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I'm facing developing a new web app in the future and I'm wondering how to decide what framework to use. I've settled on Python as my language of choice. But there are still may frameworks to choose from! More generally how do you choose between different similar technologies that are still in the works as the latest round of web frameworks are? I'm curious what your process is for deciding on technologies you've never used.
Recognize that no choice is perfect -- or even very good.
No matter what you choose, someone will have a suggestion that -- they claim -- is better.
No matter what you choose, some part of your tech. stack will fail to live up to your expectations.
The most important thing is "shared nothing" so that the components can be replaced.
After that, the next most important thing is automatically-generated features to reduce or prevent programming.
Look at Django. Lots of automatic admin features make life very pleasant.
There are a number of things you can do:
Download the frameworks and build something similar with them for comparison.
Look for comparisons by other people, but attempt to understand the bias of the reviewer.
Observe the community at work, see what people are building and the issues they run into when using the technology. Forums, blogs, mailing list etc are good places to check out.
Go to conferences and meet like minded developers interested.
You can also take the approach of using stable versions rather than alpha bits. After a while you might move closer the bleeding edge. People associated with the project in question are generally more biased than those approaching from other platforms, be careful who you trust.
Consider the impact of using a bleeding edge framework versus an established one. Sometimes it's important to your customers that you are on one perceived as stable. At other times this doesn't matter. How comfortable are you with fixing the framework itself? Great developers will learn the internals, or at least know enough to keep things moving whilst a bug is sent to the framework mailing list etc.
Consider some general best practices in building abstractions and reusable code on the python platform. You may be able to save yourself some work in moving to another platform. However, don't be a reuse junkie as this can limit the effectiveness of your use of the framework. The 37Signals guys are right when they talk about extracting frameworks from working code rather than building frameworks from scratch.
I know this is an old posting, but I am in a similar situation (again) and I think there are other people who may want to look for different opinions, and hear of (somewhat) successful experiences.
Since baudtack mentioned Python, I will try to answer this along the lines of my experiences using Python. Here is what has been working for me:
determine the scope of your project - outlining what your application is supposed to be able to do without introducing any programming or design notes will clarify your goals greatly
determine how you would like to work with your code, stack and data:
a. what sort of programming paradigm do you want to work with? i.e. object-oriented, functional, etc. do you want to play to your programming style or do you want to follow somebody else's programming style?
b. use semantic web or not? do you want greater control over URIs and their design? (I found web.py great for this by the way - It is my choice to create REST APIs in Python)
c. do you want to be trapped by framework requirements, or do you want a better separation of the application from the web component, i.e. use a framework to utilize your application as a set of modules, for example. My problem with Django was that I ended up not programming Python, but having to learn more Django than I needed to. If that works for you, then that is the way to go.
d. data stores... some sort of SQL vs. non RDBMS (xml databases like eXist-db with full xquery support) vs. OODBMS vs. a combination of the above? how complicated do you need this to be? how much control/separation do you need to have over how data gets stored and recalled in your application?
e. testing: unit tests... thank goodness for python! if your web app has the potential to grow (as they often do), having a sane and coherent testing platform to begin with will help out a lot in the future - I wish I had learned about this earlier on. oh well... better late than never.
f. how much control over the server do you need? hosting considerations? how much control over an Apache instance do you need to have? OS specific needs? I found that using shared hosting providers like Webfaction has been great. I eventually found I needed greater needs for flexibility and bandwidth. In other words, what can you get for your budget? If you have USD50 to spend each month, it may be better to consider a virtual hosting solution like Linode....
Finally, I echo S.Lott's sentiments that no choice for a solution is perfect, and are subject to obsolescence.
Experience trumps hearsay. I've found that prototyping is a huge help. Make a prototype that uses the features you expect to be the most important for various frameworks. This helps route out any features that may not work "as advertised."
In general though, kudos for being willing to look at new technologies.
I have a set of criteria in different categories:
Activity & Documentation
Is there an active user base?
Is there an active development base?
Is the support responsive and information accessible?
Are there user and development guides and reference material?
These are essential, there needs to be traceability of all of these to build confidence in the solution.
