New tutorial experiment

cheesegrits

cheesegrits

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I'm experimenting with a new tool for building tutorials. My first draft attempt at a basic tutorial to go with the 'Contact Us' sample data is at:

http://fabrikar.com/media/tutorials/contact1/contact_us.htm

It is very much a first hack at this stuff, and far from perfect. But I found the 'Wink' software very easy to use, and the whole thing only took about an hour or so to put together.

Our plan is to provide a series of basic "How Do I?" tutorials, available to non-Subscribers, and then a series of more advanced tutorials in more depth for Subscribers, which build on the basic examples.

So I'm looking for some feedback on this first attempt, to make sure I'm headed in the right direction before going any further.

-- hugh
 
Looking good, sir! It seemed a little jumpy at first, but when you pause it with the text before hitting something that navigates away, it was easier to follow...expected some harmonica in the back or something, though...perhaps a little elevator music to calm the masses clamoring for change. ;)
 
Yeah. I also noticed that it doesn't immediately change the screenshot when (say) hitting "New" or some other button that reloads the page. It'll move the mouse first, until the next mouse or key click, which then changes the screen to the new page. I'll see if I can fix those little glitches by hand in the Wink app.

I'll also put in more pauses and text boxes, and probably include Back as well as Next arrows, so folk can go back and repeat steps.

And I'm definitely going to install a virgin Joomla/Fabrik to build these things in, so the screens aren't cluttered up with all my other test crap. I just wanted to get a draft out for comment before going much further.

Hmmm ... soundtracks ... that might be fun, LOL! I'm trying to get away from 'voice over' type tutorials, simply because of the language barrier ... it's much easier to translate tutorials into different languages using purely on-screen text ... but Wink does provide for an audio track, and Music Is Universal ... :)

Having the Rolling Stones "You Can't Always Get Want You Want" cranking away in the background might be a good hint.

-- hugh
 
::laughter::

Very nice, and I can see them being very useful indeed for those folks just dipping their toe in the water, as well as for the more advanced tutorials later.

I found that I could navigate to previous steps by clicking on the progress bar at the bottom of the screen, but it took a minute to find that. Might be worth putting some basic usage info on the page itself, outside of the tutorial window itself? Kind of a legend of the tutorial (the green "next" button looked a bit like a Joomla 1.x control so I didn't see it as part of the tutorial controls on first glance) controls and how to use then to navigate through.

Regarding the language issue:

::wobbling hand gesture::

I think it's a bit of a toss up actually, IME English is hands down the most frequently spoken language among internet folks, not because it's native to any great preponderance, but just because it's become kinda the common denominator.

As an interesting tidbit from our area of specialization, did you know that most if not all IKEA employees speak english? It's the designated language of the company even though they have stores all over the world and the english speaking countries are the minority as far as their market is concerned.

Anyway... I was kind of expecting to hear *something* when the tutorial started playing, to the point that I was checking my headphones and volume to make sure all was set right.

Heh. Just followed terp's link. That should be mandatory listening for everyone. Doubt it would make a dent in the invincible sense of entitlement that many folks have, but it's worth a shot! ;).

I know...

Hugh, as the designated musical type, you're responsible for coming up with the "Official" Fabrik themesong!

I'll loan you Elizabeth if you like though... She's good at coming up with songs on the fly, though you'd probably end up with some ponies and dancing slinkies. Oh, and everything would be pink. :p.

James and Susan
 
Tigratrus said:
As an interesting tidbit from our area of specialization, did you know that most if not all IKEA employees speak english?
Click to expand...

You guys are unquestionably the IKEA masters. I was suprised at the size of your site when I checked it out. If you need a tutorial on installing those $14.95 color shelves (with the dowel-type metal mounting bracket and like 3" thick shelves), this might motivate me to install them sometime...wife's been riding me for months. :)

I love the new look, too; you guys getting close to migrating?

[/hijacking Hugh's serious thread] :)
 
We're getting closer. Susan's made a lot of progress on the Template, and the infrastructure bits are starting to come together. JFusion should have a new release out in a week or two that will hopefully nail the last issues we have with the authentication/accounts integration, and I think there is finally an answer on the near horizon for the one thing that has been keeping us from upgrading to vBulletin 3.7. We're hoping to roll it all out together as a full blown upgrade to IKEAFANS 4.0. And with our new, more professional look and functionality we should be much better positioned for starting to provide the premium content that will actually start making revenue beyond Adsense.

We have high hopes, and reason to believe that they aren't just wishful thinking ;).

James and Susan
 
I guess to be honest, the real reason I don't want to do voice-over type tutorials is I hate the sound of my own voice. Makes me break out in hives when I hear it. So the likelihood of me doing voice-overs for these things is nill. Or at best very much tending towards zero.

It also adds quite a lot of time to the production. Heck, just trying to find some quiet time in this house where the voice-over wouldn't have kids and family members yelling and screaming in the background would be a problem. And of course it also requires some coherent flow of information, which I'm not well known for.

Of course if anyone likes the sound of their own voice, and wants to load Wink:

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

... I can put the 'source' file up alongside the flash stuff, and y'all can have at it. :)

-- hugh
 
Yea, I offered to do some before, sometime down the road...I use Jing, but can't do those fancy dancy tooltip things, so might have look into wink...will have to wait until I setup the new laptop and clean off my desktop, as you can not even see an inch of space with icons covering all 1600x pixels. :)

PS...anyone know what I could use to record mp3 voice files? The new CB has some Asian guy (thought it was Beat) doing the phonetic alphabet, so like to record my own so people think I made it. :)

I spell: Foxtrot - Alpha - Bravo - Romeo - India - kilo :)
 
I like Wink but it tends to be a bit tempermental, at least on Ubuntu Gutsy/Hardy. I have learned to save a LOT!! It would be so much better if you could capture into existing projects, though and if you could have more than 1 text box to a frame....


-n8
 
I just viewed the example and think you have to add some time to the frames, let me know if I can help, I have done several tutorials on wink and they are very usefull for my friends, I can even help with spanish version, take care.

Juba
 
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