Yes! You can sign up now and record your own casts. For now it's focused on client-side libraries, but we're looking at supporting server-side languages as well.
I was watching the flexbox video and modified the CSS code but the view layout didn't update. I clicked the save button thinking that would update the view, but then it had me sign up. After signing up, I ended up with a fork of the video. Cool, but not what I wanted.
All I really wanted to do was fool around with the code while I had it paused, see the updates in the layout, and click play again - at which point I would have expected the code to revert to the script.
This is really awesome! I was wondering about how you are planning to monetize or sustain the project.
Are you going to give the ability for users to monetize their own contributions?
Tip for people trying this out, to experience it fully you have to:
- login with github
- edit some text
- then hit play again. The preview will then update.
- also, you can record your own edits to the video.
I am surprised by the quality and thoughtful demos.
Some simple things would make it better, like updating automatically without hitting play. Also, I think the videos should have x buttons to close them, not just clicking in another area.
Nice to hear you praise the quality. We haven't spent a lot of time on producing the current casts, it's just that the tool makes it easy to create casts of high-production value. No more fiddling with screen-recording software and post-production. It makes a big difference when you can go from "I want to explain this" to a finished cast in three minutes.
The "casts are shown in an overlay"-feature was released yesterday. It certainly requires more iterations. Thanks for the feedback.
Neat! The audience for the tool seems to be someone who can hear, though. Has there been any awareness or discussion of those who cannot hear? Of those that cannot hear, a large majority use captioning or sign language. Video in a PIP mode, or captioning support, would go a long way in including everyone to the party. Also, the earlier these features are added, the more content is accessible.
In the last few weeks I've been thinking something similar would be great for podcasts. Not on-screen editing, but tools for displaying information and soliciting feedback.
In my case I've been listening to a lot of podcasts about real estate. Frequently they reference a PDF or web site to sign up for more info. It would be nice if that just showed up onscreen rather than having to open a browser on my phone (especially when I'm in the car).
Dedicated apps can do this, of course, but I an open protocol would have a lot more uptake from semi-technical people who want to create simple online course distributed via podcast.
There is so much opportunity for learning here... I agree, I wish podcasts had some kind of technology that allowed you to follow things that are hard to convey through Audio.
I once started writing a podcast app like that. As a listener I would reallly like the idea. Unfortunately I don't see why a podcaster would do the job of adding metadata on my platform if they don't get anything out of it. If it was a core of their value proposition, they would probably use a mooc platform and not a podcast.
Then I though I would probably need to build a more useful tool to manage other needs of a publisher, like website, feed generation, pushing to multiple platforms, etc. That way I would have all sorts of metadata for free AND I would provide value to the publishers (automatic publishing to all other platforms). I could host the content too and give them download numbers, could post listening habits from my app, and all that.
But that is a lot of work though, before I can provide any value to either the listeners or the publishers.
Then I listened to a podcast about the podcast ecosystem (how meta) about
how podcasters actually benefit from the ecosystem being so distributed.
If there was a single format for metadata dictated by a single company (would probably be apple) it would eat into their advertising revenue. They would not admit it, but it's actually good for publishers if they only have rough download numbers. Without clicks, they can just make up their numbers, and sell ads even though everyone fast forwards on the ads. If they had actual clicks, their revenue would become dependent on it.
For sponsored podcasts you're right. But much of what I listen to doesn't have advertising, or it's indirect in the form of interviewing guests who promote their products.
For example, one of the podcasts I really like is run by a guy who a) knows a lot about real estate and b) sells a SaaS product for people who want to do what he does. He frequently references show notes, PDFs, webinar signups and the like in his show, and I engage with most of that stuff... if I remember to do it when I get home.
In his case the value per customer is quite high, so he would probably make the investment in rich media. He doesn't have sponsors and so isn't beholden to click through rates.
And I'd wager that's true for the vast majority of podcasts. A handful make money from advertising because they have really large audiences. The rest do it as a hobby or to promote their businesses.
Much like IanDrake said, this is super cool but kind of "primes" the user into thinking that he'll be able to play around with the code while paused. It'd be great if you supported that, e.g. by doing a "fork" into local storage.
Anyway, the project is really great and impressive! :)
<rant>
I cannot wait for the "everything needs to be a small looping video clip" fad to go away.
Video clips of typing make no sense. The animation is distracting, it provides no useful information, and they always either loop too quickly (frustrating me because I lose my place and have to wait for the whole thing to come back), or go too slowly (frustrating me because it won't hurry up). A 3 second loop is great for a hamster meme, it's not great for displaying text that I want to read.
It's like an entire group of people completely misunderstood why GIF animations were despised and died off.
Seriously, what value are these video clips adding?
</rant>
Wow this is so much better than a traditional video explanation of code. Really well done and polished for a beta project.
Speaking of 'beta', what is the plan for Scrimba? Are you interested in it being an open place for sharing videos and demonstrations? Or are you planning on monetizing in some way?
Just to post in blogs, github pages, etc. I'm biased but I think you would get free marketing if people embed it, and a paid feature for people to keep them private (password locked, whatever).
That way people who publish free educational content (freecodeacademy, me - example, a todo app tutorial: http://gun.js.org/think.html , etc.) would spread scrimba awareness. The inverse, sites that charge for classes - Udemy, etc., have a natural incentive to keep their content secret, which they'd have to pay for.
