RoboDemo 5

asp:review

RoboDemo5

BuildInteractive Product and Service Demonstrations in Minutes

By Mike Riley

Soyou've just finished the most sophisticated ASP.NET application you've everconstructed. And by sophisticated I mean complex. It's a thing of beauty, buthow do you demonstrate your creation to its user base without a lengthy writtendissertation or bandwidth-gobbling video? Macromedia has the answer.

Macromedia'sFlash presentation file format has certainly become the de factostandard for dynamic content presentation on the Web. Everything fromintroductory pages on Web sites, to animated ad banners and interactivebrochures are being delivered to cross-platform browsers capable of renderingFlash .swf files.

Realizingthe dominance they have over the interactive Web marketplace, Macromediapurchased eHelp Corp. in October 2003 to further promote the Flash formatbeyond simple (and, by design, often distracting) Web page animations, andpropel it further into the eLearning market space. Although eHelp was betterknown for its electronic Help documentation-authoring tool RoboHelp, thecompany also created a tool, called RoboDemo, designed to deliver dynamicslideshows for product demonstration purposes. Because RoboDemo uses theMacromedia Flash format for its file packaging, delivery, and rendering format,they became an ideal acquisition for Macromedia.

Recording a Demo

Usingthe product is incredibly straightforward. Even though the packaged versionships with a sparse 14-page installation manual (half of which is focused onproduct activation and troubleshooting), the product is intuitive enough tolearn by simply clicking on things. RoboDemo includes a simple tutorial thatneatly summarizes most of what the product can do. I was recording my first projectwithin minutes of briefly reviewing the tutorial. Simply target the window ofinterest, click the Record button, and capture away.

Figure 1: The main composition screen isuncluttered and intuitive, making new users instantly productive.

Most RoboDemoprojects will either be screen recordings of software processes, or imports ofPowerPoint and/or other Flash presentations. PowerPoint slides maintain theirlayouts while additional media objects can be embedded into the project. Withthe help of Advanced Audio Management, synchronized audio can be merged withthe imported slides for an audiovisual experience suitable for Web, removablemedia, or kiosk distribution. The simplicity of the product hides the fact thatall these elements are Flash objects and timelines. Thus, you don't have to bea Flash wizard to assemble a compelling demonstration.

More than a Slide Show

Interactivitycan be added to a RoboDemo project, but it's restricted to mainly buttons,hotspots, textboxes, roll-overs, and mouse clicks. Branching can be authoredvia embedded JavaScripts, though RoboDemo isn't really suited to sophisticatedeLearning scenarios. Macromedia's Authorware product is more appropriate forthat task, but because of its ability to generate Aviation Industry Computer-BasedTraining Committee (AICC) and Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM)manifests, RoboDemo-generated files can be incorporated into Authorware andother Learning Management Systems (LMS). Macromedia also hosts a healthydiscussion forum for the RoboDemo user community at http://robodemo-forums.helpcommunity.ehelp.com/phpbb2/index.php.

Figure 2: Rudimentary interactivity can beadded to RoboDemo presentations in the form of button clicks that can triggerplayback actions, such as branching to another section or passing a URL intothe user's default Web browser.

Inaddition to demonstrating the product itself using RoboDemo, Macromedia alsofeatures a list of public customer sites that have used the product. Most ofthese are demonstrations with little to no interactivity, but they doeffectively illustrate the results generated by the program.

Bandwidthconstraints kept most of the customers highlighted on Macromedia's showcasepage (http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/showcase/index.cfm?event=finder&productid=18051&loc=en_us)from exhibiting the more elaborate video imports that RoboDemo allows. Onebandwidth-related problem that immediately becomes apparent is RoboDemo's lackof a built-in visual indicator for Flash clients that more content is beingdownloaded from the server. There were many times, particularly withMacromedia's own RoboDemo-authored demonstration, that I thought thepresentation had either failed or locked up. I would have been more tolerant ofthe condition if I had seen some type of indicator informing me that more datawas being downloaded from the server, rather than showing me a slider bar thatsimply refused to move past a certain frame position.

Figure 3: Audio events can be managed usingthe Advanced Audio Management dialog box.

Editing Costs Extra

Anirksome omission from the package is an add-on known as the RoboDemo FLAmodule. This expensive export module allows FlashMX users to editRoboDemo-generated projects. This extra cost is a holdover from when eHelpwasn't exclusively chanting the Flash mantra. Now that the companies arecombined, so too should the software. I would expect Macromedia to build thisexport functionality directly into future editions of the product to build upthe new feature list while promoting the use of its flagship dynamic mediacreation tool. For now, however, developers looking to further manipulateRoboDemo-compiled presentations will need to shell out two Ben Franklins tolicense the technology.

Conclusion

So hasRoboDemo 5 succeeded in its objective to make online product and service demonstrationsa painless process? Yes. Is the product perfect? Not yet, but givenMacromedia's track record for acquiring companies and merging the technologyassets into its future product roadmaps, RoboDemo should quickly evolve into astandard authoring tool for product demonstrations and limited interactiveeLearning scenarios.

Figure4: RoboDemo 5"Pros" and "Cons."

AlthoughI still hope one day Macromedia will embrace the SVG standard to provide anon-proprietary alternative, realistically Macromedia doesn't need to becausetheir Flash players execute on nearly every meaningful computing platformavailable. If your human resource or marketing departments are seeking a quickand easy way to maximize the impact of a message, RoboDemo 5 should be thefirst place to start your search.

Rating:

Web Site: http:// www.macromedia.com

Price: US$599(FLA module, US$199)