Ease of use
Are basic features easy and complex features possible? I typically give a new framework a test drive and try to roll out a set of use cases to see how intuitive the framework is to use.
Is installation intuitive and simple for a local/dev installation and production deployment?
How is it backed up and upgraded?
What is the effort and UX for implementing a "Hello World" type blog post, static page, menu item, and plugin?
How are versions dealt with for the core & plugins?
Example (on the topic of Automated Testing/Continuous Integration solutions)
Several years ago I evaluated several Automated Testing solution. At the time Jenkins and TeamCity were front runners and in the end I chose TeamCity because of the UX, active user & development base and quality of accessible documentation.
Example (CMS for a blog)
This criteria is also why I prefer to use Wordpress over other options. While wordpress has its shortcomings, the user and development base is strong and active which leads to a software architecture with more potential to evolve over time and maintain its relevance and a development community that provides quality plugins and themes to choose from.
What real-world projects would you suggest looking through the sources?
As I'm learning Java Swing, mucommander seems to be a decent example. The code is excessively commented though.
EDIT: No shameless plugs plz :).
I learned a lot from looking at the source code to GoGrinder. It's well thought out, uses MVC correctly, and the comments are helpful (and no, I didn't write it). It's also a fun program to use if you want to learn how to play Go.
For Gui design, Patterns and general good advice I highly reccomend Jeremey Miller's series of articles on building a better CAB. For C#, but equally applicable to Java. Also using
the MVC style which Stackoverflow follows, and Apple uses for Interface Builder.
Build your own CAB
Jeremy's articles/ideas are followed in his own project, which you can download and inspect at http://storyteller.tigris.org/
Take a look at the Windows version of truecrypt. It is one of the best organized open source projects I've ever seen. You can almost tell how the whole thing works just from the directory and file layout.
What I've done to learn some new technologies over the years is to look to open source projects that both match the criteria you're looking for and also interest you.
I'm not a Swing guy, but I'd suggest finding a project that uses Java Swing, does not appear too complicated, and then start digging through the source. The nice thing is you can then see the app before you start poking through it, and then you can see what happens as you change stuff.
The idea behind picking something that interests you is that it will keep you engaged. I am intrigued by content management systems, so I might download a CMS that I can then see how stuff works, and I'm engaged because the problem domain of the project fits in with an interest.
I've done this once or twice when I had to get up to speed on C# and I think it works will. YMMV....
Some of the most well thought out source code ( c++ ) I have seen in an open source project is the Ogre3D graphics engine, I've learned a lot about OOA&D just by looking at the structure and reading the comments. It is also well maintained and the community is very active.. http://ogre3d.org
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What successful conversion/rewrite have you done of software you were involved with? What where the languages and framework involved in the process? How large was the software in question? Finally what is the top one or two thing you learned from being involved with the process.
This is related to this question
I'm going for "most abstruse" here:
Ported an 8080 simulator written in
FORTRAN 77 from a DECSystem-10 running TOPS-10 to an
IBM 4381 mainframe running VM/CMS.
I rewrote 20,000 lines of Perl to use "use strict" in every file. I had to add "my" everywhere it was needed and I had to fix the bugs that were uncovered during the process.
The biggest thing I learned from doing this is, "It always takes longer than you think."
I had to get it done all at once overnight so that the other coders would not be writing new, unfixed code at the same time. I thought it would go quickly, but it didn't, and I was still hacking on it at 6 AM the next morning.
I did get it complete and checked in before everyone else started work though!
I rewrote a large java web application to an ASP.Net application for a realty company for various reasons.
The biggest thing I learned is that, no matter how trivial the feature the original system had, if it's not in the second system, the client thinks the rewrite is a failure. Expectation management is everything when writing the new system.
This is the biggest reason rewrites are so hard: it seems so easy to the client ("Just re-do what I already have and add a few things.").
The coolest one for me, I think, was the port of MAME to the iPod. It was a great learning experience with embedded hardware, and I got to work with a lot of great people. Official site.
I am doing a rewrite of an Inhouse Project managment system to a more standard MVC model. Its in the LAMP stack (PHP) and i am close to the 1st milestone.
The things i have learned from that currently is how simple the program feels at the beginning and i tried to not add complexity until i have to.
