Remy Sharp runs jQuery For Designers, a screencast education site for jQuery users.  He screencasts using iShowU on a Mac with a pro microphone and is a local here in Brighton.

Please tell us about your background

My name is Remy Sharp (@rem on Twitter).  I’ve been working on the web for over 10 years and have been coding for a lot longer. I have always been obsessed with the problem-solving aspect of the developer role.

I was the second man in to a company called Digital Look back in 1999, and learnt pretty much every aspect of running web sites over the following years.  My background is in server-side programming  but scratching my own itch I got (back) in to JavaScript around 2005 and I’ve made this the focus of many of my projects today.

As I learnt the tools of my trade, the company started taking on employees, people that I would come to mentor and manage. This where I first got a real taste for teaching other people how to go about solving problems.

Today I run my own freelance consultancy called Left Logic working with JavaScript and the LAMP stack.

In my spare time I run my screencasting web site called jQuery for Designers.

Why do you use screencasts on jQuery for Designers?

The initial reason for using screencasts was quite simply that I could convey more information than typing out an article.  It was my way of taking a slightly lazy approach to blog posting.

However my feelings quickly changed as I realised I had a responsibility to my readers. Screencasting was more important than it just being a tool for me to get my ideas out faster.  It is a powerful education tool.

Today, after running jQuery for Designers for over a year, I’m a huge fan of using screencasts to educate.

One side effect I never anticipated also convinced me that screencasting is a great method for teaching: the mistakes I make.  As I’m recording, depending on the degree of mistake I make, I’ll work out the problem and continue with the screencast.

Many viewers have commented on this as though I’ve dived right in to the session and included all my mistakes, and how this is one of the most valuable aspects of the screencasts.  They get to see how someone else would approach debugging a completely unrelated bug during development.

Why do you think screencasts work?

The real killer aspect of screencasts is that you can convey two methods of education: audibly and visually, and as such there’s very little effort and commitment required from the viewer.

The comparison is easy: I could read the newspaper and it would take me 15 minutes.  Alternatively I watch the news on the TV which would take me 5 minutes but I’ve taken in even more information in a much shorter time.

It is simple to see the benefits given how busy people are in today’s world.

This is only for education screencasts.  Screencasts as sales tool are powerful mediums to demonstrate a product and win a customer.  The visitor to your site has to give very little, i.e. a simple click on an image to start the video, before they’re given an introduction to using the product.  Without a screencast, the sales tool would be a feature list and some screenshots.

Text and images certainly have their value, but to me, the screencast is the extra value, the icing on the cake if you will.

Do screencasts ever replace text+pictures for explaining certain topics?

I wouldn’t say that screencasts should entirely replace text & pictures – or certainly not for tutorials.  Indeed all the screencasts on jQuery for Designers also comes with a complementing article.  Some articles go in to more detail than others but I still feel it’s important to explain the topic in some written form, even if it’s briefly.

The primary reason that I provide the full article is for both the visitors that would prefer to only read the tutorial but also for accessibility and for SEO.  If I were to only post a screencast, search engines would only have the title to index.  Whereas posting a written tutorial it is fully indexed, and new visitors could enter my site via Google searching for a specific answer.

There’s other issues with replacing text & pictures with just a screencast, often relating to now the content is accessed.  For example, screencasts can be many megs to download, if there was a written article summarising what the visitor will learn, they can make that decision before downloading.

If a screencast is available for a tool that you’re interested in – would you watch it?

Always. When a screencast is used to promote a product, or to give a preview of how something is used, it’s much more telling than screenshots.  With a product or a tool, as a user I already have an idea of what I should be able to do.  By watching a screencast, it will nearly always finalise my decision as to whether I want to download or purchase a tool.

I think this works particularly well for software.  There’s no better sales tool, than to show a potential user how to interact with the software.  The Apple web site use this tool for all of their key products and include demos of how to use the software as a sales tool to get people interested in all the things they could do with their software.

What hardware and software do you use to screencast?

My very first screencasts were run on a MacBook Pro via the internal microphone.  This works fine if you’re doing quick and dirty screencasts.  However the biggest problem, aside from bad sound, was that after a while of recording, the fan would kick in and it could be heard in the audio.

Today I record on an iMac, 2.8Mhz 2Gb machine.

I also have a separate user account set up that I can switch to record the screencast.  That way I can prepare a specific wallpaper – which includes brand, Creative Commons information and URLs, a specific screen resolution (800×600) and desktop icons for the session.  This allows me to record the full screen to include everything I do during a session.

I use a Samson CO1U mic, which I set to record in AAC mono 22.050 kHz.

The video is compressed using H.264 at 12fps.  These settings keep the size down for the visitor but maintains a good end quality screencast.

The software I use for recording the session is iShowU.

Once the session is completed (for my posts I don’t edit the video, I try to get a single uncut take – but this is because of the nature of the subject I’m screencasting) I will convert to iTunes compatible MP4 and to raw FLV.

This way I can make both Flash and QuickTime versions available on from my web site, and the MP4 version available on iTunes (which has to be 640×480 – so some video compression takes place).

Are there any other screencasting sites that web-developers should know about?

Other than jQuery for Designers the biggest screencasting site I would recommend is CSS-Tricks run by Chris Coyier.  He publishes screencasts primarily covering CSS but also other web topics, such as Photoshop and jQuery.

Become a better screencaster – read The Screencasting Handbook.  We’re distilling 4 years of experience into our book, the book will tell you everything you need to know to screencast faster, better and more efficiently.

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Ian produces professional screencasts (ProCasts, twitter), writes The Screencasting Handbook and blogs (IanOzsvald.com).

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