A look at software demo tools

by Dana Cline

There's a thin line between technical writing and instructional design. One area of overlap involves actually showing the user how to do something by using a demo of the real software. Fortunately, there are many tools available to create demos.

RoboDemo, from eHelp (www.ehelp.com) is a relatively new entrant to the field. It helps you capture screens, add text balloons and other objects, and add sound. RoboDemo can produce standard Flash files, allowing most users to view the demos. RoboDemo is available in nine languages.

TurboDemo (www.turbodemo.com) has capabilities similar to RoboDemo but with a slightly easier-to-use interface. In addition to Flash, TurboDemo can produce a combination HTML/Java version of the demo. TurboDemo includes an audio wizard that helps with voiceovers.

DemoShield (www.demoshield.com) is one of the oldest demo-building programs. It has a wealth of templates for different types of demos, but is surprisingly lacking in some features, such as the ability to show mouse cursor movement. However, it does have features others lack, such as the ability to create an installation program for your demo, or a link so that demo screens can extract data from an ODBC data source.

Viewlet Builder, from www.qarbon.com, is one of the first programs to create web demos. It's a tad slower because it's written in Java, but versions will be available soon for Mac, Solaris, and Linux. Viewlet Builder is available in 11 languages.

Which one is right for you? Well, they all have free versions available so you can try them out. RoboDemo is the least expensive at $400, assuming you don't need support, which adds $200 to $800 per year. DemoShield is next, at $700. TurboDemo is slightly more at $790, but would be my choice if I needed to create a lot of demos. Its interface is so intuitive that I was able to create demos of decent quality in just a few minutes. Viewlet Builder is the most expensive, at $900. I would choose it only if I needed to demonstrate programs that run on the Mac, on Solaris, or on Linux.