Example is that i programmed all the functionality first (like i was an admin user) and then when that is sorted out, add the complexity of having restrictions (user levels etc)
I ported/redesigned/rewrote a 30,000-line MS-DOS C++ program into a similar-length but much more fully-featured and usable Java Swing program.
I learned never to take another job involving C++ or Java.
I ported a client server Powerbuilder app, a couple of hundred screens worth, into an ASP.NET app (C#).
Due to performance and maintainability issues, I had over the previous year moved a ton of embedded SQL out of Powerbuilder scripts and into stored procedures.
Although this would make a lot of you wince, having a lot of business logic in the database, it mean the Powerbuilder app was relatively "light" and when we built the .Net front end, it could take advantage of the SQL codebase and have a lot of functionality already built and tested.
Not saying I'd recommend building apps that way, but it certainly worked to our advantage in this instance.
We had a code generation tool in our application framework that was used to read in text-based data files, About 20 other applications made use of it.
We wanted to make use of XML data files instead of structured text-based files. The original code was quite outdated and difficult to maintain. We replaced this tool by a combination of XSLT scripts and a utility library. For the utility library we could make use of some code in the old tool.
The result was that all 20 applications could now make use of either the obsolete text based file format or the new XML based format. We also delivered a conversion-generation tool that converted old data files to new XML data files.
After bringing out one or two release we have now decided that we will no longer support the old text based format and everybody is able to convert their data to XML.
We did hardly have to do manual conversions,
Converted the main company app from pre-standard C++ to standard C++. We had a multimillion dollar sale contingent on making it work on AIX, and after looking at it we decided that converting to standard C++ was going to be just as easy as converting to IBM's traditional C++.
I don't know the line count, but the source code ran to hundreds of megabytes.
We used standard Unix tools to do this, including vi and the assorted compilers.
It took a few months. Most of the fixes were simple ones, caught by the compiler and almost mechanically fixed. Some of them were much more complicated.
I think my main takeaway was: Don't get too awfully clever with code in a language that hasn't been standardized yet, or is likely to have things change in unexpected ways. We had to do a lot of digging in some of the ingenious adaptations/abuses of C++ streams.
Ten years ago I managed a team that converted a CAD system from DOS into Windows. The DOS version used home-brew libraries for graphics drawing, the Windows version used MFC. The software was about 70.000 lines of C code at the time of the conversion. The most important thing we learned in the process is the power of abstraction. All device-specific non-portable routines were isolated in a few files. It was therefore relatively easy to substitute the calls to the DOS-based library that would draw by directly accessing the frame buffer with Windows API calls. Similarly, for input we just substituted the event loop that checked for keyboard and mouse events, with the corresponding Windows event loop. We continued our policy of isolating the non-portable (this time Windows) code from the rest of the system, but we have not yet found this particularly useful. Perhaps one day we will port the system to Mac OS X and be thankful again.
Several. But I mention one.
It was a performance modeling tool. Part delphi 1, part turbo pascal. It needed a rewrite else it was not going to survive. So we started as a team of 2, but only me survived to the end. And I was ready before the deadline ;-).
Several things we did:
Make it multimodel. The original had lots of globals. I removed them all and multi model was easy to adapt.
Extended error messages. Click on a message and get the help.
Lots of graphs and diagrams. All clickable to drill down.
Simulation. Change parameters over time and see how long the current configuration was enough.
We really made this one clean and it paid back heavily in the end. Such a big learning experience.
Re-wrote a system for a company that processes legal invoices - the original system was a VB monstrosity that had no idea of good OO principles - everything was mixed together. The HTML did SQL, and the SQL wrote HTML. A large part of it was a custom rules engine that used something like XML for the rules.
Two teams did the re-write, which took about 9 months. One team did the web front end and the backend workflow, while the other team (that I was on) re-wrote the rules engine. The new system was written in C#, and was done test-first. Adding new rules to the system when we were done was dirt simple, and it was all testable. Along the way we did things like convert the company from VSS to SVN, implement continuous integration, automate the deployment, and teach the other developers how to do TDD and other Scrum/XP practices.
Managing expectations was crucial through the project. Having a customer that was savvy about software was very helpful.
