Topics

1

Living Room / Ideas for "Knowledge Snacks" Marathon

« on: September 12, 2020, 11:43 AM »

Hello, Everybody!

A while ago I started a Reddit community dedicated to educational GIFs that implement the idea of microlearning or "knowledge snacks" - bite-sized pieces of educational conent that is easy to digest, post and share everywhere. However, did not have time to properly promote it at the moment.

Now I have an idea of "99 knowledge nuggets" marathon, during which I will create 99 educational GIFs on my own to provide some initial content for the community.

I am researching ideas, but the area is too vague... So I decided to ask for your help to identify 99 educational micro-content ideas that are interesting to a common curious person and could be fit in up to 5 slides. I think it should cover different areas of knowledge - not only math/physics, but also history, art, music and popular culture. I'd greatly appreciate your ideas! Thank you in advance.

2

Found Deals and Discounts / GIF Explainer - a tool to create microlearning GIFs

« on: February 10, 2020, 08:51 AM »

Hello!

Disclaimer: I am the author of GIF Explainer (and a number of other tools).

GIF Explainer is a tool that makes it easy to create slide-based GIFs for create educational "snacks" for your students that they can digest easily and share with others. Creating bite-sized pieces of educational content is called microlearning and is good for developing hard skills. You can plug microlearning not only into teaching students but also use it for customer onboarding and employee playbooks.

More info: https://www.gifexplainer.com

GIFExplainer on ProductHunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/gif-explainer 

Please contact me if you want to write a review of GIF Explainer on this or another site in exchange for a free license.

UPD GIFExplainer on BitsDuJour: https://www.bitsdujour.com/software/gifexplainer/saf=510203

3

Found Deals and Discounts / "Make Batch Files" discounts

« on: November 25, 2016, 05:05 AM »

"Make Batch Files" is a GUI tool that helps to create Windows Batch Files quickly and easily, without even knowing commands and switches.

Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2016: 50% off

http://makebatchfiles.com/order.html

4

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / "Make Batch Files" - Rapid Windows Batch Files Creation

« on: December 12, 2013, 07:33 AM »

Hello, everybody!

I'd like to introduce you to my new project called "Make Batch Files". It's in alpha version now, but has enough functions to play with.

The main ideas are pretty simple:

• No need to remember batch file command names
• No need to remember numerous switches, their meanings and how they work together
• "Tasks" instead of commands

Say, you need to upload a file via FTP from a batch file and this is the first or second time you do this trick. First, you need to find out what command to call to use ftp, then you need to learn how to use it in batch files, investigate it's script file format and etc. What a waste of time  With my tool you only need to add "Upload a file via FTP" task to your project, specify host, username, password and file path using comfortable GUI dialog and that's it. The tool will create several lines of code including ftp script for you in a single mouse click.

Hope you got the idea  ANY feedback is welcome (even largely negative)!

Website:
http://www.makebatchfiles.com

Main window screenshot:


Video Tutorial (better in fullscreen mode)

5

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Helpinator 3.10: Publish Online Documentation to WordPress

« on: March 06, 2013, 05:38 AM »

Hello, Everybody!

My name is Dmitri Popov, I am the author of Helpinator.

WordPress is so popular now that even my cat knows how to install and use it.
It has tons of themes and plugins and a very active community.
Well, it's not perfect, but if you create an app - you can get your site up and running in minutes and there are a lot of inexpensive themes to make it look professional.

Online documentation (or WebHelp) for your product is another good idea - it's SEO-friendly, easy to update and access. But authoring online documentation in WordPress editor or a post-oriented desktop client is a kind of tedious work. This is where Helpinator helpinates your problems. It's a specialized help authoring tool, you can capture screenshots, annotate them, create step-by-step guides, write topics in WYSIWYG editor and then publish to WordPress with a single mouse click!

This post on our blog shows how easy it is to connect Helpinator and WordPress:

http://www.helpinato...ublish-to-wordpress/

Thank you for reading this

6

Living Room / Humour And A "Serious" Product - Opinions Needed

« on: June 20, 2012, 12:39 PM »

Hello!

