Rick Henkel - FrameMaker-Related Stuff

Earlier this week, I attended training for Firefly, a software simulation tool from Knowledge Impact. Firefly is incredibly easy to learn. I know nothing about software simulation tools, but I knew how to use this tool within a few hours. (I usually am a quick study when it comes to learning how to use software.)

The e-learning developers at my company are excited about the template feature of Firefly. You can create a screen or item, modify it so that it's exactly what you want, and then save it as a template item. You can then import that template item into other simulations. For example, if you have a standard account screen that should always display the same sample user account information, you can set up the screen once, save it as a template, and then have all the developers in your company import that screen into their e-learning simulations.

I threw together a quick simulation for creating a new document in FrameMaker to show you some sample output from Firefly. Use the prompts to move through the simulation.

I did notice a few oddities. For example, watch for small boxes in front of the keyboard combinations on the FrameMaker menus. The Firefly trainer said that she'd never seen that before and that it must just be something in the way that Firefly captures Frame's menus.

The other oddity was how painfully slow the application ran on my PC. When I'd test a simulation, I sometimes had to wait over five minutes for the simulation to close so I could go back to the tool for editing it. But colleagues with newer PCs didn't have similar slow performances. I think the specs on my PC are closer to the minimum required rather than the recommended, so that might have something to do with that problem.

All in all, I think this is a great tool . . . if your department can afford it. As with all the simulation tools, it ain't cheap.