C1 Community

A few of my favorite (web) things

C1_NickyB — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:07:00 GMT

It has finally stopped raining in Pittsburgh (for the moment) so I'm going to blog while the sun shines.

I love the 'Burgh, but it does rain quite a bit in June. We have a large arts festival -- the Three Rivers Arts Festival -- that coincides with the rain every year. But it all seems to work out.

So ... here are a few of my favorite (web) things ...

You can build your own fonts (and share them) with FontStruct http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/ (I read about this @ http://www.slate.com/id/2192535/)
The Duck Island Greeking Machine generates greeked text in seven "languages" (Classical Latin, Hillbilly, Marketing, The Matrix, Metropolitan, Pseudo German, and Techno Babble). Very handy. http://www.duckisland.com/greekmachine.asp
If you need to map colors for different outputs, the Tridesign PMS/RGB/Hex color (actually colour) chart is very useful. http://www.tridesign.com.au/index-tess1.php?ItemNo=2055

While on the subject of the web -- I highly recommend Janice (Ginny) Redish's new book Letting Go of the Words -- Writing Web Contents that Works. Lots of great information and solid examples. I have post-it notes all over my copy.

Lastly, an interesting article from slate.com about how we read online http://www.slate.com/id/2193552/ (Jakob Nielsen is referenced).

More later

ComponentOne Awards

C1_EveT — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:34:00 GMT

Here are some accolades we have wanted to share with you since we last chatted:

ComponentOne won “THE SD TIMES 100 -RECOGNIZING THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST IN THE INDUSTRY.”

ComponentOne Studio Enterprise, the world’s most complete component suite for developing all layers of Windows, Web, and Mobile applications, was voted by readers, just like you, to receive the Visual Studio Magazine Readers’ Choice Merit Award in the Component Suites for .NET—Desktop and Web category.

ComponentOne Studio for WinForms, a collection of over fifty-five enterprise-ready .NET components, including charts, grids, scheduling, reporting, menus, toolbars, editors, navigation, data input, validation, and export/import, was named “BEST OF TECH•ED 2008 DEVELOPERS AWARDS” WINNER BY WINDOWS IT PRO AND SQL SERVER MAGAZINES.

ComponentOne DemoWorks, a screen recording tool that empowers anybody to produce professional quality demonstration videos without programming, multi-media, or graphic design expertise, received a Jolt Productivity Award.

We walked away with a total of 4 Visual Studio Magazine Readers’ Choice Awards, more than any other component vendor! ComponentOne Studio for Mobile, Readers Choice Award-Mobility Tools and Frameworks, ComponentOne Studio for WinForms Readers Choice Merit Award- UI Components-Desktop, and ComponentOne Doc-To-Help, Readers Choice Awards-Help Authoring.

Wow, that was a lot to share and we are only half way through the year. As we mentioned earlier, we want you to be in the know and reaffirm with ComponentOne that you will always be ahead of the curve, and with a company who clearly demonstrates their products are “award winning.”

Best Wishes,

ComponentOne Studio Enterprise, Studio for WinForms, Studio for Mobile, and Doc-To-Help Recognized for Excellence with 2008 Readers' choice Award from Visual Studio Magazine

C1_EveT — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:31:00 GMT

Pittsburgh, PA - June 27, 2008 - ComponentOne, the provider of the most comprehensive suite of visual components available anywhere, today announced that its Studio for Mobile has been honored with a Readers’ Choice Award and Studio Enterprise, Studio for WinForms, and Doc-To-Help have been honored with the Readers’ Choice Merit Award from Visual Studio Magazine. The 2008 winners, which will appear in an upcoming issue, are chosen by Visual Studio Magazine’s readers and honor excellent software products in 22 categories.

“These awards are especially noteworthy because it is the people who use these products day in and day out, the developers in the trenches, who select the products they consider the best in their respective categories,” said editor in chief Patrick Meader. “We respect the work of all the vendors who help make the Visual Studio third-party marketplace so robust and dynamic. Their efforts save countless hours and untold amounts of money for professional developers everywhere.”

“This distinction in the development and help-authoring tool industry is an immense honor,” stated Gustavo Eydelsteyn, managing director at ComponentOne. “Being recognized more than any other software vendor company by the readers of Visual Studio Magazine signifies that we are delivering industry leading products to our clients.”

Visual Studio Magazine presented awards in three categories:

Readers Choice Awards, given to products that received the most readers' votes
Readers Choice Merit Awards, given to products receiving a high number of votes that also show real value to Visual Studio Magazine readers
Editors Choice Award, given to products that shows special merit or innovation, but don’t fit comfortably into the standard categories

The awards are based on the responses of 539 Visual Studio Magazine subscribers. An email invitation was sent to 23,000 randomly selected subscribers and responses were collected from April 28 – May 2, 2008. The ballot, which was complied by the editors of Visual Studio Magazine, included more than 400 products.

ComponentOne DynamicHelp for WinForms provides Help on individual controls by enabling end-users to view Help files in WinForms applications. This type of Help system is available in applications such as Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and 2005, Microsoft Office, and ComponentOne Doc-To-Help.

About Visual Studio Magazine

1105 Redmond Media Group’s Visual Studio Magazine provides independent, how-to, practical articles that teach enterprise developers how to create applications with Visual Studio better, faster and more easily. The award-winning editorial reaches the core of the Microsoft developer community - software architects, senior developers and development managers. The publication reaches 85,000 subscribers monthly. For more information, visit Visual Studio Magazine online.

