Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.
Wink is distributed as freeware for business or personal use.
[via Julian Robichaux, Jumpstart Session Sneak Peek]
I’ve recently started using Wink for user documentation in my databases. It’s great. I turned a 5 page (or so) help document with screen shots and text that no one ever read into a 2 minute Wink presentation with big yellow callouts every 20 seconds or so. People who would never read the documentation will watch the “movie”.
Here’s what I did:
1. I created the screen capture in Wink, added callouts, and exported as a SWF file (hint: use the “optimized palette” option for a much smaller file).
2. I created a Page element in the database that is all pass-through HTML, which is the HTML page that Wink generates.
3. Then I took the SWF file from Wink and add it as a File Resource in the database.
4. Back on the HTML page, I changed the SWF file reference to a computed field, pointing to /thedatabase/thefile.swf?OpenFileResource
5. As a Shared Action in the database, I have a button that makes a @URLOpen call that opens the Page.
So now when people click the “Help” button in my database, it opens up a browser window and starts playing the Wink movie. It’s great.
Julian, thank you for this great tip.
Glad you like it!
I’ve been meaning to blog about that technique for a while, but haven’t had the chance. And I probably won’t until at least after Lotusphere. So maybe if you wanted to blog about it…?
🙂