eStoryMaker

With the variety of design applications available nowadays, you can combine just about any kind of files, depending on the result you want to reach. For instance, eStoryMaker allows you to bundle together pictures, text, and audio files in order to create a custom, story-driven slideshow.

One of the application’s main advantages is you can carry it along on a USB flash drive to run on other computers as well. Another advantage of portability is that you don’t have to worry about the target PC’s health status, because registries are not modified in the process, and also remain clean after usage.

Running the application can be a little confusing at first. This is only because it needs to be launched when all resources are in order, with the executable acting as the slideshow player. You need to combine pictures with text, and audio files for the whole experience to be worthwhile.

Unfortunately, the whole creation process can be incredibly time-consuming, especially if you want to include a lot of items. A project is built by copying all resources, namely pictures, text, and audio files in the application’s source directory, but that’s not all it takes.

In order to make things work, files need to be renamed according to their page. Regardless of type, all files in the first page need to be under the “page1” name, and so on for all pages you want to include. Sadly, there’s no built-in function to quickly rename files, and hence the long time it takes to create a lengthy presentation.

The application can only run in fullscreen mode, but pictures you load are displayed in a fixed position. There is a TXT configuration files you can edit, but options inside need to be experimented with, and can take a lot of effort just to figure out, especially because of the lack of proper documentation.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that eStoryMaker comes with good intentions, and allows you to build interactive slideshows, but at the cost of a great deal of effort, and time. It all seems easy, but renaming file appropriately is difficult without a dedicated tool, while the design is incredibly rough, making you quickly look for alternatives.