Having a mix of large scale (end-to-end) tests along with comprehensive unit and integration tests helped tons.
Converted vBulletin which is written in PHP into C#/Asp.NET. I'm pretty familiar with both languages, but PHP is the hands down the winner for building that software. The biggest pain in the rear was needing to do a C# equivalent of PHP's eval() for calling the templates.
It was my first challenge in trying to do a conversion. I learned that I need more experience with C# and that writing it from scratch is just the easier route sometimes.
I converted a dynamical build-process completely written in Perl to a C#/.Net solution using a workflow-engine a co-worker had developed (which was still in beta - so I had to do some refinements). That gave me the oppertunity to add fail-safe and fail-over functionality to the build process.
Before you ask - no - the microsoft workflow-foundation could not be used since you cannot dynamically change a process during its runtime.
What I learned:
to hate the Perl-developer
process-optimization using a wf-engine
fail-safe and fail-over strategies
some C# tweaks ;)
In the end it covered about 5k - 6k (including the wf-engine) LoC origin from 3 200 LoC Perl-files. But it was fun - and far better in the end ;)
Converting theoretically portable C code into theoretically portable C code across architectures to support a hardware change that saves the company X dollars per unit.
The size varies - this is a common need, and I've done small and large projects.
I learned to write more portable C code. Elegance is great, but when it comes right down to it the compiler takes care of performance, and the code should be as simple and portable as possible.
Ported a simulation written in Fortran 77 (despite being written in the 90s) to C/Java because the original only worked on small data sets. I learned to love big O notation after several times of explaining why just moving the entire data table into memory at the start of the program was not going to scale.
Migrating the B-2 Stealth Bomber mission software from JOVIAL to C. 100% fully automated conversion. Seriously!
Main lesson: using configurable automated conversion tools is a huge win.
See DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit.
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I have experience writing console and network client/server applications in C and C++, but I know next to nothing about using the win32 visual API, MFC, Qt, wxWidgets, etc. Where is a good place to start, and what method should I specialize in, so as to be future ready and robust?
This is a rather broad question, as programming GUI applications in Windows can be done in so many ways.
There are two main parts to developing any GUI app: the language and the API/framework. Considering you're interested in learning to build Windows GUI apps, the language isn't really a point of focus for you. Hence, you should pick a language you already know and work with a framework or API that can be harnessed by your chosen language.
If you want to use C you're pretty much restricted to dealing with the Win32 API yourself, in which case reading Petzold or Richter would be great places to start. The Win32 API can be quite daunting, but it's well worth the effort to learn (imho). There are plenty of tutorials on Win32 on the web, and there's always MSDN, with a complete reference/guide to the Win32 API. Make sure you cover not just the API, but other areas such as resources/dialogs as they are building blocks for your Win32 application.
If you want to use C++ you have all of the options that you have when using C plus a few others. I'd recommend going with the Win32 API directly, and then moving on to a known framework such as MFC, Qt, wxWindows or GTK so that you can spend less time working with boilerplate code and instead focus on writing your application logic. The last 3 options I just listed have the added benefit of being cross-platform, so you don't have to worry too much about platform-specific issues. Given that you said you want to work with Windows, I'll assume you're keen to focus on that rather than cross-platform -- so go with MFC, but spend some time with the Win32 API first to get familiar with some of the concepts.
When dealing with MFC and the Win32 API, it's a good idea to try and get a solid understanding of the terminology prior to writing code. For example, you need to understand what the message pump is, and how it works. You need to know about concepts such as "owner-drawn controls", and subclassing. When you understand these things (and more), you'll find it easier to work with MFC because it uses similar terminology in its class interfaces (eg. you need to know what "translate messages" means before you can understand how and when to use PreTranslateMessage).
You could also use Managed C++ to write .NET GUI applications, but I've read in a few places that Managed C++ wasn't really intended to be used in this manner. Instead it should be used as a gateway between native/unmanaged code and managed code. If you're using .NET it's best to use a .NET language such as VB.NET or C# to build your GUIs.
