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Flowgram is a really nifty new, Flex-powered service that takes Web-based demonstrations to the next level. I don't get impressed by many training tools any more as I've been exposed to way too many that do the same thing in less and less interesting ways. Flowgram isn't just a screencasting or video demonstration tool. It actually brings up the Web page that you are trying to demonstrate. It's the full Web page and the viewer can interact with the page because, well, it's live!
This goes way beyond simple screencasts where you can watch, but not participate. It's much closer to what you can achieve with Adobe Captivate in terms of providing training for desktop or Web-based applications. Because you're dealing with live Web pages, you will run in to the issue of logins preventing users from getting inside a site that requires authentication, but theoretically, you could show them how to create and account, log in, and go from there. Captivate's simulation mode works around these issues, but you have to deal with changes to the Web pages you're demonstrating in Captivate, which can be time consuming and expensive. (Granted, Captivate can do a whole lot more, including branching, which isn't even in in Flowgram's playbook.)
You can also add in annotations to the Web pages you're demonstrating, add still images, pull from Flickr and and Facebook image sets, import PowerPoint files and then mix it all up.
The service itself uses a Flex app with and a whole lot of <iframe>s to get the job done, but the experience is really quite seamless and really darn interesting.
Like all Web-based services, there's the Flowgram branding and site redirection that you pretty much can't get around, and, of course, you run the risk of your content going away if Flowgram goes away. It is, however, a really interesting service for those looking to create Web-based demonstrations of (mostly) Web-based properties. I'm definitely going to be using this for some of my future training content creation, though I'll still rely on Captivate for demonstrations of desktop-based applications.
Clik here to view.
Flowgram is a really nifty new, Flex-powered service that takes Web-based demonstrations to the next level. I don't get impressed by many training tools any more as I've been exposed to way too many that do the same thing in less and less interesting ways. Flowgram isn't just a screencasting or video demonstration tool. It actually brings up the Web page that you are trying to demonstrate. It's the full Web page and the viewer can interact with the page because, well, it's live!
This goes way beyond simple screencasts where you can watch, but not participate. It's much closer to what you can achieve with Adobe Captivate in terms of providing training for desktop or Web-based applications. Because you're dealing with live Web pages, you will run in to the issue of logins preventing users from getting inside a site that requires authentication, but theoretically, you could show them how to create and account, log in, and go from there. Captivate's simulation mode works around these issues, but you have to deal with changes to the Web pages you're demonstrating in Captivate, which can be time consuming and expensive. (Granted, Captivate can do a whole lot more, including branching, which isn't even in in Flowgram's playbook.)
You can also add in annotations to the Web pages you're demonstrating, add still images, pull from Flickr and and Facebook image sets, import PowerPoint files and then mix it all up.
The service itself uses a Flex app with and a whole lot of <iframe>s to get the job done, but the experience is really quite seamless and really darn interesting.
Like all Web-based services, there's the Flowgram branding and site redirection that you pretty much can't get around, and, of course, you run the risk of your content going away if Flowgram goes away. It is, however, a really interesting service for those looking to create Web-based demonstrations of (mostly) Web-based properties. I'm definitely going to be using this for some of my future training content creation, though I'll still rely on Captivate for demonstrations of desktop-based applications.
