Software Gadgets

Sometimes telling someone isn't nearly as good as showing them. This is particularly true when trying to explain how to use software.This is why programs that allow one to capture actions on the screen, add text explanations, and save the resulting demonstration as a Flash video are popular -- and often expensive and hard to use without a lot of training and/or practice. Wink allows one to create Flash demos, but it is relatively easy to use and free. It will even produce PDF output so a version of the demo can be printed.

From the Wink Web site:

* Freeware: Distributed as freeware for business or personal use.
* Cross-Platform: Available for all flavours of Windows and various versions of Linux (x86 only)
* Audio: Record voice as you create the tutorial for explaining better.
* Input formats: Capture screenshots from your PC, or use images in BMP/JPG/PNG/TIFF/GIF formats.
* Output formats: Macromedia Flash, Standalone EXE, PDF, PostScript, HTML or any of the above image formats. Use Flash/html for the web, EXE for distributing to PC users and PDF for printable manuals.
* Multilingual support: Works in English, French, German, Italian, Danish, Spanish, Serbian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified/Traditional Chinese.
* Smart Capture Tools: Capture screenshots automatically as you use your PC, based on mouse and keyboard input (great time saver and generates professional captures).
* Performance/Quality: Creates highly compressed Flash presentations (few kbs to few hundreds of kbs, much smaller than competing commercial products) ideal for using on the web.
* Tools:

o Navigation buttons to move to next/previous/random frames in the presentation, you can use custom bitmaps for these buttons (full transparency/alpha channel support).
o Callouts and shapes for displaying text explanations. The inbuilt Callout Editor is used to create custom shaped callouts as you want.
o Intuitive drag-n-drop editing of the frame, callout, cursor, navigation buttons and the title elements.
o Advanced features like templates, cursor editing, palettes, background images, control bars & preloaders for the flash output etc.
o Completely PC and Web ready with exports to PDF, HTML, SWF and EXE formats.
o Innovative compression techniques applied to reduce filesize of output Flash file. Generated flash file plays in Flash players from version 3 and above, giving you widest array of target audience.
o Uncompressed output to allow you import the output of Wink into other Flash editors.

Wink is an amazing program. It is hard to believe that it is freeware -- and easier to use than some of the commercial programs I've seen. Be sure to try the demo on the main page of the Wink web site to see a sample of what you can do with Wink.

Rating: 5.0 Stars
Operating System: Windows 2000 or XP (Linux, too)
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version Reviewed: 2.0 build 1000
Web Site: http://www.debugmode.com/wink/