So if you are going to use .NET, you currently have the choice of the WinForms library, or WPF. I personally feel that you'd be wasting time learning to build WinForms applications given that WPF is designed to replace it. Over time WPF will become more prevelant and Winforms will most likely die off. WPF has a much richer API set, and doesn't suffer from many of the limitations that Winforms does. If you do choose this route, however, you'll no doubt have to learn XAML, which is a markup language that drives WPF applications. This technology is coming of age, and there are many great places to learn about it. First, there are sites such as LearnWPF, and DrWPF which have some really great articles. Secondly, there are plenty of quality books on the topic.
So, to sum up, once you've picked your language and tech, the path is actually quite easy. Just pick up a book or two, read some blogs, get into some code samples.. and most importantly ... write code. Keep writing, keep making mistakes, and keep learning from them.
As a final note...
In other words, Silverlight. If you don't want to go the MS route you might give Adobe's Flash/Flex a look see. Both Silverlight and Flash/Flex build RIA's. Which I think is where we are headed. They days of Office like apps are numbered
I don't agree at all. Silverlight is not the same as WPF. Silverlight is web-specific, and only has a subset of WPF's features. Given that the question asks for Windows GUI apps, Flash/Flex Rich Internet Apps are not really a fitting suggestion. I also don't agree that the days of Rich Client Applications (such as office) are numbered at all.
I hope that helps. Good luck :)
I don't know if I'd call it a good place to start, but if you want to be future ready, take a look at the windows presentation foundation which is built entirely for the purpose of programming GUI's for windows
My first experience writing simple GUI applications for Windows was with C# and Visual Studio. The GUI-building interface is a simple drag and drop deal that generates skeleton methods based on potential user actions. I only did fairly basic programming with this, but I imagine it would be an excellent place to start to learn the basics and extend into the more advanced capabilities as you go.
There are plenty of online Win32 tutorials:
http://www.zeusedit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1218
There are plenty of compilers to choose from:
http://www.zeusedit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=238
I would also recommend getting the Borland Win32 SDK documentation in WinHelp file format:
http://www.zeusedit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7
It only covers the bare basics of the Win32, but when starting, this can be helpful as it is less daunting and less bloated than the MSDN.
I'd never go down the Silverlight, Flash/Flex or any similar route. It does look nice, but the main problem is that the code of the engine that runs it is completely closed-box and controlled by a single company. Take, for example 64bit versions of both of those. If some new platform emerges, you won't be able to migrate your existing code to it.
For business apps, Windows Forms is very mature. It provides a gentle path from auto-generating a lot for you into allowing fine-grained control and rolling your own. There are tons of high-quality third party controls and a large body of examples, docs, etc out there. It's hard to run into a problem that someone else hasn't solved. I highly recommend acquiring some background Win32 knowledge (e.g. Petzold) as the WinForms framework lives on top of it.
I have no WPF experience, but from the sample apps I've seen it looks like a good choice for apps whose interfaces would benefit from more graphical metaphors. So if you're doing a banking app, probably not worth the extra design overhead. But if you're doing, say, a warehouse management app it could be improved by dropping pretty boxes into pretty bins.
#StephenCox: wrong answer to the wrong question. OP is asking about desktop client apps, and moreover, WPF != Silverlight.
For a simple starting point to get your head around the "event-driven" nature basically all frameworks are created around look at FLTK.
Here are some quick starting videos Link
For professional use I'd recommend Qt, expensive but often worth it in commercial situations.
Since you are already familiar with C and C++ I would recommend learning how to write a simple Windows GUI app using Charles Petzold's book. It will give you the fundamental understanding of how Windows works. It's good to understand that most everything that you see is a window (a button is a window for example) and that these windows respond to messages. I wouldnt' spend a lot of time on this though and you don't necessarily need to do this first if you are going to chose WPF. I just think it's good to have a basic understanding of this.
There was a good podcast recently on .Net Rocks called "Kate Gregory Develops in C++ for Vista!" on there she recommends that someone starting out now should not use/learn MFC (even though it has been recently updated).
As far as getting ready for the future you need to learn WPF, but it isn't complete yet, so depending on the kinds of client side apps you want to create, you will probably need to learn WinForms. The majority of people aren't using WPF yet, so it's a good time to start learning. I think you will find it easier using C# to learn it instead of doing managed code with C++.