About ComponentOne

ComponentOne has continued leadership in the Microsoft Visual Studio component industry, and has been a premiere partner of Microsoft for over 20 years. ComponentOne's flagship product, ComponentOne Studio Enterprise is the industry's broadest and most complete suite of development components for developing all layers of Windows, Web, WPF, and Mobile applications. With the most powerful components designed for the .NET framework, Studio Enterprise delivers the tools developers need to produce next-generation UIs for Windows and the Web. Studio Enterprise allows developers to create rich user experiences with ASP.NET AJAX-enabled Web interfaces, enterprise-level .NET Windows Forms applications, as well as newly emerging WPF and Silverlight technologies with less code and in less time. ComponentOne is also the provider of Doc-To-Help, DemoWorks, and FrontLine. ComponentOne is a privately held company headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA. For more information on ComponentOne or its products, visit, www.componentone.com.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Dynamic Help: I’ve got it and you can have it too

C1_NickyB — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:01:00 GMT

I’ve worked on a number of software products, and there were several that were ideal candidates for dynamically updating, embedded help – but since that sort of effort is usually software developer-intensive, I was never able to make it happen (not for lack of trying by myself and some wonderful software developers).

The wait is over; and convergence was the answer. Doc-To-Help is developed by ComponentOne; ComponentOne develops components software developers use to streamline Visual Studio development. The C1 DynamicHelp for Winforms control was born.Short tour: this control can easily be dropped into the main window of your app, as well as in dialog boxes. Once the software developer has configured it, that’s all they have to do. Mapping a compiled Help file to the user interface is the information developer’s job, because the control includes a mapping interface. Once you’ve mapped, the end user has help that updates automatically as they navigate the interface. The right help at the right time. You can see it in action in Doc-To-Help 2008 (download a trial version at http://www.componentone.com/Products/DocToHelp.aspx) If you are attending the STC Annual Conference in Philadelphia next week, you can see it there at the Doc-To-Help booth. The Dynamic Help control will be available in June. I’ll be talking about the project itself (among other things) at DocTrain East this fall. See http://www.doctrain.com/east/program_detail/all_around_user_assistance_delivering_layers_of_information_efficiently/ for more information on that.

"Camp" on the Road: STC Annual Conference in 10 Days

C1_NickyB — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:21:00 GMT

Since I need to play a bit of catch up; a few updates and thoughts...

Can't think of a better way to kick off summer camp than the STC Summit in Philly. (Full disclosure: I'm currently an STC Director At Large, but I've been attending the Annual Conference for years.) Hope to see you there.

Earlier this month I attended DocTrain West in Vancouver. I did a talk titled "Documentation Planning and Library Design in a Web 2.0 World." I'll be posting more on this subject later. While I was there Tom Johnson interviewed me for a podcast that he will be posting on his "I'd Rather Be Writing" blog. Looking forward to hearing it.

Great Web 2.0 read (albeit from a marketing perspective) -- "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies" by Li and Bernoff.

More later!

Welcome to Technical Communication Camp!

C1_NickyB — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 20:33:00 GMT

There are a number of tech comm blogs out there (the ones I keep up with are listed on my blogroll) but the cool thing is that they are all different, with different themes, perspective, and – probably most importantly – tone.

Today, I’m adding my voice to the mix.

My blog’s name, Technical Communication Camp, refers to the fact that we are always learning – and that we should try to have a bit of fun along the way.

With that in mind, I plan to keep you up-to-date on what is going on in the world of technical communication, handy tips and tricks, and maybe even try my hand at podcasting.

Smores anyone? :-)

DemoWorks’ Unique Smart Full Motion Recording Makes it a Compelling Choice for Creating Software Demos

C1_DanB — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:48:00 GMT

Virtually all screen recording applications create videos by taking a series of screen captures and combining those captures, or frames, into a continuous series. These applications all approach recording and editing in a slightly different way, but there seems to be two main recording methods.

1. Full-motion recording: A continuous stream of frames is captured at a preset frame rate, such as five frames per second. These frames are then compiled and presented in the editor as a single video clip.

2. Action-Based Recording (my word, not an industry term): A frame is created when a user performs an action, such as a mouse click, in the software. Most action-based recorders show cursor movement between frames to avoid a slide show-style presentation. The collection of frames is then presented individually in the editor.

Basically, full-motion recording is actually recording your screen while action-based recording is taking screen shots at critical moments.

Generally speaking, each method has its advantages. Full-motion recording ensures the smoothest video and captures screen activity that may not be tied to a user-initiated action. For example, full-motion recording will capture a video playing on screen where action-based recording would not. Action-based recording, on the other hand, keeps the frames captured to a minimum and allows editing of each individual frame.

You are probably wondering by now how this relates to DemoWorks…

DemoWorks uses a unique sampling process that combines the best of both worlds. We call this Smart Full-Motion Recording. DemoWorks allows you to set a sampling rate, which is really a frames-per-second setting. When recording, DemoWorks will start with an initial frame and then compare the screen, at the set interval, to the last frame. If the screen has changed, it will record a new frame. If the screen has not changed, it will not create a new frame. Furthermore, if a user action is initiated, a mouse-click for example, a frame will immediately be created. All this happens many times a second.

So, if DemoWorks is set at five frames per second, it will check the screen at 0.2 second interval to see if the screen has changed. If anything is different, even a single pixel, a new frame will be created. Also, if a button is clicked, a frame will instantly be created. The mouse position is logged the entire time.

When the recording is stopped, all the frames and mouse path are presented in the editor. The user then can edit, duplicate, hide, or delete individual slides as well as the mouse path.

Now you are wondering why Smart Full-Motion Recording is better than the two methods described above…

It keeps the number of frames captured at a minimum while preserving video quality and “smoothness.” It also allows you to see the movie frame-by-frame in the editor. The end result is a top quality recording that is easy to edit and has the smallest possible file size.

Find out more about what you can do with DemoWorks and download a trial at www.componentone.com/demoworks.