Requirments for user

[anya]

hello all!
Does the user have to have MadCap Viewer or Flash installed on their machine in order to see the output?
Thanks
Anya

[RamonS]

Yes! The user needs to have the player installed that can play the output that you generated. If I recall correctly, there are ways to package a Flash file into an executable that contains the Flash player. Then the user only needs to run that executable and there is then no need to download a player. If in doubt, use Flash as output format, but MadCap's format allows for much smaller files.

[anya]

Hi RamonS,
Thanks for your reply. Could you explain a bit more about the ways to package a Flash file into an executable that contains the Flash player.

Anya

[RamonS]

That is possible with 3rd party products, but would be a nice enhancement for Mimic. I googled for swf to exe converters and found several. I never had a need for doing this, I only know that some software packages can do that.

[dwag]

I've been evaluating Mimic and am on the verge of making a pitch to purchase a license; however, I need to know more--or understand better--about requirements. (Forgive my terminal awkwardness with the lingo.) I much prefer the MadCap Viewer output to Flash or Silverlight but don't want to complicate distribution. Flare's WebHelp was integrated and shipped with our software for the first time last month without incident. If I were to use Mimic to incorporate software simulation links in the help file, what exactly do I need to tell developers, if anything, so that our customers are able to view the simulations hassle-free? I'm assuming (hoping, anyway) the Viewer can be installed automatically with our software?

Thanks.

[Richard Ferrell]

The viewer would need to be installed on all of your client machines, you can have this install along side your main application