ITauthor

In this interview, from Channel 9, April Reagan (a Program Manager at Microsoft) talks about the up-coming Microsoft Help 3. This client-side help system will be used first in the MSDN Library within Visual Studio 2010, but will be made available for other software companies to use.

Note: I found the first half of the video the most interesting. After that the interview moves onto other things and only returns to help towards the end. Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot of detail about how the new help system will differ from good old HTML Help. There’s no demo, for instance. Still it’s interesting that Microsoft are still investing in the idea of client-side help.

Note: This video belongs to Dan Fernandez and Channel 9.
If you're having problems viewing the above video, try the orignal video on Channel 9,
or view it in Windows Media Player.

Blogs used to be called Web logs, which was a straightforward description of what they were: sequential, time-based personal jottings, where you just kept adding entry after entry in a linear fashion. Now, what does that remind you of? A diary, right?

But these days blogs have long since evolved away from something that most closely resembled an online diary, into something that’s more like a multifunctional Web site. Nevertheless, blogs still make brilliant diaries. The trouble is, of course, that by default everyone gets to see what you write in your blog. One way round this is to download WordPress and install it locally on a PC, so that only someone logged onto that machine can access it. But that involves using something like XAMPP to install Apache Web server and MySQL.

A much easier way is just to sign up for a free blog at wordpress.com and then make particular posts, or the whole thing, private – as described in this WordPress video:

The marketing manager at my work got in touch today to ask about recording screencasts of product demos. After replying, I thought the information might be interesting to others. So here’s her email and my reply.

Note: I’ve changed the names.

From: Lesley …
Sent: 10 March 2009 15:00
To: 'Alistair Christie'
Subject: best tool for the job?

Alistair,

I have a requirement to capture a demo the solutions team has been working on – all screen activity and voiceover.  What I want to be able to do is give this to the sales team along with the kit so they can do the demos themselves.  I also want to take this file and have our designers create a flash movie for download from the web site.

I wanted to ask your advice on the best tool to use for this job?  I have looked at GoTo Meeting and Webex Meeting recorders as well as Camtasia.

My slight problem is that Mike is my voiceover person and Ben is my demo click through person – both based in different locations.  This is why I looked at webinar software for recording but it doesn’t look like its straightforward to record voice and clicks on screen in multi locations.

Any advice/hints or tips – I know you have carried out this kind of thing before.

Thanks,
Lesley

Lesley

Here's how I've done this before. You're probably not going to like this! But you asked.

I've never been able to do voice over + what's on screen in one go. One of them always goes wrong. So the system I settled on is as follows:

1) Write the script!

I've tried improvising but you end up with lots of editing to do, so it's quicker to spend the time up front writing a complete script (word for word, not notes).

2) Go through the demo speaking the script and recording what's on screen - but concentrate on getting the screen capture right. I usually don't even bother recording the voice at this stage. That way, if you make a slip with the voice you just stop clicking/moving the mouse until you're ready to pick up the script again, make a note of the time, then continue (i.e. just keep the screen capture rolling). That way you can go and edit out a bit from the screen capture.

3) When you've captured the screen stuff OK and you're happy with it, go into Camtasia and chop out the bits you noted down. When you do this you've got to go through that bit of the script so that you make sure you haven't cut too much out.

4) In Camtasia, generate a video (Flash or AVI or whatever - doesn't matter at this stage).

5) Using sound recording software (like Audacity, which if free), record yourself speaking through the script while watching the video. You generally have to do this a few times until you get the timing right.

6) Save the recording as a .wav or .mp3.

7) Back in Camtasia, import the sound recording and drag it onto the time line of the video.

8) Play through the whole thing and make sure the sound and video match up. Usually at this stage you need to do some fine tuning, but Camtasia allows you to pause or cut the video and/or pause or cut the sound recording, so it's pretty easy to get it all spot on

9) Output the final demo video.

Camtasia has a huge variety of output formats, resolutions, styles - including .wmv for showing in Windows Media Player, .m4v or .mov for iTunes, or a .swf (Flash) file nicely embedded in a Web page. If you want you can easily grab the Flash file from this page and stick it in another page (e.g. on the company Web site).

Technically there's nothing to it, but if you want to produce something half decent it will take lots of time and patience. The one I did for … last year took 3 full days to produce.

As for folks being in separate places, that shouldn't be difficult, Mike can be on the phone speaking the script, looking at what Ben's doing on screen (Acrobat ConnectNow is good for this - like WebEx but free), while Ben records what he's doing in Camtasia. Ben can then put together the video (without sound) and send this to Mike for him to record the voice over. When Mike's got this just right he can send the sound file back to Ben and Ben can finish it off.

Job's a good un!

Alistair

A couple of years ago, when this site was getting far higher Google rankings than it does now, and much more traffic (oh, the good old days!), I got hit by a tidal wave of comment spam that required a lengthy and tedious clean-up process to get it all out of my archives.

This happened while I had the WordPress Akismet plugin turned on. Akismet certainly picks up most comment spam, but a lot still gets through. After I turned on moderation I then had to do a weekly cleanup of all the spam sitting waiting for approval.

But since installing the WP-SpamFree plugin about six months ago, I’ve had no comment spam at all. None. Not one little bit of it.

So now, but with a certain amount of hesitation, I’m turning off moderation again. This means that anything you comment here, or on any other post, will be immediately visible to anyone who visits the site.

So go on. Give it a go. Leave me a comment. Go on!

Awh, go on, go on, go on, go on!

Disk defragmenter in Vista no longer gives you the graphical representation of a fragmented disk gradually becoming less and less fragmented. It doesn't even tell you how fragmented your disks are. Instead all you get is a message telling you that the disk is being fragmented and "This may take from a few minutes to a few hours."

This is annoying, because you have no idea where in that vague time range your defragmentation job will fall. Can you kick it off when you go for lunch and expect it to be complete by the time you get back? Or is it an overnight job? However, it's better than so many other progress messages that attempt to tell you how long you need to wait, but inevitably lie to you. For example, I've been having problems with Outlook recently. I had to kill and restart it twice today. The second time it came back it had the familiar message "The data file 'Personal Folders' was not closed properly" and a progress bar with a “seconds remaining” count.

Microsoft seconds obviously don’t work like normal seconds because after waiting for the count to work its way slowly down to "20 Seconds Remaining" I had to sit there for at least 30 seconds before it changed to 25 Seconds, then 30, then 35, then 40, then 45, then 50. From "50 seconds remaining" it took 2 mins 10 seconds before it finally finished and Outlook came to life.

If you don't know how long something's going to take, don't just make something up. And don't mislead the user into expecting something to take less time than it really will. The principle should be that software should not lie.

And don’t believe the Microsoft hype that disk defragmentation is now automated in Vista, so you don’t need to think about it any more. In fact, the Disk Defragmenter’s scheduler is set, by default, to kick off at 1.00 am every Wednesday morning. That’s fine if you leave your computer switched on every night. But if you never leave your computer on on a Tuesday night, it’ll never get defragged.

Personally, I liked the old Disk Defragmenter, with its coloured bands.