AutoPlay Usage Questionnaire

[Mark]

Hey Everyone,

We're looking to find out a little bit more about what our users are using AutoPlay Media Studio for. If you have the time please answer the questions below with as much or as little detail as you want.

We don't need an essay but if you want to provide one we'll read it. Also feel free to add any other information or detail that you'd like.

1. In what context do you use AutoPlay? (e.g. consulting, internal in your company, personal projects)
2. What do you generally create with AutoPlay? (e.g. Software front-ends, installation CD front-ends, stand-alone applications, brochures, quizzes, reports)
3. What do you like most about AutoPlay?
4. What do you like least about AutoPlay?

Thanks,

mark.

[longedge]

OK here goes -

1. In what context do you use AutoPlay?
All within the context of teacher training and education improvement.
I. Dissemination of professional development and training course materials.
II. Creation of small 'in house' bespoke applications e.g. staff member photo gallery, database file updating and distribution, online staff handbook etc. etc.
III. Distribution of electronic publications.
IV. Distribution of video materials showing examples of best practice.

Within the context of a bit of relaxation, just playing around with it to see what I can do with it

2. What do you like most about AutoPlay?
Ease of use. There is a learning curve but it's an easy one and the software enables creation of useful applications almost from day one. It's sufficiently powerful for most users to continue to develop new skills in it's use for a very long time. It's a useful tool for programmers and people such as myself who are non-programmers, in other words it covers a huge range of skill levels and abilities.


3. What do you like least about AutoPlay?
The move to open ended charging for support and bug fixes aka Maintenance Plan. Over the years I've had real battles getting the OK for funding to buy new versions. I have little hope of getting year on year funding of the £200 or so it would take to keep me updated.

[Tomasin]

1. In what context do you use AutoPlay? (e.g. consulting, internal in your company, personal projects)

Advanced applications. (personal projects)

2. What do you generally create with AutoPlay? (e.g. Software front-ends, installation CD front-ends, stand-alone applications, brochures, quizzes, reports)

Advanced applications.

3. What do you like most about AutoPlay?

Easy GUI and basic scripts.

4. What do you like least about AutoPlay?

Not 64 bits support, Not unicode support, executable very heavy, Not periodically updates, Not support for advanced applications (more scrips, more objects, more DLL functions, more options for personalize the apz, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc....), not fix MULTIPLES BUGS (very importants...) reporteds in seggestions forum.. etc etc etc etc etc etc

[jassing]

[*] In what context do you use AutoPlay? (e.g. consulting, internal in your company, personal projects)

Consulting, ranging from simple AutoPlay CD menus to document viewers/menus to content-controlled video players. a few data-driven applications (using sqlite). Would be nice if the sqlite plugins were kept up to date.

[*] What do you generally create with AutoPlay? (e.g. Software front-ends, installation CD front-ends, stand-alone applications, brochures, quizzes, reports)

Installation cd front-ends and quick-n-dirty applications.

[*] What do you like most about AutoPlay?[*] What do you like least about AutoPlay?

Most? ease of use
Least? lack of support for active/x controls. (oh, and ease of use, sometimes people use it to create applications and then get frustrated by the slowness thinking it should perform as fast as a compiled language)

[johnraus]

In what context do you use AutoPlay? (e.g. consulting, internal in your company, personal projects)

Personal most of the time, sometimes for use in the company I work for

What do you generally create with AutoPlay? (e.g. Software front-ends, installation CD front-ends, stand-alone applications, brochures, quizzes, reports)

Presentations, Small Quick+Dirty Portable Apps , for simplifying my IT+administrative tasks, and sometimes make my point in a discussion (RAD)

What do you like most about AutoPlay?

Ease of use, great learning curve, great/helpfull forum

What do you like least about AutoPlay?

I don't mind it's a bit sluggisch, but I using it already for quite some time now, would like some more Adv. Actions/Objects/Scripting/ActiveX ... blablabla but a working LUAsocket plugin for all versions Windows would really be cool. Just look at some great plugins/DLL's from some forum members, really extend the possabilitys of AMS. Sometimes I miss those great Ideas/Addons from Indigorose themselves.

