola on April 20, 2004 09:18 PM