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What is Instant Software Builder?
by Patricia Ritsema van Eck

Instant Software Builder was first launched on Monday November 15th 2004. Well two months after Make Your Own Software (MYOS) and as far as I’m aware of it’s the third HTML based software compiler to enter the market this fall. I don’t personally know the third.

ISB - short for Instant Software Builder - was developed by Cody Moya, a European software engineer living in the States. He says he’s been working on it since before the Summer and approached me early October to do the beta testing.

I had been working with MYOS since early September delivering new applications at high speed. Totally addicted really. Cody noticed and liked the fact I created a very broad variety of programs, hence his request to beta test the program.

HTML Based Software Compiler?!

Basically this means that you ‘feed’ the compiler HTML pages and it will create software from this which is also scripted with HTML. So in essence all you need to know is how to create HTML pages and you’re set to start making your own software. But you can already create applications using text only pages as well.

You will notice on the ISB sales page that heavy emphasis is put on the fact that you need zero programming experience and still will be able to make software with this program. (Same story at the MYOS sales page!) This claim is probably made in the assumption that about everyone can create a text page and even an HTML page with a good HTML editor.

While this is true to a certain extent, I know from experience that once you’re ready to create programs which are looking good enough to sell, you do need to learn a bit more about HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). To add fancy dynamics some knowledge of Javascript will come in handy too…

What it all boils down to is that basically anything you can use to create a website, can be used to create software as well with HTML based software compilers.

How Does It Work?

Most people who have ISB use it to create ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ software. Have you ever filled in a form? Then you’ll know that most of them are a bunch of texts that have empty spaces every now and then where you are supposed to fill in your personal information.

Would you have such a form as a web page, then you can feed it to ISB and it will create a software that asks for the information to go in the empty spaces. After you filled them all in, out comes the completed form. Which can be saved, printed or emailed.

Both ISB and MYOS call these kind of forms software recipes. And instead of having empty spaces or lines in the recipe, they need a more specific snippet of code which tells them: ‘this is a blank’. For example:

In this example you see three blanks in the form which become [#recipeTags#] once the form is converted to a software recipe. After you feed this recipe to ISB, the program will recognise these tags and replace them with an empty textfield.

Questions & Answers

As you can see, all of the original text from the form has now vanished. And it will not appear again till the textfields are filled and the print button is pressed.

Since you wouldn’t know what to do with three empty textfields on a screen, ISB asks you to specify a unique question to go with each tag: the question definitions. With the example form above, these would make logical questions (or commands):

Once you’ve provided these question definitions (and some more information which will be covered in the course), ISB will create a software which could look like this when it is run:

What Your Software Creates

With ISB you can make applications which create text files or HTML files (web pages). They can be saved to hard disk, copied to clipboard and emailed to friends. You tell ISB which options you want available in your software.

The example above shows a print button as the ‘output’ option. The print result will depend on how you formatted your software recipe. If you only entered that one line of text, your result will be:

This certificate proves that John Doe has succesfully passed the exam in Software Engineering on May 23rd, 2005.

Would you have used HTML to write that line, the result could also be…

The recipe you feed to ISB would have looked like:

The green script is HTML script - it tells an internet browser how to display what’s between the <script> tags. You don’t even have to know HTML to duplicate this script. It can be done in what’s called WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get.

If you have an HTML editor with WYSIWYG mode (like FrontPage or DreamWeaver), you can edit your texts much like you’d do in a program like MS Word. The editor will automatically add the <script> tags for you.

Once you’ve saved your HTML file, you can ‘load’ it to ISB and the program will have included the <script> tags. So even if you don’t really know HTML, if you can work with a WYSIWYG editor you have all it takes to start creating your first software!

What More Can You Make?

If you understand the fill-in-the-blanks concept, the posibilities within this concept are endless. Here are a couple of examples of software which has already been created with ISB:

• eCourse software to learn hypnotic writing
• wedding vows software for ministers and pastors
• software to generate CSS scripts
• software to write poetry
• software to write sales letters
• software to write recurring invoices
• software to keep track of dog breeding results
• software to create HTML newsletters
• software to write .ini files
• et cetera…

And if you don’t want the textfields, ISB can also work in ‘advanced mode’ which works similar to a simple ebook compiler.

Download examples of software created
with ISB from the ISB Freebies page.

There are also limitations. You shouldn’t expect to be able to create an MS Word clone or an image editor with ISB. It might be possible, but this would require real programming skills and there are probably other ways of doing it more efficiently.

Instant Software Builder Features

If you have already created HTML based software before, here are some features you will want to know about:

Image Embedding
Easy way to include images in your software screens which your users can also see if they’re running your software off-line (not possible with MYOS without additional installer software).

