Software Demo Tools

[Sally Paul <spaul -at- CSISOLUTIONS -dot- COM>]

Our Technical Communications department has recently been assigned the task
of developing fairly simple demos of our software products. I'm researching
the tool in which we want to write these demos. The requirements are as
follows:

* To demonstrate various screen features, we must include hot spots that
open pop-ups of descriptive text when the cursor passes over the features.
* We want users to be able to run the demo from our Web site. That is, we
don't want users to have to download the demo or to order it on CD-ROM.
* If possible, we'd like to avoid requiring users to download any plug-ins,
but we don't have the time or resources to do the programming or scripting
required to have the demo playable without a plug-in.

Thus far, it appears that DemoShield might be the right tool, although it
does require the user to download a plug-in. I've also looked at ToolBook,
Authorware, and Quest, which all seem like overkill to me. (We have
ToolBook Instructor, because we acquired a product that had an online
tutorial written in ToolBook. But it seems to be pretty difficult to use if
you're not a programmer.) I also briefly considered just writing a small
HTML Help system, but I doubt that's what Sales is looking for.

Any thoughts on any of these tools? Any other suggestions? Any warnings?
Any input would be most appreciated. Thanks.

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Sally C. Paul
Creative Solutions

WORK: <spaul -at- CreativeSolutions -dot- com>  <<<<NEW ADDRESS>>>>
HOME: <espaul -at- mediaone -dot- net>

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