DemoMate Enhancements - February 2010

The DemoMate Team is pleased to announce that the latest version has been released (Build 969), introducing a number of new features and enhancements. We’ll be adding numerous new tutorials over the next few days to give you a complete overview of the team’s great work. Check back often!

Scenario Branching: In this release, we’re proud to deliver one of the most-requested features from the DemoMate community, Scenario Branching. This enables you to create non-linear demonstrations driven by the interest of your audience, and opens a world of presenter-driven demonstration options. The new feature that enables branching is called a “Jump Box.” Check it out in this tutorial:

External Links: The new Jump Boxes can also be used to create links from your presenter-driven demonstrations to any URL or URI, so you can link to Videos, Websites, or Supporting Documents such as Worksheets, Quotes, Proposals, or Technical Specifications. To create an link, just add a Jump Box and select “Add New Address” from the drop-down menu.

Interactive Text Boxes: Need to simulate secure sign-in? Now you can. Text Boxes are another new feature in this release. With Text Boxes, you can simulate typing into a text field during your demonstration. Font and size options help you with match text or select “password” style (dots).

Animated Text Boxes: In all DemoMate Auto-Play modes, Text Boxes animate elegantly. This includes Auto-Play in the client, the hosted Silverlight Player on DemoMate.com, the embeddable Silverlight Players, and the “Click to Run” EXE.

Click-and-Drag Click Boxes: We’ve updated the Click Boxes (includes Jump Boxes and Text Boxes) so you can Click and Drag or Click and Resize.

Persistent Click Here Cue: As requested by the community, pressing Tab in Preview or Present modes displays the “Click Here” cue persistently as you move from step to step until you press Tab again to remove it.

Show/Hide Click Bubble (Editor): As requested by the community, you can now show or hide the Click Here bubble while working in the Editor.

Capture “Glossy” Overlays: DemoMate now supports capturing the newer “glossy” overlays, being used for pop-up windows, hover states, sidebars, and application menus in advanced applications such as Visual Studio 2010.

The Need for Speed: As mentioned in our January Twitter post, we’ve launched numerous client- and server-side enhancements to optimize launch times, bandwidth, and memory management.

IPL Release (969): General updates.

Thanks to the Community for all of your ideas and input. We’ve worked hard to bring you these enhancements and we’re already well on our way to the next release.

Go forth and demo!

Working with Jump Boxes and Click Boxes

Each step in DemoMate requires you to have a Click Box in order to ensure that the user can click through the entire demo in a linear fashion. There are several ways you can approach having both click boxes and jump boxes on the same step:

• You can have one of your buttons set as the “default” or preferred choice, and use the click box as the overlay on that button. Clicking on that button would then take the user to the next step or section in the demo. You can then place Jump Boxes on all the other buttons on that screenshot.
  
  
• You can also simply minimize the size of the click box and drag it into a corner on the screenshot. You would still get a “Click Here” cue over the click box in this instance, so the first option might be the better choice if that is a concern. This approach is best when the sections you want to link to are further up or down in the demo navigation pane, and you don't necessarily want the demo presenter to advance to the very next step in the demo.

Introduction to Jump Boxes

By adding a jump box control to a demo step, you can provide some additional flexibility in demo navigation by allowing you to “jump” or “branch” to a different section in the demo. For example, you might have an introductory screenshot that allows the demo presenter to click on one of several choices, each of which jumps to a different section in the demo. The same approach could be used at the end of a demo section, to allow the presenter to choose where to go next in the demo.

In addition, jump boxes can also be used to embed hyperlinks to external content in your demo. This can be used to create a “For More Information” link at the end of a demo, or perhaps to link to a series of related documents that are hosted on a publicly-accessible web server.

To add a jump box to a demo step, click on the Add Jump Box button on the step controls. This will place a new jump box control on the current demo step. Multiple jump box controls can be placed on a single step. To customize the location of a jump box, expand the “Jump To” menu and select the demo section you want that jump box to point to. With the Jump To: menu open, you can also click the “Add New Address” button to type in a URL for the jump box.

