I foresee a bit of panic in the future once Ning Creators have migrated their members and content over, when they realize that they should have put some indicators in place, telling members how to navigate the changes to their site.
I also anticipate a lot of confusion when NCs begin to relinquish control of groups to members and must describe to each and every one of them how to add pages and how groups work.
You could go the scribbled screenshot route but this just won't cut it for many. So I suggest trying out a tool that I've been using to create animated gif walkthroughs. Enter LICECAP by Cockos Incorporated. This is a tool that I have never heard of, until I ran across it 2 weeks ago and now I use it practically every day.
LICEcap can capture an area of your desktop and save it directly to .GIF (for viewing in web browsers, etc) or .LCF (see below).
LICEcap is an intuitive but flexible application (for Windows and now OSX), that is designed to be lightweight and function with high performance.
LICEcap is easy to use: view a demo (output is here).
Take this Gif for example. It Works!
Some Practical tips on Animated Gifs in Ning Networks
There has alway been a bit of confusion about how animated gif images can effectively work on Ning networks, for example. The truth is they will work (move on page) If they have been originally created with sizes below 750px wide. It is when they are resized that they no longer work.
For example, here is a GIF I made from a codepen I created and it will upload and move on page because it is not wider than 750px. In this screencast gif I will show you how width really matters:
But here is one I made from an experiment importing full facebook pages and Picasa Albums, which doesn't animate in the screen after upload.
But if you open the GIF in full screen (removed the ?width=750) it works perfectly, try it!
So My advise to you all is to anticipate the confusion before it happens and be ahead of the changes, so that your members feel comfortable with the migration.
As always, if you ever need help or would like to discuss your migration goals or design, simply connect with me on my profile. Happy to help!
Replies
Riccardo... you big show off!
lololol! ;D
Of course I"m the only idiot who can't figure it out. #typical LOL
I haven't tried it, but I'd probably have a hard time too, Kos. You're not alone!
thanks Ricardo... glad you got it working!
Love this. Thanks for posting.
my pleasure.. glad you're getting use out of it..
not sure if anyone else has noticed but take a look at this
another pretty useful solution for creating animated gifs on the fly http://recordit.co/
Thanks a lot Justin. Really appreciated for your whole explanatory post.