Pure-text help pages are pretty boring. So this evening I used Wink, an open-source screencasting program, to capture a quick series of screen shots. Still in Wink, I added some call-outs and circled highlights. Then I used the Wink “Export” feature to save the project as an HTML with JPG images.
Finally, I added the images to the Instructions page. You can see it via the menu near the top of this page. The screen shots make for a much nicer help page than just plain text.
I plan to do a video demo too. I won’t be using Wink, because its audio codec is awful. The narration sounds great in Wink, but then when rendered into a complete Flash file it sounds terrible. I’ve been playing with Camtasia, which seems to be the leading package, albeit a bit pricey.
Contract review: A final checklist
