How to create tutorials and presentations for free using Wink

Posted on January 20, 2008 at 6:58 am

If you’re a computer geek like I am, some thing comes easily, such as how to setup a piece of software or how to troubleshoot a Windows error message. But if you’re the non-techie parent of that computer geek or the sales and marketing guy at your office, you may not have as much insight into those cryptic messages or strange menu options when installing software.

And having provided technical support in the past, I can say that repeating myself a hundred times is not fun either. That’s where it would come in handy for a computer savvy user to be able to create a simple step-by-step tutorial with screenshots of how to accomplish a particular task, such as installing or setting up software.

DebugMode Wink is a free tutorial and presentation software that is primarily used to create tutorials on how to use software (like a step-by-step guide for using Microsoft Excel/Word, etc). With Wink, you can capture screenshots, add explanation boxes, buttons, titles, and lots more to create a truly interactive and highly effective tutorial for users.

This is a great tool for not only system administrator, but also anyone who has a keen interest in teaching someone how to use a computer software program. Wink is free to use and allows you to create your presentations in Flash so that you can easily post it to a website or blog.

Here are a couple of the major features of Wink and why I really like it:

Freeware: Distributed as freeware for business and for personal use. However if you want to redistribute Wink, you need to get permission from the author.
Cross-Platform: Available for all flavors of Windows and various versions of Linux (x86 only).
Audio: Record voice as you create the tutorial for better explanations.
Input formats: Capture screenshots from your PC, or use images in several formats including 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 are using your PC, based on mouse and keyboard input (saves a lot of time and generates professional captures).
Performance/Quality: Creates highly compressed Flash presentations (few kbs to few hundreds of kbs, much smaller than competing commercial products) which is ideal for using on the web.

Wink has a good set of tools and features at your disposal for creating highly detailed and customized tutorials including:

Navigation buttons to move to next/previous/random frames in the presentation. And you can use custom bitmaps for these buttons (full transparency/alpha channel support).
Callouts and shapes for displaying text explanations. The inbuilt Callout Editor can be used to create custom shaped callouts as you desire.
Intuitive drag-n-drop editing of the frame, callout, cursor, navigation buttons and the title elements.
Advanced features like cursor editing, templates, palettes, control bars, background images and preloaders for the flash output etc.
Completely PC and Web ready with the ability to export to PDF, HTML, SWF and EXE formats.
Innovative compression techniques applied to reduce file size of output Flash file. The flash files generated play in all Flash versions from 3 all the way up, giving you widest array of target audience.
Uncompressed output allows you to import the output of Wink into a different Flash editor.

So next time you want to teach someone how to do something on their computer, consider using Wink to show it to them visually! Make sure to read the manual first before using Wink as it takes a few minutes to understand how to use it. Enjoy!

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Comments

4 Responses to “How to create tutorials and presentations for free using Wink”

Alek Davis said on : January 21st, 2008 at 1:58 pm

This looks interesting. Never heard of this tool before. Need to check it out. Thanks.

akishore said on : January 21st, 2008 at 11:58 pm

Hi Alex,

Yeah it’s great for creating tutorials and simple presentations with screenshots. Hope it helps!

Thanks,

Aseem

Helen said on : January 28th, 2008 at 3:42 pm

Hi,
This is just what I was looking for – I think..however, I have a MAC, so its not any good. Please can you help me with similar sw for my mac os? I need to create thumbshots/screenshots of every webpage of a website, show all the links from each webpage using thumbnail images, which I ideally need to annotate, basically produce a visual website map but with slide shows – screen shots I can annotate, enlarge..I was also hoping to find a way of showing the navigation myself with a video, I wonder, how can I show/record the number of CLICKS? a user does? If anyone could tell me about a visual bookmarking website I could use for MAC? Can anyone help me with how to save every webpage in a website? In a gallery/slide show? Any help to show a websites navigation and access, all the clicks and links – like a transparent map over the top of the webpage, numbering each action, add either comment or speech bubble, and of course window viewer separate to show all links – where they go etc..I have never made a comment, or asked for any help, but if anyone has time, I need this stuff for a website that will be especially for donating to CANCER, one in three of us will get..Anyone can suggest a website where I can hopefully find some web gurus to assist me, and help me with the best develop your own software packages/sw, and locate the best web tools. Anyone help me with some websites I can visit, any tekkies that are not too important to email me, let me know , thanks..
pls help with cancer support people…I need visuals

Create interactive presentations and tutorials using Flowgram Says:

[...] like Camtasia Studio. You can also use Google Docs to create online presentations, and you can create interactive tutorials similar to Flowgram using Wink. Enjoy! Source: CNET Enjoyed this post? Subscribe to Online Tech [...]
October 15th, 2008 at 12:17 pm