Toolbook 8.6: How I hate you!

Tom — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:29:40 +0000

As part of my learning technologies course at university I’ve had the misfortune of using a software application called Toolbook Instructor 8.6. Meant to assist in the creation of learning applications, I can say it does to that, but in typical windows style (i.e. it involves pain and suffering on the part of the user). Why do I dislike it? Well… (Disclaimer: This is an old version, 2001 I think was its release date, so the later version may be better… I did originally put 7, but I was wrong… I think that makes it worse as they’re only up to 9)

It’s windows only. I’m a mac user, and so being stuck with a bit of software that’s windows only is irritating, especially when you find out it doesn’t run under darwine, the windows compatibility layer for the mac, because of some stupid DLL thing.

Another reason: It’s really painful to use. The ability to undo is more or less granted at random, which is really annoying; Adding graphics is painful because you can’t scale your pictures without ruining them so I end up using something else to scale them before importing. It also struggles with large picture sizes (crashes). Then the all important one: The interface was designed to infuriate you at every turn by hiding things, and having more modal (prevents you from doing anything but what it wants you to do) dialog boxes than you really need.

There’s probably more to it than just that, like how expensive it is; Luckily then that I only have to use it for another week!

Ok, Rant over for now.

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Toolbook 8.6: How I hate you!