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Our last post about how we got to SnagIt 9 is from Chris McQueen, from the Training Department. I love visiting the training department! They have lots of fun equipment (microphones, cameras, sound booth, etc) and they make lots of waffles for breakfast! And, on a side note, if you're ever in the Lansing area, I'm always happy to give you a tour of TechSmith and you're invited for waffles with Training! Doesn't get much better than that! Here's what Chris had to say about working on SnagIt 9...

The Training team is here to make you rock. We want you to be very successful with every product that TechSmith creates and understand all the great features the developers, user experience, and product managers come up with. Honestly, it’s about the coolest job ever; I work with awesome software and determined individuals.

When I started working with the SnagIt team, version 9 was about half way done. The user interface was 80% complete and the primary features for release were already in place. My job, with the information developer Kelly Mullins, was to convey the vision TechSmith had for SnagIt 9 and pass it along to you. But, since I came on late in the development cycle, I had to work within the existing structure and development time frame. For me, this meant being creative and flexible, something I’m sure you’re all familiar with. My first project was the 30-day tips, also known as the “Tip of the Day”, that appear during the trial period. In SnagIt 8, these were static graphics that highlighted a feature and had a link to a video. I wanted the SnagIt 9 tips to give customers a bit more guidance. Ideally, I wanted customers to look at this tip and be able to perform the steps after viewing it once. To do that, I knew I needed something more than just static images and text. I wanted something more dynamic. So, I decided to create animations that could convey the procedure or process.

Of course, the first thing I looked into using was Adobe Flash for the animations, but that requires each user to have the plug-in installed on their computer. Unfortunately, we have a lot of users that use SnagIt in corporate environments that may not allow Flash to run on their system. So, I applied a careful dose of Occam’s razor and decided on using animated GIFs for the tips. Animated GIFs have been around for a long time and they ensured 99.9% of our customer could view the animations. It also gave us a lot of control, with the fewest restrictions.

Using SnagIt and Photoshop we created 22 animations, 7 static graphics, and 1 graphic with a JavaScript mouse over effect. Of course, I didn’t do this all by myself; I had help from Anton Bollen (Instructional Specialist), Sylvania Dye, and Paul Middlin to get all the pieces to work together. I mentioned determined people above—these are the people I was talking about.

The other half of the SnagIt release was instructional videos. We created 15 videos for release, all of which you can find in the TechSmith Learning Center here. All of these are designed to introduce new customers to SnagIt and direct existing customers to their favorite features. These were a lot of fun to develop and I think are some of the best instructional videos ever released with SnagIt (post a comment if you disagree, I really appreciate the feedback.)

What’s nice is this isn’t the end to the training material for SnagIt 9. We got stuff already in the works and have plans for some exciting new ways to learn SnagIt and achieve that ever impressive status of “SnagIt Ninja”. As always, let us know what you enjoy and what doesn’t work for you. And, we’ll see you next time.

Chris McQueen is working on his degree in Instructional and Performance Technology from Boise State University.

Previous to TechSmith, Chris was a Technical Writer for a software company in Idaho and worked with the faculty at Brigham Young University-Idaho to help them integrate technology into their curriculum.

Currently he works with the SnagIt and Jing team. He loves his new Michigan home and doesn’t mind taking care of his kids when they’re sick. :-)