I develop and sell a help authoring tool - a kind of product that is by default "serious" and even boring. But as a micropreneur I should always think of making things different from my competitors.  Their sites are, you know, really serious and corporative, so I decided to do a little twist and create something offbeat on my website. So here we go, my "Tutorial":   

http://www.helpinator.com/tutorial.html

But now I'm in doubt - is it funny at all? Or just harms my reputation without any good. Please take a look and tell me what was the first thing on your mind? Was it "Wow!", "WTF?!" or "I'd better close it right away!" 

7

Found Deals and Discounts / Helpinator (user manual and software documentation writing tool) Discounts

« on: June 20, 2012, 12:14 PM »

Hello!

I am the author of Helpinator (help authoring tool). Just a couple of links to show what it's about:
Informal features review: https://www.helpinator.com/blog/2019/09/18/recommended-reading/
Story of Helpinator on my blog: https://www.dmitripopov.com/why-i-like-what-i-created-and-hopefully-you-will-like-it-too-part-1/
Tour: http://www.helpinator.com/helpinator.html
Benefits: http://www.helpinator.com/benefits.html


UPD 2019/12/24: 2-day BitsDuJour sale, lifetime license for the price of a yearly subscription: https://www.bitsdujo...elpinator/saf=510203

8

Living Room / Looking for people to follow on Twitter

« on: May 08, 2012, 06:02 AM »

Hello, everybody!

I never believed that Twitter will become so big, and for years I just avoided it. But now it seems to me that I am missing something and a lot of things go by just because I'm not involved. I tried to browse and search for people to follow, but there are TONS of information and I quickly get tired choosing right people - some accounts are long dead, other post things not related to their interests, or you need to follow those crazy shortlinks before you figure out what the tweet was about... Insanely ineffective. And I decided to go another way - just call for people with similar interests in a place more compatible with my brainware.

So, if you are living active Twitter life, interested in Delphi/C#/ASP.NET/Android programming and microISV business / web startups, then follow me and I'll follow you back, or post a link to your twitter account here in case you want other donationcoders to follow you.

https://twitter.com/#!/DmitriPopov

In case you know someone I should definitely follow, post them too.

9

Developer's Corner / Ribbon UI - is it really THAT good?

« on: November 29, 2011, 12:45 AM »

Hello, everybody!

As you might know I develop and sell a help authoring tool targeted at software developers that document their creations themselves (tech writers usually use more complicated and expensive tools).

The big problem I have right now is what UI concept I should follow. For years my tool had "classic" text processor UI, defined by MS Word versions prior to 2007. But then it was switched to the Ribbon (which I personally hate a lot) and it became a new standard for word processors. Users of my program are divided almost equally into 2 groups - those who like classic UI and say that it is my competitive advantage, and the other group that says they miss Ribbon very much.

I'm afraid that absence of Ribbon becomes a more significant disadvantage over time, because it becomes more and more popular and widespread thing. Redesigning UI will take a lot of time and I'm not sure right now that it will pay back.

So, what do you think? I know, it's a controversial thing, but I just need to hear what other developers think.

10

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Helpinator 3.5 - feedback required

« on: August 26, 2011, 09:06 AM »

Hello everyone!

Short intro: Helpinator is a single source / multi-language/ multi-format help authoring tool. And it is my creation

In the new release we've added a new feature called "Step-by-step Guides". Generally it's a tool to create tutorials from images in Helpinator project "Image library". Each step has assigned image, title and textual description. When you compile CHM/Web help embedded guide turns into a Javascript slideshow and in PDF/RTF mode - into a sequence of images with titles and descriptions. Here's our blog post about this feature:

http://www.helpinator.com/blog/2011/08/26/step-by-step-guides/

Main ideas:
1. Explaining even complex actions becomes simple when you split it into steps and illustrate with annotated images and little text.
2. Guide exports into all supported formats without any actions from user side.

Are we going in the right direction? Did we miss something important? I'll be glad to hear from you, even hard criticism