Goodbye User Manuals, Hello Screencasts: The End of the Traditional User Guide?

... this is a growing phenomenon, and an excellent one too. It has long been a problem with software that it takes time and effort to get to know an application properly. With large professional Applications you are often willing to put in the time and effort to learn it regardless, but when trying out shareware or smaller pieces of software, I find that if an Application doesn’t grab my attention quickly I will often abandon it for something that does. I know this sounds like laziness, but sometimes you are just too busy to invest the time. By using simple quicktime videos, a developer can give a much better overview to an application and allow the potential user to get into the software much quicker. More than that though, it is a great boon for end users to quickly see what a software product can do and immerse themselves in the features without having to go through pages of documentation first. I hope more software developers realize this in the future and we start to see the traditional user manual replaced with a more media rich and easier to follow alternative.

Goodbye User Manuals, Hello Screencasts: The End of the Traditional User Guide? at thomas fitzgerald.net