Come On, this is such a great product, at least supprise us with something BIG, from your side, once in a While

[Derek]

In what context do you use AutoPlay? (e.g. consulting, internal in your company, personal projects)
1. Mostly internal

What do you generally create with AutoPlay? (e.g. Software front-ends, installation CD front-ends, stand-alone applications, brochures, quizzes, reports)
1. Software front-ends
2. Stand-alone applications

What do you like most about AutoPlay?
1. Again, ease of use.
2. I also love the fact that its so versatile and powerful - this adds tremendously to it's appeal.

What do you like least about AutoPlay?
1. I'll second the maintenance plan.
2. Having to wait sooo long for some of the many great feature suggestions

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
PS. will this survey have any bearing on Visual Lua ??

[rexzooly]

1. In what context do you use AutoPlay? (e.g. consulting, internal in your company, personal projects)

I started to use it when a company i worked for passed me laptop full of software one was AMS and asked them to come up with some apps for inhouse
since then i used it as much as i can helping websites to offer free software to people to things i want to do i have had a few other projects that came to me but mostly i do it cos it helps me with my depression to just sit down and lose my self.

2. What do you generally create with AutoPlay? (e.g. Software front-ends, installation CD front-ends, stand-alone applications, brochures, quizzes, reports)

I have made Stand - Alone and App installers within AMS and also some frount ends.

3. What do you like most about AutoPlay?

I like the easy to use building platforum and the way ams wraps LUA functions in to easy to use and understand actions.

4. What do you like least about AutoPlay?

AMS is clumsy at times and safty for the exes and arcived files are not the best in the world this would be nice to update this and like to have away to handle better images and other formats and and LUA is all around supported coding i love to see it on linux.

[Dermot]

1. In what context do you use AutoPlay? (e.g. consulting, internal in your company, personal projects)
Commercial software development.

2. What do you generally create with AutoPlay? (e.g. Software front-ends, installation CD front-ends, stand-alone applications, brochures, quizzes, reports)
Stand-alone apps. Both off the shelf and custom one of a kind. These are mostly database apps including client/server. Also some construction engineering/design programs.

3. What do you like most about AutoPlay?
Lua scripting language, The fact that the IDE it is very stable, very clean and very easy to use. Can be easily extended using plugins.

4. What do you like least about AutoPlay?
Long time between updates. Lack of any kind of future road map.

[Intrigued]

Ah, the floodgates of joy are open.

I've not used it as much of late, but I'll throw my comments in with the rest of the fine folks here.

What I do with it:

1. small one-off applications for businesses

2. created a small music streaming player for my premium music account (much better than fumbling through their Website)


What I like:

1. It's very easy and quick to create standalone applications that are highly functional! This is what sold me in 2003 and it's still the main reason I throughly enjoy Autoplay Media Studio. I've looked over several other offerings before and during my time with AMS and I can 100 percent say that there is just no other products I've tried out there that compete on easy-of-use, speed of learning.

2. Service/support, the support is awesome. It's made me feel apart of the I.R. team in some ways, at the least I feel appreciated for being a customer.


What I dislike:

1. Having to share developer time with other I.R. prouducts.

2. Would love to see an export to Web sort of feature, but I know that's not going to be easy and I.R. would probably need another 5 developers to take that on.

3. Would also love an export to mobile sort of feature, see # 2. And this one would be probably even more crazy for the developers to tackle.

4. Waiting for the next version!

[Bruce]

1. In what context do you use AutoPlay? (e.g. consulting, internal in your company, personal projects)
Commercial development, test and web interaction

2. What do you generally create with AutoPlay? (e.g. Software front-ends, installation CD front-ends, stand-alone applications, brochures, quizzes, reports.
Stand-alone apps.

3. What do you like most about AutoPlay?
Lua scripting language, reall most everything.

4. What do you like least about AutoPlay?
The "Maintenance Plan" I had to stop at 7.1.1007.0 maybe I'll buy 8.0... not sure.