Currently, Jump Boxes are only active in the Present / Preview modes for a demo. They will not be displayed in auto-play mode.

DemoMate Enhancements - October 2009

The DemoMate Team is pleased to announce that the latest version has been released (Build 873), introducing the ability to export and import your demo scripts.

You can export your demo script to the Microsoft Word .docx format, including screenshots for each step, click instructions and presenter script text. This provides a convenient way to review the entire demo script in one location, distribute it by e-mail, or include it as a project deliverable.

You can also re-import any edits you make to a demo script. Just make sure the script matches the demo (e.g., they both have the same number of Sections and Steps). All of the Click Instruction and Presenter Script text will be imported from the script back into your demo.

Here's a brief tutorial showing the process of exporting a script, making a few changes, and then importing those changes back into DemoMate:

From the Options menu, we've also added a new setting that lets you adjust the export script quality:

This setting determines the quality of the screenshots when you export a script to the .docx format. Higher quality will allow the images to be resized if desired and improve the overall quality by reducing the amount of image compression. Higher quality images will result in significantly larger file sizes, which could make it difficult to distribute the scripts via e-mail.

On behalf of the team that worked hard to bring you this new feature, we hope it’s a time-saver for you, and that it opens up new ways to share and collaborate with your team, partners, and customers.

Inserting a Step

In our recent DemoMate release (Build 852), we added the ability to insert steps into a demo. This provides an easy way for you to add screenshots, PowerPoint slides, diagrams, or other content to your demos.

When inserting an image, it must be the same pixel size as the rest of the steps in that demo. For example, if your demo was captured at 1024x768, then the image you insert must also be 1024x768. Currently, the images must also be inserted in the .PNG image format.

Here's a brief tutorial showing you the process of inserting a step in a demo:

DemoMate Enhancements - September 2009

The DemoMate Team is pleased to announce that the latest version has been released (Build 852), introducing several exciting new features:

Insert Steps – Now you can quickly insert custom screenshots, graphics, or other .PNGs directly into your demo.

Publishing Tutorials with Audio – Our new Silverlight auto-run player has been implemented on DemoMate.com. Now you can invite viewers to watch your tutorials online, in full fidelity, as previews or leave-behinds.

Embeddable Silverlight Player Enhancements – Our industry-leading embeddable Silverlight player continues to improve, now with even faster load times and new bandwidth efficiencies.

Thanks to the Community
We’ve been working hard to deliver these features and we want to take a moment to say “Thank You” to everyone in the DemoMate community who has contributed their time and ideas to these powerful new capabilities. We love the success stories you tell us and we’re looking forward to seeing how you take advantage of these new capabilities.

Go forth and Demo!

Tips for Working with Audio in DemoMate

Here is a collection of useful tips for incorporating sound bites in DemoMate:

• Invest in a good microphone! We tested a variety of different recording devices, and microphone quality had the biggest impact on audio quality. Check the DemoMate Team Blog for suggestions.
• Keep your sound bites short and sweet. You don’t need continuous dialog.
• Experiment with adding sound to a Step or a Section. Select whichever approach works best for you.
• Use the Presenter Script box to write notes about what you are going to say ahead of time.
• Try using a free, professional audio recording program. We’re big fans of certain packages. Check the DemoMate Team Blog for suggestions.
• If using a professional audio recording program, normalize the volume levels of the recordings. Also, trim out any dead space at the beginning and end of your audio clips, to tighten them up. If you don’t do this, you might notice a bit of “lag” at the beginning or end of a Step or Section.
• Advanced: If needed, you can adjust the volume levels of your audio in tutorials by directly editing the following attributes in the OBJECT embed tag: ClickSoundVolume, SoundBiteVolume, and BackgroundSoundVolume. Valid values for these three parameters are between 0 (muted) and 1 (full volume).