Great job! Is there any other way to login that's not github? I'm trying to move away from github and so far the only thing preventing me are sites that require github login. It would be great if you offered just plain old email login :)
I really like the idea and I expect to see a lot of great tutorials in this format.
I would really use a version that works with tmux or iterm though, something like asciinema but for multiple terminals + a browser. I wouldn't even mind if the result is read only as long as the viewer can copy paste from it.
Edit: Just to add one more note: I know recording terminal and chrome at the same time is too complicated to productize, but I wouldn't mind having to set it up. I am a developer. I set things up.
Thanks. Yes, other (server-side) languages are definitely coming. We're currently working with a prototype that integrates with Jupyter/IPython, and we're also playing with the idea of using Docker images for giving a full terminal. The biggest challenge is to give a powerful execution environment and make it easy for the viewer to play with the code and be able to run it.
Have you guys seen https://runkit.com/ ? I suspect they are using something like docker for snapshot and replaying. I'm sure there are some tricks to be learned from them
Really cool tool. Congratulations and great job! Look forward to seeing where this goes.
Feedback: the rerun project button is hard to locate and not prominent. I wanted to rerun the project after making some changes. I felt encouraged to save (fork) or resume playback, overwriting my edits. Make it more intuitive to rerun after making an edit.
114 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] threadIs it recorded using the scrimba.com website ? Is it only for web code ? The about page https://scrimba.com/about does not explain much.
Also, really really well done!
I was watching the flexbox video and modified the CSS code but the view layout didn't update. I clicked the save button thinking that would update the view, but then it had me sign up. After signing up, I ended up with a fork of the video. Cool, but not what I wanted.
All I really wanted to do was fool around with the code while I had it paused, see the updates in the layout, and click play again - at which point I would have expected the code to revert to the script.
Tip for people trying this out, to experience it fully you have to:
- login with github - edit some text - then hit play again. The preview will then update.
- also, you can record your own edits to the video.
I am surprised by the quality and thoughtful demos.
Some simple things would make it better, like updating automatically without hitting play. Also, I think the videos should have x buttons to close them, not just clicking in another area.
The "casts are shown in an overlay"-feature was released yesterday. It certainly requires more iterations. Thanks for the feedback.
To run the code, press the play icon in the top right corner. When you hover over it, it says 'Run code'.
We clearly have some UX challenges here :)
In the last few weeks I've been thinking something similar would be great for podcasts. Not on-screen editing, but tools for displaying information and soliciting feedback.
In my case I've been listening to a lot of podcasts about real estate. Frequently they reference a PDF or web site to sign up for more info. It would be nice if that just showed up onscreen rather than having to open a browser on my phone (especially when I'm in the car).
Dedicated apps can do this, of course, but I an open protocol would have a lot more uptake from semi-technical people who want to create simple online course distributed via podcast.
Then I though I would probably need to build a more useful tool to manage other needs of a publisher, like website, feed generation, pushing to multiple platforms, etc. That way I would have all sorts of metadata for free AND I would provide value to the publishers (automatic publishing to all other platforms). I could host the content too and give them download numbers, could post listening habits from my app, and all that. But that is a lot of work though, before I can provide any value to either the listeners or the publishers.
Then I listened to a podcast about the podcast ecosystem (how meta) about how podcasters actually benefit from the ecosystem being so distributed. If there was a single format for metadata dictated by a single company (would probably be apple) it would eat into their advertising revenue. They would not admit it, but it's actually good for publishers if they only have rough download numbers. Without clicks, they can just make up their numbers, and sell ads even though everyone fast forwards on the ads. If they had actual clicks, their revenue would become dependent on it.
For example, one of the podcasts I really like is run by a guy who a) knows a lot about real estate and b) sells a SaaS product for people who want to do what he does. He frequently references show notes, PDFs, webinar signups and the like in his show, and I engage with most of that stuff... if I remember to do it when I get home.
In his case the value per customer is quite high, so he would probably make the investment in rich media. He doesn't have sponsors and so isn't beholden to click through rates.
And I'd wager that's true for the vast majority of podcasts. A handful make money from advertising because they have really large audiences. The rest do it as a hobby or to promote their businesses.
Anyway, the project is really great and impressive! :)
Video clips of typing make no sense. The animation is distracting, it provides no useful information, and they always either loop too quickly (frustrating me because I lose my place and have to wait for the whole thing to come back), or go too slowly (frustrating me because it won't hurry up). A 3 second loop is great for a hamster meme, it's not great for displaying text that I want to read.
It's like an entire group of people completely misunderstood why GIF animations were despised and died off.
Seriously, what value are these video clips adding? </rant>
Speaking of 'beta', what is the plan for Scrimba? Are you interested in it being an open place for sharing videos and demonstrations? Or are you planning on monetizing in some way?
That way people who publish free educational content (freecodeacademy, me - example, a todo app tutorial: http://gun.js.org/think.html , etc.) would spread scrimba awareness. The inverse, sites that charge for classes - Udemy, etc., have a natural incentive to keep their content secret, which they'd have to pay for.
Edit: Just to add one more note: I know recording terminal and chrome at the same time is too complicated to productize, but I wouldn't mind having to set it up. I am a developer. I set things up.
Feedback: the rerun project button is hard to locate and not prominent. I wanted to rerun the project after making some changes. I felt encouraged to save (fork) or resume playback, overwriting my edits. Make it more intuitive to rerun after making an edit.
[0]: http://imba.io
The desktop experience, though, is better than comparable stuff I've seen. Nice work.