[OT] "Tooling" around

[Richmond]

And, so, to download the 30 day version of the latest
version of Toolbook Instructor when I hit on
their "examples of stuff made with our thang"
page led me to this:

http://tb.sumtotalsystems.com/showcase/sonata/firefox3/index.html?dhtmlActivation=inplace

Awful; both in terms of GUI design and just about everything else.

Now it may be a bit naughty . . . but, I remember when I was in the 
United States watching
TV commercials (actually, apart from National Public Television (rocks!) 
there seemed to be
only commercials to watch) that went something like this:

"Our product . . ." Big picture of product ". . . doesn't suck as much 
as . . ." Big picture of rival product
". . . and this is why . . . " 5 second whizz through our product's good 
points compared with their
product's bad points (avoiding their good points and out bad points).

Now the main difference between those adverts about washing powder; 
which, face facts, will both get you scratching under your oxters owing 
to the enzymes they've shoved in their products; and

products such as Livecode and Toolbook is that the ONLY possible 
advantage I can see with Toolbook
is its ability to pump out things that run in a web-browser, 
cross-platform without having to first
download a plug-in . . .

on every other point Toolbooks loses.

Some people will say that it is immoral pushing your product by running 
down a rival one:

well, it probably is if there are no obvious differences and advantages 
of your product over
the rival one . . . BUT

Toolbook just doesn't match up to Livecode:

BUT, loads of people are pumping their money into Toolbook instead of 
Livecode . . . why?

The progging language is more awkward,

The interface is not completely WYSIWYG,

Probably through:

1. Inertia.

2. The theory that having spent yonks learning how to get Toolbook to do 
something one cannot
be bothered to do that all over again for Livecode.

3. RunRev are not getting the message out.

Here is the bye-line for Toolbook:

"The New ToolBook 11.5Industry’s most comprehensive solution for fast, 
easy content authoring"

That last sentence is untrue and needs to be taken issue with.

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Richmond.