Using Jing to Develop Jing
Posted on Tuesday March 11, 2008 by Mike Curtis
I’d like to let you in on some of the inner workings of our Jing Project development here at TechSmith. We use a tool called Campfire that is a Web-based chat room of sorts that allows us to share documents and keeps a permanent log of past days and months. We use Campfire to ask quick questions to the group, troubleshoot, seek opinions and announce updates. Sometimes we talk about things that have nothing to do with Jing.
Jing 1.3 and 1.4 incorporated new features that required new buttons. You might be amazed at how much discussion and work goes into the simplest little button. Alan Dennis is our Interaction Designer, and he incorporates all the grief we give him into something tangible and “clickable.”
In this Jing video (0:58) I show you how Jing quimply enhanced our conversation about the little buttons in the upper right of the History window. (Audio is beneficial, but not required to get the gist of this demo.)
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Comments (11)
Hello, I like jing. But there is one Problem, please look at my test-page:
http://wordpress232.nanokultur.de/
As you see, my visitors have to push 2 times the play button. first, the player, second in the jing video.
I need an option, to not display the jing-play button. Can you help?
So that video starts, wenn player-startbutton is pushed.
Posted by blogfeuer | March 11, 2008 5:11 PM
Posted on March 11, 2008 17:11
blogfeuer--I'm going to need to do some digging, but I'm pretty sure you can set the Jing SWF to start playing automatically without a button press. It looks like you're hosting this yourself and using a Flash video player to play this content back.
You don't need to do this, as Jing videos have built-in controls (a scrubber, play/pause, mute) but there are some good reasons for doing it. Having a "click to play" image (in your case, a Flash player) means that your video isn't downloaded every time someone loads your page. I'm not really an HTML or Flash guy, but I suspect you might find some useful info in the embed code provided for movies at Screencast.com since they have similar functionality (only one click instead of a "double-click to play").
Let me know if this helps. I'll try to find some more information for you as well.
Posted by Matt Dyer | March 12, 2008 10:37 AM
Posted on March 12, 2008 10:37
Hello Jing Team --
Is there any way to set your capture area to 1024 x 720 and have your capture show at a smaller size? Say 600 x 400 or something? I tried changing the height/width parameters in the embed code but that just gave me a corner of the capture.
Very cool tool if you can get around this snag.
Ken
Posted by Ken Taylor | March 12, 2008 6:41 PM
Posted on March 12, 2008 18:41
Very cool. By day I am an instructional designer with a university nursing program, and have been wondering how to better provide training to busy faculty. Jing might just do the trick.
Posted by Lynda Williams | March 12, 2008 7:17 PM
Posted on March 12, 2008 19:17
Hi Ken,
Unfortunately, you cannot resize a video after the fact. Here's more info from a post Matt Dyer wrote on the subject. http://screencast.com/t/94SRCOxJ
Posted by Mike Curtis, TechSmith | March 13, 2008 3:00 PM
Posted on March 13, 2008 15:00
Is there any development in the way of file formats (ie. saving to something a little more useful than .swf)?
Posted by Alex Rodrigues | March 16, 2008 4:34 PM
Posted on March 16, 2008 16:34
Alex - we recognize the shortcomings as well as the benefits of the single .swf file we've been using with Jing. We do realize the lack of portability to other sites and the lack of easy editing of Jing videos due to our use of SWF.
What I can tell you is that there is a lot of discussion on how to resolve this problem and keep our goal of a single, portable, ubiquitous file format in tact. Will that include a change of the file format(s) we support? Quite possibly yes, but there are several factors to consider to do this right.
The last thing I want to do is to introduce a host of new formats, only to ruin the simplicity and efficiency of using Jing in that day by day visual conversation we are trying so hard to improve. Also, the file format itself is only one part of the equation to solve the various requests we've been receiving around Jing videos. We are working hard trying to answer those requests in best way possible and of course, in the spirit of Jing.
Thank you for your feedback, I hope this reveals some of our intentions as it relates to your question.
Best Regards,
Tony Dunckel
Product Manager
The Jing Project
Posted by Tony Dunckel | March 18, 2008 10:08 AM
Posted on March 18, 2008 10:08
I love this program--I had previously purchased a screen capture program, but with Jing sitting on my desktop all the time, it is much easier to access. Also, it does the very same job. Love it!
Posted by PAMELA H. | March 18, 2008 12:58 PM
Posted on March 18, 2008 12:58
WOW LOL IIIIIIIIII
LLLLLLOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEE JJJJJJJJIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG!!!
!!!!!!!!! Its the best ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!
Posted by Jessica | March 18, 2008 8:28 PM
Posted on March 18, 2008 20:28
I'm using Jing for QA projects to communicate various multi-step bugs to our developers. Very handy tool that hugely cuts down on time and miscommunications. Simple and easy to use - two great features!
Posted by Jason | March 24, 2008 4:12 PM
Posted on March 24, 2008 16:12
I posted an answer to a question on Expert Exchange, and one of the Zone administrators, thought that using Jing was the coolest solution post he had ever seen!
Thanks for making me look great!
http://screencast.com/t/iRoGC5ch
Posted by Dawn | March 27, 2008 1:55 PM
Posted on March 27, 2008 13:55