Demise of Demofuse?
February 27th, 2008 by Greg R Notess
Since my library launched a new Web site for this semester, I decided to use Demofuse to create a quick online tour of the new site. Take a look and see what you think. It seemed to work well for showing where key links had moved on our home page (although to reduce the external calls we set it up on a duplicate of our home page so that the Demofuse JavaScript would not need to be loaded every time that the home page loaded.)
I have been fairly pleased with the results of my second Demofuse tour. According to Demofuse, the tour has been viewed (or at least started) well over 400 times in the last month. Compared to the very sparse turn out we had for in-person new site tours, the online approach succeeded far better.
We will probably take this down soon, but I wonder if I will be using any more Demofuse tours. I am concerned that the Demofuse site still has a footer with a 2007 date, their toll free number now advertises a an adult phone number, and their blog link is dead. I’ve sent email to them to see if they plan to maintain and develop the site.
So you may consider using it for a short term project, if you do it soon. Or you might try a similar site I just came across called Amberjack. I have yet to try using it, but the example on their site is similar to Demofuse, although it seems a bit slower and less elegant.
It seems that Demofuse has been let go. There is no successful way to contact the developers. I’m still looking for a good alternative. Amberjack is ok, but very 90′s looking, and doesn’t highlight like I’m looking for. Let me know if you find anything else. Thanks!