Recently someone asked me if there was a way to include a demo of an iOS app as part of a Captivate or Storyline tutorial. The demo should showcase the fluid scrolling, reorientation and transitions that iPhone users are accustomed to. My first thought was to take static screen captures and then ‘stitch them together’ into a demo, using Captivate. As simple as that approach seemed, it didn’t provide the smooth transitions and full motion that were required.
A much better option was to record the app in the iOS simulator that is included with xCode, Apple’s Software Developement Kit for iOS.
While this simulator is meant to be used for testing during app development, I thought it could also be used to record apps and web content. For my test, I:
- Recorded an app (Maps)
- Recorded web content in the Safari iPhone browser
- Edited the recordings in ScreenFlow
- Imported the finished videos into both Captivate and Storyline
Here is an example of two videos that were recorded in the xCode iPhone simulator and then inserted into a simple Storyline project (I could have added the same recordings to a Captivate project as well).
Note: In addition to the Flash version, I also published an HTML5 version. Using the Articulate Player app for iPad, the sample file looks something like this:
Yet another option is to use the Reflector app I had mentioned in a previous post. This app mirrors everything you do on an iPhone or iPad to a desktop, which can then be recorded.