Multi-Screen Software
Like those wizards you encounter when installing new programs you can create software that leads your users through the steps clicking ‘Next’ buttons. Now MYOS too has this feature. Only with MYOS you create one screen per question. ISB however allows you to create screens with one, two, three or any number of questions you want. Allowing you to group related information to one screen.

Multi-Page Output
Whereas MYOS produces a single output document for your users, ISB has the facility to break long documents into separate ones. If specified the program will save to several text or html documents.

Creating Installer Software
When you create your software, you can add files to your package and turn the whole thing into a set-up file. It’s a very basic installer function, but your software looks so much more professional when you deliver it this way. A license text can be added as well.

Adding viral pages
Viral is the option to add a page to your software before and after the program is run. So when your user opens the software, it will display a page with a close button at the bottom. 

The software is triggered when this button is clicked. And another (again optional) page when the software is shut down. You can use this option to add the instructions of use or you can place an advertisement for other products or a newsletter signup-form on these pages. 

What makes it really special is the fact you can make the page dynamic. This means the content is linked to a web page you loaded to your site and whenever you change that page, the content of the software’s added page is changed as well. So you can keep your info up-to-date without having to request a new download from your users!

About Box
Your software’s general info is stored in the About Box: name, copyrights notice, description and of course a link to your site (or anywhere you wish to link to).

Brandable Links
Once your software is created, you can also change some info inside the software with the brander program that comes with your software. This allows your affiliates for example to change links inside your software with their affiliate links.

Icon Customizer
The latest feature is an option to add customized icons to your software - the icons which are displayed on a desktop.

Issues for Improvement

No program is perfect and there are still a couple of things that could be improved with Instant Software Builder.

Default Interface Color Scheme 
Though I personally like the dark shade of purple-blue which makes up the background color of default software applications, it has one drawback: hyperlinks are hard to see. There are two ways around this:

• using Cascading Style Sheets - this is my preferred way to create any interface, but it requires some knowledge of CSS. (You get a CSS generator with your bonus package when buying ISB that’s really easy to use.)
• Pick a different background color. ISB comes with an easy color picker feature to choose the color you like, but it only works for background colors. Again it has a drawback: if you choose a light background color, your links will be clear but your body text will be real hard to spot.

Preview Button for Single Page only
A preview button which is inserted by default in your applications when you chose ‘Save as HTML’. However, when you created a multi-page project, it is only capable of previewing the first page.

Customer Support

Frankly, there isn’t much of that. You will receive help if you have problems installing ISB on your computer, but that’s about it. Once you have it up and running, you’re basically on your own…

The new user guide is pretty good. So that should get you well started. And once you’ve finished that, your best bet is probably to have this site bookmarked and look here for everything else you need to know. Which is a lot! You can find an overview of the ways we can help you at our:

ISB Knowledge Center

Sales Hype?

Both MYOS and ISB claim you don’t need to know any programming to be able to create software with their programs and this is true. When I began using these programs, I really knew next to nothing about HTML. As with all new programs, you need to start working with it to understand how easy it can be. A desire to create stuff will probably motivate you to embarke on this learning experience.

Both MYOS and ISB also claim you can create software in minutes. It is sort of true, but you should not expect to create a high quality program in such short amount of time. The best programs I created myself took me at least a week. As my skills keep improving, I could probably do these faster today, but to claim you can make and sell software as if by magic is a bit over the top in my humble opinion…

Then, if you would have to do it the old-fashioned way. Do you have any idea how long it takes to learn C++ for example? I don’t have a clue, but I’d imagine it would take me way longer than a week before I would have anything good created with those real programming languages…

My advice:

Don’t purchase ISB if you are at constant war with your HTML editor.

If you simply haven’t really gotten involved in creating HTML documents before, one of our forum members offers an excellent free course in HTML. You can find the link to this at: www.letsmakesoftware.com/scripts.html.

I am sometimes asked what the difference is between ISB and an ebook compiler. It’s HUGE! If ebooks is what you want to create, just get yourself a good compiler. ISB was never intended to create professional ebooks with. You can manage real simple ones and shouldn’t expect typical ebook features.

Only purchase ISB if you understand what you can and cannot create with this program. You can give it a test run. I believe there is a 60 days money back guarantee. So far I haven’t heard any complaints about people not getting a refund, so the guarantee is good.

Conclusion

Personally I really like Instant Software Builder. Not knowing any real programming languages my self, I’m just mighty pleased that with ISB I have a tool to create my own simple software applications. You can download a bunch of free examples here to see what I’ve made.

I also have MYOS and still use it for some of the easier things.

But if you’d put a knife on my throat and force me to choose between the two, I would tell you without second thought that you can keep MYOS and I’ll stick to ISB.

Since the latest upgrade was released, there isn’t anything MYOS can do, which can’t also be done with ISB. And ISB can do much, much more…

See the Comparison Details

I hope this helped you to get a better picture of what you can expect from ISB!

Patricia Ritsema van Eck

View ISB Sales Page