Julie Smyth : 2003
Cool: Sick of explaining to customers HOW to do a small task? Send them a FlashCast file and let them WATCH how to do that task on their own PC.
Uncool: File sizes can be a tad large (something to watch out for).
With the enormous popularity of Macromedia Flash these days it is hard to wade through all the 3rd party products that have materialised around Flash. I think I may have found a good and useful tool though from multi.dimensional.media (MDM) and it is called FlashCast. What does it do? Well, FlashCast is a unique little tool with which to build tutorials, presentations, corporate training material and desktop screen captures.
Lets go through all the useful things you can do with FlashCast one point at a time.
| Desktop Recording | Believe it or not, Flashcast will capture all on-screen events, including mouse movements and clicks. You can then customize which events you want to record and which you want Flashcast to ignore. We had one client recently who just could not install something on their PC, we recorded the steps, sent them the FlashCast file and they simply replayed the keystrokes and installed the item. Cool or what! |
| Output to SWF Format | Output your projects to SWF (ShockWave Flash) format so they are accessible via the web, your intranet, or even a cd-rom. Think about that a minute. Flash files are normally small file sizes with great quality so its a win/win situation. |
| PowerPoint to SWF | Use FlashCast to convert PowerPoint files to SWF. I found this a handy tool, as PowerPoint files on the net are normally quite bandwidth heavy. So converting them to Flash is a great solution. (Just a note here: you would need to already have Microsoft PowerPoint, it does not come included with FlashCast). |
| Narration and Sounds | Plug in your Microphone and add narration to your presentations and tutorials for that extra touch of inter-activity. Explain procedures to your clients (or team members) in audio and visual format. Another nice touch. |
| Information Layers | Insert layers at any point in your Project to display information, instructions or guidlines! Create custom shaped layers or use FlashCast's own internal library of shapes. Eh, this is reminiscent of pop-up windows ... but anyone who has used action-script in Flash is aware that it takes a little programming to create this effect ... so I found this feature very useful. |
| Flash Studio Pro Integration | FlashCast has been tightly integrated with Flash Studio Pro (Another MDM product). Flash Studio Pro allows you to add any of the proprietary FSCommands to your FlashCast projects with ease and then output them directly to Flash Studio Pro. If this doesn't make any sense to you, don't panic, as in the next edition of the WBB I will be reviewing Flash Studio Pro and explaining how and why these two products are so tightly linked. |
Okay, so we've heard all the tech talk about FlashCast, would you like to see an example? Its a pretty basic example of a rather indepth product but you'll get the idea Click Here.
To me FlashCast sounded just too good to be true ... I was rather pleased to discover what a great and unique little tool it is. I have no hesitation in giving the products a thumbs up as a great addition to any web design or IT support representative's collective software library.
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