The flash tutorials in the Cafu Wiki have been created using the DebugMode Wink software by Satish Kumar. Wink is freely available and works very well.

Wink is an excellent tool for creating flash tutorials especially for the Cafu World Editor “CaWE”. This pages lists tips and tricks about using Wink with CaWE, as well as some guidelines that are intended to achieve consistent impression and design across all Cafu related tutorials, even if the tutorials have been made by different persons.

• There are user forums for the Wink software at http://www.debugmode.com/userforums/
  Please make sure that you read the Wink FAQs and the Tips & Tricks.

• Wink FAQ #4 is important: You may want to press the PAUSE key manually while auto-capturing screenshots whenever CaWE updated the screen slowly.

• Use “Sizer”. As described in tip #6 about resizing the target window, use the program Sizer to resize the CaWE main window to 960*720 pixels before capturing screenshots for any tutorial. The main window size of 960*720 maintains the proper aspect ratio while it ensures that the finished presentations can properly be viewed even on screens of 1024*768 pixels display resolution.

• If you've made a new tutorial that you want to upload to this Wiki, please send me the finished .wnk file per email (or FTP), because uploading and properly linking the relevant files (.htm and .swf) is unfortunately not possible through the Wikis usual media center.

• When you have two screenshots N and N+1, Wink implements the transition from N to N+1 by first moving the mouse cursor to the spot defined in screenshot N+1, then switching the image from N to N+1.

• A good way to capture mouse clicks on GUI buttons is to hold the mouse button down, press the PAUSE key explicitly with the mouse button still being held down, then release the mouse button. This way, a screenshot of the GUI button in “indented” state is captured.

• Menu selections are well implemented by only two screenshots: The first screenshot shows the situation immediately after the first mouse click, i.e. the mouse cursor is over the menu name (e.g. File) and the menu is expanded. (There is no need to also keep the screenshot before the click when the menu is not yet expanded.) The second screenshot shows the mouse cursor hovering over the menu item to be selected, which is also highlighted at that time. With both screenshots, a frame delay of 0.5 seconds works well, or 0.8 seconds for emphasis.

Keeping the design and style of all Cafu tutorials consistent makes sure that the user experiences a familiar look-and-feel of the tutorial environment whenever he or she works through another tutorial. This way, the user can concentrate on the contents of the tutorial rather than getting confused by its GUI or controls.

• Prefer the default yellow text boxes that are built into Wink in several flavours, and the default green navigation buttons and preloader and control bars that come with Wink.

• Prefer the font “MS Sans Serif” at size 10pt for most cases, or the same font at 8pt when the text is too large (I usually use 10pt for making flash tutorials, and 8pt when Wink is used to make an annotated screenshot).

• When you begin a new tutorial, first open a map, then immediately close it again. This makes sure that the File menu only shows the filenames of the most recently used maps (xy.cmap) without the entire preceding path. It also makes sure that when you next select File → Open…, the dialog starts in the right directory.

• At the beginning of each tutorial, briefly summarize for the user what the tutorial is all about. At the end, possibly provide an outlook on other, subsequent tutorials that build on this one and have more advanced material (“thematische Einordnung”).