[Sakuya]

1. In what context do you use AutoPlay? (e.g. consulting, internal in your company, personal projects)
   • Personal projects. I usually release applications that manage addons for games and other various projects.
2. What do you generally create with AutoPlay? (e.g. Software front-ends, installation CD front-ends, stand-alone applications, brochures, quizzes, reports)
   • Stand-alone applications.
3. What do you like most about AutoPlay?
   • Ease of use, great support from the forums, vast amount of plugins, Lua scripting language.
4. What do you like least about AutoPlay?
   • Lack of updates, Still using Lua 5.0 which is a real pain for including Lua modules, I don't mind my source files being seen but my source code is another story (lack of memory encryption), Very very long time between major updates.

[autoplmst6]

1- In what context do you use AutoPlay? (e.g. consulting, internal in your company, personal projects)

Personal projects (games free addons for their communities, installs for specials-free fonts packs, photopresentations and videotutorials for illustrator and photoshop)

2- What do you generally create with AutoPlay? (e.g. Software front-ends, installation CD front-ends, stand-alone applications, brochures, quizzes, reports)

Stand-alone applications too with Setup Factory 8 ( for me together with ams 7 the best installer in market today)

3- What do you like most about AutoPlay?

Is very easy to manage, gui windows and options generally is very intuitive, a lot of possibilities to make things ( many objects very wide numbers of actions ). The help is very deep in overall sense. For me Autoplay is like the photoshop for the multimedia and audiovisual version. I dont know another soft like ams that it manages better than it. For me was a great discovery XD

4- What do you like least about AutoPlay?

I hoped to see listboxes and comboboxes speed loading when is more that 150 entries inside. those it loads slow sometimes.

The help could have been a lot more intuitive in explanations and ( it sounds silly but that avoid that noobish -sometimes- question when it could be done with more simple examples ) could have done 1 action explanation ( with the variants for that specific action) 1 example. Suggest to IR to sell the entire Help, not only the Guide. I wouldn't m,ind to buy it if there would have it available.

More security options ( example, the ccd files password you could put in somewhere in menu bar AMS an option in advanced settings or so "Change the cdd password to ---> Input box and save it before you publish your project.)

The menu pane for scripting and selecting objects could have been better if were nearest to photoshop style for selecting objects so that I avoid mistakes in selecting objects in realtime...


Apart from this answers I wonder why IR is remarking this question...mmm..it Will be a new style in AMS for the workstyle? or somehow and seeing the huge asnwers to the thread suggestions for AMS ¿8? I guess they IR felt overwhelmed in some sane way and I think this is the reason for this post

[Mikhail]

I only use for fun. I like to "play with AutoPlay" in my free time... For me, the main problem is a "Conceptual problem": IndigoRose sells AutoPlay as "reliable CD-ROM/DVD-ROM autorun menu systems", but everybody here knows that AutoPlay goes so far away beyond that description. Moreover, will be great a AutoPlay for Non-Commercial / Open Source projects, a "Free/light version". In another words: I think that a "sourceforge-ready" version is missing, like the old Qt toolkit.

[rexzooly]

I only use for fun. I like to "play with AutoPlay" in my free time... For me, the main problem is a "Conceptual problem": IndigoRose sells AutoPlay as "reliable CD-ROM/DVD-ROM autorun menu systems", but everybody here knows that AutoPlay goes so far away beyond that description. Moreover, will be great a AutoPlay for Non-Commercial / Open Source projects, a "Free/light version". In another words: I think that a "sourceforge-ready" version is missing, like the old Qt toolkit.

Do you mean Qt by nokia? if so there toolkit is not old and still going strong.

[Mikhail]

Do you mean Qt by nokia? if so there toolkit is not old and still going strong.

Yes, sorry my poor English! My "old Qt" means "the Good and Old Qt" (well established), not "the old, outdated, obsolete QT that no one else will touch anymore"...