tjboemker-ga,
I am not aware of any "Software Storyboarding" applications on the
market, and turned up none after an internet search. This is likely
because there are many ways of accomplishing software product
demonstrations using conventional software packages and approaches,
the most salient of which I will outline here. As a professional
software developer for several years, I can tell you that there is no
substitute for a fully functional demo program which uses either a
parallel port hard key or a time-based expiration, to allow the
potential customer to try the fully-functional product out.
However, real life being what it is, I realize that it is not always
possible or financially practical to fully develop an application and
then hope that someone will purchase it. Sometimes in order to attract
funding, it's necessary to do a "storyboarding" type of demo. To this
end, I will cover here a full range of solutions to software
demonstrations which require no or very limited functionality, and
which will probably require no additional expenditures on new software
tools for you--certainly not $2,000.
Here’s a brief outline of one possible method, which I then follow
with more details along with some other methods:
Create your actual GUI in VB, obtain screen-captured images using
Windows, edit the images in Adobe Photoshop (if necessary), export
them to MS PowerPoint, storyboard them in PowerPoint’s Thumbnail view,
create captions and a timing sequence. Finally, save the presentation
to CD-ROM along with the MS PowerPoint Viewer (it’s free), just in
case your audience does not have the PowerPoint application available.
Since you're developing Windows applications, one of the simplest and
most effective methods is to use MS Visual Basic to create the GUI's,
just as you will have to do (hopefully) anyway, for the fully
functional version. So, whether you're going to use VB6 or VB.NET,
create the GUI's. This involves dragging the controls (textboxes,
labels, combo boxes, list boxes, frames, checkboxes, radio buttons,
etc.) onto the form within the IDE. Don't forget to include any logo
images (i.e. bitmap or JPEGs) on your forms, too, by adding the Image
control to the form. When the control objects are arranged how you
want them, run the program.
This will show the traditional Windows form with your controls and
logos on it. They will have at this point the extremely limited
"functionality" you mentioned in your Question, in that you will be
able to type characters into textboxes, or select checkboxes or radio
buttons. Of course at this point you won't be able to hit Enter after
entering text into a box, because nothing will happen or you may get
an error message. But, all that is missing is the VB code that tells
your objects how they are supposed to respond to certain events (not
that this is trivial by any means, but for the purposes of
demonstration it is not always necessary).
Then, make a screen capture of that GUI when it is run, and save it as
an image (.bmp works fine). There are several ways of doing this,
including special screen capture software that allows more
flexibility, but the basic way using Windows, is to select the window,
hold down Alt and hit the Print Screen button on your keyboard. This
saves a copy of the window's image to the Clipboard. You can
physically print out the images of your application's various screens
and put them on a physical whiteboard where your team can easily
rearrange them while working out the sequence of the demo. Or, you can
paste the image into an MS PowerPoint slide, for use in an electronic
presentation. This is the method I used most myself, and with the best
success.
PowerPoint has a “Thumbnail View” that is the same as storyboarding,
literally. Place each of your screen-captured GUI screens on a
different PowerPoint slide and select the thumbnail view. From there,
you can simply click and drag each slide around to its desired
position.
Then add captions and timings and optionally, an audio narrative of
you explaining your program and what happens to bring about the
different screens. You can even incorporate .MPEG videos directly into
the PowerPoint presentations.
Another powerful tool that can be used in conjunction with PowerPoint
is Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop elements. Elements is only $100 and
should suffice for cropping and resizing screen captured images, and
optionally for adding captions to them.
So, you can create your actual GUI in VB, obtain screen-captured
images using Windows, edit the images in Adobe Photoshop, export them
to MS PowerPoint, storyboard them in PowerPoint’s’ Thumbnail view,
create captions and a timing sequence. Finally, save the presentation
to CD-ROM along with the MS PowerPoint Viewer (it’s free), just in
case your audience does not have the PowerPoint application available
Let me review the software Tools needed for the "Storyboard" demo
method I just outlined above:
1. Whatever version of MS VB you will be creating the actual product
in if you get the go-ahead after the demo: Either VB6, VB.NET or
perhaps even VBA if it's a custom MS Office application. Also, if you
do not yet have access to the full VB program, VBA within MS Access
can create standard GUI forms.
