DemoShield4 An Advacement Opportunity? News & Views Software Review

by Dave Yelenchic Documentation Specialist Millstar Electronic Publishing Group Langhorne, PA DemoShield5 is now available for $495. Originally published in News & Views March, 1998 issue. Copyright 1998 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

Most technical writers in the software industry create both "hard" manuals and help systems. But there's room to grow: if you're into learning another complex development tool, you can go beyond the world of paper and online documents by creating self-running program tutorials. One such tool is DemoShield4 by InstallShield Corporation, which enables you to create tutorials and other presentations complete with graphics, descriptive text, animation, and user interaction. Become the producer, director, and screen writer Creating a program tutorial using DemoShield might be compared to making a movie. While the film director attempts to simulate the real (or unreal) world, the tutorial director creates a simulation of a program and adds descriptive text and other elements to help teach the viewer the application. The tutorial director assembles a set by capturing screens, command buttons, and other items from the application. (I use Paint Shop Pro 4 for capturing and touching-up images.) Then, using DemoShield, the director builds any number of scenes. Each scene typically contains one or more of the captured images and a number of objects created with DemoShield, such as text boxes, command buttons, highlighting borders, lines, arrows, etc. Each object is assigned various attributes, such as a color, a size, and when and how it will enter and leave the scene. Tools for building program tutorials Four main sets of tools in DemoShield are used to create, edit, and test the elements of a tutorial. The Object Palette is used to create a wide variety of objects for each scene. Multi-tabbed dialog boxes are used to select each object's attributes. For example, I often create yellow text boxes that "fade-in" (Random Bits Appearing). User interaction can be incorporated by inserting hot spots, command buttons, and other interactive objects anywhere in a scene. Each object is assigned a Life, which defines when and how the object enters and exits the scene, including any motion or special effects. For example, a text box could "float" across the scene, stop at mid-screen, and then fade out two seconds before the scene ends. The Scene Editor enables you to jump to any scene and also contains a list of objects in the current scene. Using Scene Editor you can select an object (so the object can be moved, edited, or deleted), or bring objects forward or back in their stacking order. Among other capabilities, the Demo Controller allows you to step through the current scene in specified increments of time. For example, you could step forward 0.5 seconds at a time in order to more easily determine how the scene you're constructing is shaping up. The Duplicate options in the tool bar (top of screen) can save you a lot of time when creating tutorials. With the click of a button, you can duplicate any object or an entire scene along with every object in the scene. The newly created object or scene can be changed or moved. For example, I frequently choose to duplicate a text box, then I change the text in the newly created box. I don't need to create the new box's attributes from scratch. Lots to learn but worth it DemoShield4 is a big, sophisticated program, well-designed and intuitive, containing many other tools and options not mentioned in this article. As with any complex software package, a significant amount of time may be required to learn all of its capabilities. The time you invest may be well spent, as many software developers now provide demos or tutorials with their programs.

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Posted May 8, 1998 (dls)