This is a very easy to use but basic tutorial creator. The install was clean (but not using the Microsoft Installer, so no automatic Restore Point), but the coding isn't. This is pre-Vista code, not multi-user aware. The company shows up as Addictive Software, A-PDF, and Boxoft. Dumps and leaves temporary files in ProgramData (All Users). Other files will get virtualized per-user in Vista and higher (unless you did something incredibly stupid like turning off UAC or installing/running the program as an Administrator, which isn't the same as running from an administrator account). It tries to put one file in Program Files and another in Windows, those will get virtualized.

There's Help in HTML and PDF format, but you need to read it from the Start menu, it didn't work from within the program. It's also very basic and incomplete. The image captures work but are primitive, you're not going to get rounded window corners or cleared Aero backgrounds. Selecting a window for capture doesn't bring it to the front, so you need to do that in advance. The screen capture is actually a selectable screen-region capture. Fortunately, you can use your own capture and annotation tools and import the images.

Annotation is easy to figure out. You select what you want, generally click to start placement, drag and release to end. There are resize/reposition handles, and you can drag the entire object. Double-click the interior of text boxes to edit the text, click outside the box when done. You can select text sizes/fonts/colors, box border present/absent and color, etc., and similarly for other types of annotation. No doubt, endless people will complain about no undo, but all you have to do is right-click the object which you don't want and delete it. The annotation tools are basic but very primitive, you're not going to get any type of automatic resizing; I didn't check but I'm sure that there's no anti-aliasing, etc.

I published my test project as PDF, and it wouldn't let me set some of the basic properties of the PDF file (coding error), but it did let me select some of the options of how to create the PDF file.

Screen Tutorial Creator did a pretty good job with the output, handling scaling and such. Of course, the images and annotation aren't in vector format, so you'll experience degradation with PDF scaling and zooming.

Screen Tutorial Creator needs a lot of code cleanup, but it's a very easy to use application if you don't mind the format restrictions, and has a spelling checker.

Fubar  –  15 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+118)

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First of all thanks to both developer and GAOTD Team!

What (IMHO) is missing:

- Undo and Redo icons on the toolbar
- Enable/Disable "Drop Shadow"
- Curved Lines and Curved Arrows
- Thickness of frame (when adding text) selection command
- Drag & Drop support (it would be nice to add images to the project by D&D)

What I would like to see corrected:

- In Add Step/Select Screen, if the screenshot you are taking is small and positioned in the higher part of the screen (like an application toolbar, which is very likely to be the target area!) the tooltip with: "Press Ctrl + Position to change Position... etc. etc." covers entirely the screenshot area and you cannot see what you are actually cropping!

There are also other GUI elements which could be sort of "fine tuned"...But the general idea of this application is very nice!

Mark  –  15 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+85)

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To the developers of this: It is a very useful tool for me, but the market is not large. It needs to work flawlessly in a production environment.

This is both welcome and a disappointment. @6 tells me it has fundamental issues, not a good thing. OTOH it is something I useful to make software presentations and tutorials, right now I am forced to use PPT or open office presentation.

Sadly I will not be downloading this for my XP64 till it is cleaned up. Then, if it tests useful I would purchase it because what it proposes to do is something I need.

Thanks, looking forward to a finished production app.

spam s  –  15 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+17)

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On my dual-monitor desktop setup (Win7 X64) the program's screen comes up spanning both monitors halfway. The normal expectation of dragging the window to the appropriate location (one of the monitors) and smoothly closing it does not cure the problem.

So before even trying the program: the current window size and location should be retained for subsequent reuse when the program is restarted.

Art

Art Shapiro  –  15 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+9)

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Maybe it is only me, but I do not see the use for this program. What is point to use an outside application to convert the result to Word or PDF if I can do exactly the same in Word and then use cutePDF to get a PDF version of it if I needed it? The tutorial is not dynamic and does not offer anything I can not do in Word or other application.

GAW  –  15 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+9)

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