2. MS PowerPoint
3. Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements
4. Any version of MS Windows.
5. Optionally, the MS PowerPoint Viewer, which allows PowerPoint
presentations to be viewed (viewed only—not edited) without having the
PowerPoint application.
Another reason I think this fully Microsoft-based method will work for
you is that you’re marketing Microsoft-based software. You should
demonstrate full command of Microsoft products in every phase of the
project, not only the programming itself, but the demonstrating, too.
If you’re saying, “I’ve got this great software you should buy—it runs
on Microsoft Windows…” but you made the demo on 3rd party software….I
think people may notice that. You should be able to have a complete,
professional command of MS products every step of the way if you’re
going to effectively create and sell products to run on Windows.
That being said, there are other effective demonstration platforms,
most notably the Macromedia family of products, namely Flash and
Director. You could create a snazzy demo using Flash or Director (the
latter of which is like Flash but oriented toward CD/DVD-ROM
deployment and able to handle higher quality video). You could take
your screen captured images of your application and import them to
Flash or Director and create a presentation that way. However, these
platforms are quite distinctive and…flashy, if you will, and look
quite different from your “boring” old Windows applications, so you
want to be careful that you’re the presentation itself doesn’t
outshine the product!
Another alternative is to create a Flash video and export it as an AVI
or MPEG which could then be run from within your PowerPoint
presentation, so you could use it as an attention-grabbing intro
before getting into the nitty-gritty of the GUI slides. Flash will run
you about $500, while the more robust Director MX costs about $1100.
Finally, the 3rd viable course of action is one that was briefly
mentioned in Omnivorous' Comment, and that is to use an HTML-based
approach.
You can indeed use the HTML <FORM> attributes to implement GUI's
visible in a browser (i.e., IE), and would not have to take the time
to code the functionality. However, I still think it would be more
time consuming to use HTML to code all the GUIs instead of just using
VB's IDE to click & drag the controls into place (which, as I said,
you will have to do at some point, anyway). However, it is certainly a
viable approach and offers the convenience of being able to present
anywhere there's a browser. On the other hand, if your application is
web-enabled or interfaces with the web in some way, you may want to
incorporate the HTML forms in at least part of your presentation.
Below I have placed links to each of the products I've mentioned here,
if you wanted to investigate they're functionality further, or their
cost and order information:
This is the link to Macromedia's official Flash information page (for
the latest version, Flash MX 2004):
[ http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/ ]
This is a link to Macromedia's Director information page (For the
latest version, Director MX 2004):
[ http://www.macromedia.com/software/mx2004/ ]
Here's a link to Microsoft's PowerPoint Viewer information and
download page:
[ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D1649C22-B51F-4910-93FC-4CF2832D3342&displaylang=en
]
This link takes you to the Microsoft.com Search agent results for
"PowerPoint" which includes basic info plus developer downloads and
code samples:
[ http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st=b&qu=PowerPoint&view=en-us
]
Here's a link to Microsoft's main Windows product page:
[ http://www.microsoft.com/windows/default.mspx ]
Here is a link to Adobe's Photoshop 7 information page:
[ http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html ]
And here is a link to Adobe's Photoshop Elements information page:
[ http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopel/main.html ]
Finally, here is a link to the Google search results using the
keywords; "software demo tools":
[ ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=software+demo+tools
]
And, a link to some commercial software demo tools presented by the
Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication:
[ http://stcrmc.org/technicalities/feb_march_2003/feature2.htm ]
Google search strategy:
Keywords, "software demo storyboarding, software demonstrations,
software demo tools, demo programs, demo application builders"
Please don't hesitate to ask for Clarification if you are not clear
about anything I've mentioned here.
I hope you find this helpful and good luck with your software project!
Sincerely,
omniscientbeing-ga |
