Software emulation tutorials

• US 20070294260A1
• Filed: 02/02/2007
• Published: 12/20/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/16/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.), Sony Electronics Inc. (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Lam, Tom, Nguyen, Don, Zhang, Guoxuan, Lee, Kenneth
• Application Number:
  US11/701,925
• Publication Number:
  US 20070294260A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/453 Help systems

Abstract

A method and arrangement is provided for creating a tutorial for troubleshooting a software application. The method begins by saving captured display screens of a software application operating on the respective versions of the hardware device in one or more files. This step is repeated for each of a plurality of different versions of a hardware device. Next, each of the files for the plurality of different versions of the hardware device is distributed so that they are accessible to a plurality of help centers. In this way customer support can be provided to users of any of the plurality of different versions of the hardware device.

Claims

1. A method of creating a tutorial for troubleshooting a software application, comprising:

for each of a plurality of different versions of a hardware device, saving captured display screens of a software application operating on the respective versions of the hardware device in one or more files; and

distributing each of the files for the plurality of different versions of the hardware device so that they are accessible to a plurality of help centers that provide customer support to users of any of the plurality of different versions of the hardware device.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein each of the files are distributed over a communications network.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein each of the files is physically distributed on an electronic storage medium to the help centers.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising repeating the screen capturing and the distributing steps for each of a plurality of software applications bundled with the different versions of the hardware device.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the software application is selected from the group consisting of operating systems, authoring applications, client applications and browser applications.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the files are stored in an SQL database.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the hardware device is a personal computer.

8. At least one computer-readable medium encoded with instructions which, when executed by a processor, performs a method including:

receiving a selection of a given version of a hardware device selected from among a plurality of different versions of the hardware device;

receiving a selection of a given software application selected from among a plurality of different software applications that reside on the selected hardware device;

accessing one or more files that include a plurality of screenshots of the given application operating on the selected version of the hardware device; and

displaying at least one of the screenshots.

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 further comprising displaying a graphical user interface that presents a first menu from which the given version of a hardware device can be selected from among the plurality of different versions of the hardware device.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the graphical user interface further presents a second menu from which the given software application can be selected.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 10 wherein the graphical user interface is configured as a web browser.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 wherein the files are accessed over a communications network.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 wherein the files further include annotations associated with the screen shots, said annotations including additional information concerning the screen shots.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13 wherein each of the annotations is displayed with the screen shot associated therewith.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 wherein the files are accessed from an SQL database.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 wherein the selections are received at a help center providing customer support to users of the hardware device.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein the selections are received from users of the hardware device.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 wherein different portions of the files are distributed among different servers physically remote from one another.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein different portions of the files are distributed among different servers physically remote from one another.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 19 wherein at least one of the servers is located at the help center.