Feedback on screencasts, pretty please!

[Andy Howells]

Hey guys,

As some of you know I created CodeBoxers over the Christmas break as a side project, I’ve just started with a screencast series and have done 3 videos so far.

Would really appreciate if you guys could spare a few minutes to give me some feedback on them and let me know if they’re on the right track, easy to understand etc or indeed if they’re super boring or too fast and so forth.

http://codeboxers.com/videos/

Many thanks!

[chrisburton]

I’ll definitely give you my opinion later tonight when I actually have time. Looking forward to seeing these.

[nilspedersen]

Hi Andy,

First of great vids – Finaly someone is showing how SASS is working in realtime.

Saw the screencasts in crome, and it seemed to my like there was a little delay from when you’re doing the coding and speaking afterwoulds.

Other than that I enjoyed watching the vids.

Regards Nils

[frijolito56]

I agree with @scottnix its very hard to look at the code when your not in fullscreen mode.

[chrisburton]

Great screencast, Andy. I’m tempted to start working with sass (is that the correct term?). It seems quite simple to grasp and faster to write. I wasn’t aware you could create variables which is pretty neat.

One thing I don’t like about full width videos is how the video is taller than my browser’s viewport (like on this site), so I automatically click fullscreen anyway.

Would love to see a screencast on working with Kirby compared to WordPress and then link it up in my discussion. By the way, glad to see that heartbeat demo. Nice job.

[frijolito56]

> @chrisburton Would love to see a screencast on working with Kirby compared to WordPress and then link it up in my discussion. By the way, glad to see that heartbeat demo. Nice job.

Yes that would be awesome!

[Andy Howells]

Hey all,

Many thanks for the awesome feedback.

@nilspedersen – Hmm, I’ll definitely do some testing, I’ve been using Screenflow so maybe theres something in the settings.

@scottnix & @frijolito56 – Thanks for the recommendation, I’ve adjusted the video article container now so they will appear as full width. I’m using FitVids.js by @chriscoyier so they will downsize nicely if you want to trim them down a bit, or have your code editor side by side.

@chrisburton – Great idea, I’ll be using Git Tower later when the static HTML/CSS is done, so creating a fork for a WordPress theme – so at that time, or indeed once the WP theme is done, we can fork again and create a Kirby theme.

[Andy Howells]

As a side question, what would be an ideal length for these videos?

2 have gone up to the 20 minute mark, the others are around 10 or so, but I’m conscious that people don’t necessarily have loads of time to spare.

What would be the optimum for you guys?

[Chris Coyier]

I struggle with that length thing too. I went long in a lot of the Lodge videos, but I know that most people prefer short and I know I do too.

I’ve started a new series and I’m trying to stay under 10.

These are great Andy, keep going!

[chrisburton]

@andy_unleash @chriscoyier I actually prefer longer videos that explain in detail what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The only part I dislike about any screencast, are long introductions.

[Andy Howells]

@chriscoyier – Many thanks for the encouragement. I think I’m going to stick to the 10min mark as well, I don’t want people to get bored and switch off and also want to make it easy for them to jump in and out.

Thanks for the recommendation on ScreenFlow as well – totes awesome.

@chrisburton – Cheers for the feedback, I think some may have to.

For my next series or during this one I’ll do a “Learn a tool in 5 mins” thing, like show someone how to use Codekit in 5 minutes or something.

[Andy Howells]

@scottnix – Thanks dude.

Regarding not using Emmet for SCSS – Simply, my brain doesn’t have enough room in it to memorise those shortcuts! To be honest the HTML stuff in emmet is great for me, since it’s ul>li*3 (so a ul with 3 li’s in it) so it’s expressive, but because the CSS stuff is just shortcut’s I would spend so much time trying to remember it would be quicker just to type them out!

Re: border-box, I usually do stick it straight onto the *, for the video though I wanted to ease people into it with a straight forward example, I’ll likely be doing that in the next video.

On the clearfix, I choose to add it as a class for two reasons, one of which is habit, the other is because I can quickly see in my HTML code that I’ve setup clearing already.

I can appreciate the CMS point though, so it’s definitely worth considering, but most of the customer projects Unleash does we use Perch as our CMS, so they just get multiple regions they can type into where all the HTML is behind the scenes.

I’m quite a control freak with my code as well, it took some convincing to use Compass at all at the beginning, I was crafting my own mixins to be 100% in charge!

[Andy Howells]

@scottnix – Will do, thanks again for your feedback – I think I’ll definitely do a show and tell of apps and workflow as a separate series as well to highlight some of the tools and sublime plugins I use.

[Andy Howells]

@jshjohnson – Many thanks for your feedback, I’m going to keep cracking on with these. Is there anything in particular that you would like to learn more about or have something explained in more depth?

[Watson90]

@AndyHowells – I can not see the videos in work as they block the use of Vimeo on the network. So therefore I am unable to tell whether or not you have included anything about RWD in them. Apologies if you have…

I noticed that Code Boxers is responsive and also your company website is so you obviously know what you’re doing :) it’d be great to maybe get a better insight into that part of web development.

Keep up the good work, man!

[Author]

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