I've been considering putting together a video screencast sharing some thoughts on web UI components, covering the case for why we need them, some limited solutions today, the prospects for the Web Components standard, and the principles behind my own work on the QuickUI web component framework. It's been my experiencing that producing even a very short video takes gobs of time, but it occurred to me that I could break up the talk into short segments, perhaps 5 minutes or less in length. As an experiment, I created this short (4 minute) intro video:
WheneverI speak in group settings, I always find myself sketching ideas on the whiteboard, so I thought that a whiteboard talk might be a reasonable format for a web video – perhaps that can strike a good balance between something that's engaging while also not incredibly time-consuming to produce. In the course of considering how to make such a whiteboard talk, I came across an interesting iPad app called Doceri that lets you project your iPad sketches onto a desktop computer. Doceri includes its own complete screencast production tool, but unfortunately the audio quality of an iPad's built-in mic isn't great, and editing on an iPad is currently cumbersome. I ended up projecting the Doceri project onto a desktop window, capturing the window contents with Camtasia, then laying down the audio narration in Camtasia and doing final editing there.
I hope you find this short video interesting. If this seems worthwhile, I might follow up with additional segments on a semi-regular schedule.