I Heart Mimic

[Sara@PAS]

now that I have your attention, Richard:

ok, so it still has a bunch of bugs and shortcomings (Flash output, anyone?) but now that I'm back in here, I just have to say that I am REALLY enjoying Mimic. It is a great product, with a lot of potential. (hint hint - fix those bugs!!! please!!)

[RamonS]

I use Mimic more and more. We are a Captivate shop and Mimic has some nice advantages, but also some shortcomings. We'll have to wait until those issues are resolved before we can switch everyone over. Mimic is close to win the 10k race, but there is still 2k left to go.

[Richard Ferrell]

I love Mimic also! Saves work for me when showing customers issues with our various applications, I just make a movie.

Please let us know of any issues you are having.

[RamonS]

Not that MadCap doesn't know about it already, but here are our top 7 issues with Mimic in my usual verbage:

1.) Typing is not captured anywhere.
I tried Word, Flare, and even plain ol' Notepad and in neither case does Mimic capture typing. Of course, when the screen changes or when I hit Print Screen I can force the text to show, but that is really not how things should work. Interestingly enough, pressing Enter is captured.
While I like the typing boxes I don't want to enter them anywhere and everywhere I have something typed.
As I heard, this also applies to any browser based application and in this case supposedly by design. I just cannot imagine that anyone could possible think that not including this feature was a good idea.

2.) No Captivate import
The RoboHelp / Captivate combination is as natural of a choice as Flare / Mimic is. So why there is no Captivate import is beyond me.

3.) No radio button controls
Although I know that Mimic 1.0 isn't designed to fulfill all the requirements of eLearning, it at least should do some very basic things, such as offer some radio button controls that allow for creating some simple multiple choice questions. This feature to be missing is really a design flaw.

4.) No .exe output
There is no way to create stand-alone movies as executable files that integrate the player. Especially since the native Mimic movie format provides for smaller files sizes using that format is of interest. Unfortunately, it is difficult to push yet another media player to customers. We encounter this problem frequently with Flash and so far made good use of Captivate's .exe capabilities, but often found the files just not to be working right. Hopes that Mimic can help out here were squashed pretty quickly.

5.) Ugly, useless mouse pointer halo
Not only is this mouse pointer halo very distracting, it is orange. Thankfully the 70's are over where brown and orange were the hip colors - so I thought. The mouse pointer is already fairly obvious, especially since it is about the only piece that moves across the screen. There is no reason to highlight the mouse pointer. Luckily, one can turn this off, but it is a pain in the rear end to do that each and every time. This is one of those features that just shouldn't be there.

6.) Mouse trajectory shown on previous slide. This is the same problem as in Captivate. The mouse moves and a click occurs before the correct background is shown. This is really utterly annoying.

7.) Capturing of half built forms
When capturing I sometimes get captures that show half built screens. Parts of the old form are mushed together with parts of the new form. That slide is totally useless. The only workaround is to hammer on Print Screen on every occasion and bloat the capture with tons of \"safety slides\" just so that one doesn't miss anything. Again, this problem exists in Captivate as well and is also utterly annoying. Especially since a key press may cause other things to happen on the screen, such as expansion of a tree view.

[Sara@PAS]

Ramon, I concur on #3, 4,and 7, but the others haven't actually been an issue.

On your #5, I'd actually disagree - our demos are aimed at less sophisticated users, and the more we can draw their attention to a particular spot, action, etc. the better. (Besides, our brand is currently orange, so it saves me a step that it's already in that color!)

My only other pet peeves are:
1) features that work inconsistently (ie., they work in some situations but not all, like \"blur effect\" not working in animation screens)

2) poor quality Flash output

3) having to rebuild the entire project when I make a change in one movie (which takes an ungodly amount of time)

[jhobbs]

I'd like a manual Full-Motion record capability, like Captivate 2.

[RamonS]

On your #5, I'd actually disagree - our demos are aimed at less sophisticated users, and the more we can draw their attention to a particular spot, action, etc. the better. (Besides, our brand is currently orange, so it saves me a step that it's already in that color!)

I think it should be something one can turn on, but not a default. We use currently Captivate to create many simulations that are intended to look exactly like the application. There isn't an orange glow around the real mouse pointer. We too deal with less sophisticated users and my assumption is that some users get confused when the real deal looks different. If I'd have captured all the simulations in Mimic and had to manually turn that thing off each time, I'd be way more grumpy than I already am. There are nice oranges, but this one isn't one of them.

[Sara@PAS]

my assumption is that some users get confused when the real deal looks different

LOL - yes, we're already anticipating the tech support calls saying, \"so, I'm in the program, but I don't see the orange bubbles that tell me what to type...\"

[RamonS]

That's why I proposed several times to integrate the application into help, not help into the application.

[collie]

[quote="RamonS"]Not that MadCap doesn't know about it already, but here are our top 7 issues with Mimic in my usual verbage:

5.) Ugly, useless mouse pointer halo
Not only is this mouse pointer halo very distracting, it is orange. Thankfully the 70's are over where brown and orange were the hip colors - so I thought. The mouse pointer is already fairly obvious, especially since it is about the only piece that moves across the screen. There is no reason to highlight the mouse pointer. Luckily, one can turn this off, but it is a pain in the rear end to do that each and every time. This is one of those features that just shouldn't be there.

Please... how do you turn off this halo?

I've managed to remove it in a custom palette for while the cursor is moving by selecting transparent for the Fill Start option, and reducing the outline to 0 pixels and setting the transparency to 100%, but it stills shows a solid circle for the actual click.

Then I tried rsizing the circle to nothing and adding that to my palette, but it still shows a circle in whatever colour is chosen for the click

We hate this 'feature' and thisis what will prevent it being used for the help project.


6.) Mouse trajectory shown on previous slide. This is the same problem as in Captivate. The mouse moves and a click occurs before the correct background is shown. This is really utterly annoying.

I think 'annoying' is a mild term.... certainly for the effect it has on me!

[lcharlesjohnson]

5.) Ugly, useless mouse pointer halo
Not only is this mouse pointer halo very distracting, it is orange. Thankfully the 70's are over where brown and orange were the hip colors - so I thought. The mouse pointer is already fairly obvious, especially since it is about the only piece that moves across the screen. There is no reason to highlight the mouse pointer. Luckily, one can turn this off, but it is a pain in the rear end to do that each and every time. This is one of those features that just shouldn't be there.

Please... how do you turn off this halo?

I've managed to remove it in a custom palette for while the cursor is moving by selecting transparent for the Fill Start option, and reducing the outline to 0 pixels and setting the transparency to 100%, but it stills shows a solid circle for the actual click.

Then I tried rsizing the circle to nothing and adding that to my palette, but it still shows a circle in whatever colour is chosen for the click

We hate this 'feature' and thisis what will prevent it being used for the help project.

We've figured out to turn off the mouse halo. Setting the transparency to 0 will do it. Go to Properties of the mouse trajectory and select 'default' for the background and then 'Transparent' for the Fill Start. THEN, set the Transparency to 0. It will completely get rid of the mouse halo IF you've also set the line to 0 pixels.

And we built the output in Flash. It looks great.

Please note that in Flash there are other issues with setting the transparency to 0 - specifically buttons. In Flash, a button with a 0 transparency will appear as a large, solid square. For us, it's red. For others, it can be blue. Why the 0 transparency works for mouse trajectories but not buttons, we have no idea.

Laura

[forfear]

There's a very strong possibility a lot of the Mimic discontents could be fixed in a very near coming version.
If the new Capture is any indication, mimic could be on a positive upstream. Am sure the MadCap team can do as well as the Ca-t-v-te team.