Get your basics right first. Best tutorial I've found is: http://winprog.org/tutorial/start.html
After that, although the homepage is hatefully distasteful, the tutorial pages are good in content and aesthetics: http://www.tenouk.com/cplusmfcdotnet.html
Then of course there's MSDN.
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When prototyping initial GUI functionality with a customer is it better to use a pen/paper drawing or to mock something up using a tool and show them that ?
The argument against a tool generated design being that the customer can sometimes focus on the low-level specifics of the mock-up rather than taking a higher level functional view of the GUI overall.
Always start with paper or paper-like mock-ups first. You do not want to fall into a trap of giving the impression of completeness when the back-end is completely hollow.
A polished prototype or pixel-perfect example puts too much emphasis on the design. With an obvious sketch, you have a better shot of discussing desired functionality and content rather than colors, photos, and other stylistic matters. There will be time for that discussion later in the project.
Jeff discusses paper prototyping in his Coding Horror article UI-First Software Development
Click the "Watch a video!" link at twitter.com to see an interesting take on the idea from Common Craft.
The "Napkin Look & Feel" for Java is really cool for prototyping. An actual, functioning, clickable app that looks like it was drawn on a napkin. Check out this screenshot:
Seriously, how cool is that?
I would suggest you sit down with your client and use a tool like Mockupscreens and develop the UI interactively. A benefit it has over Napkin LAF is that it does not require coding, or indeed development tools of any kind
Check out Balsamiq
It does the "THIS IS NOT A FUNCTIONAL APP" napkin view very well and is easy to use.
Has a full featured demo you can try out online and as an added bonus you can email your XML to your client and they can tweak it and play with it and email it back to you without having to have a license.
There is a book called Paper Prototyping which details pen and paper drawing and what you can gain from it. I think it has a lot of benefits, particularly that you can, very early on (and easily), modify what the end result will be without much effort, and then start off on the right foot.
A basic paper version is the way to go for an initial mock-up. It's been my experience that if you do a "real" mock-up, even if you explain to the customer that it's a non-functional mock-up, they are confused when things don't work.
Bottom line: keep it as simple as possible. If it's on paper, there is no way the customer will confuse it with a working product.
For the first draft, I prefer to use graph paper (the stuff with a grid printed on it) and a pencil. The graph paper is great for helping to maintain proportions. Once the client and I have come to a conclusion I'll usually fill in the drawing with pen since pencil is prone to fading.
When I actually get around to building the digital prototype, I'll scan in the hand-drawn one and use it as a background template. Seems to work pretty well for me.
I think it is best to start with Paper/Whiteboards/White walls.
Once you have the basic structure, you can move it to Visio with the wireframe stencils
(Download a Stencil Kit)
(Visio Stencils for Information Architects).
Or you could use Denim (An Informal Tool For Early Stage Web Site and UI Design) with a tablet PC or Wacom tablets to design the GUI and run it as HTML website.
WireframeSketcher is a tool that helps quickly create wireframes, mockups and prototypes for desktop, web and mobile applications. It comes both as a standalone version and as a plug-in for Eclipse IDEs. It has some distinctive features like storyboards, components, linking and vector PDF export. Among supported IDEs are are Aptana, Flash Builder, Zend Studio and Rational Application Developer.
(source: wireframesketcher.com)
I've recenly used a windows App to prototype an application to a customer (the final interface has to be integrated into a website).
At first people thought that it would be the last version and they started to make very heavy criticism from the way controls were displayed to the words I had used (terminology and stuff) and the meeting time ended before we could even discuss the functionality itself.
That discussion dragged on for days and days until I told them that, being a mock (and not a final application) all input is welcome but we had to focus on the functionalities first and then we could move on to look and feel as well as terminology issues.
From thay meeting on I am always terrified of prototypes and mock-ups... Perhaps I should just have given them something made in visio instead.
You can try out ForeUI, it allow prototyping with different styles, what's more, it can make interactive prototype and run it in browser.
For a non-installation browser based tool you can try draft-it
It's free - and if you have a gmail account - no registration is needed.
Makes interactive/Step by Step Or Slide Show- prototypes. You can share your protoype with anyone you choose by just sending a link.
Works for us ...