Create a short screencast introducing Panels 2

This is a great idea and would be really useful.

A few worries about the current description:

1. Deliverables need to be more specific (ie. create a handbook page for the views module with your video script and a link to the video, etc.)

2. If you can I'd recommend providing an example situation that the student should use/create in their screencast. You might specify that if the student has a better idea they are free to ask if it's ok to go with that, but you might be the best at explaining a good use case for what you want the student to demonstrate in the screencast.

For an example of a task description that was very explicit and resulted in a very good handbook page and screencast, see http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...

Don't want to veer off-topic, but my .02: written documentation (especially including screenshots) is always much more valuable than screencasts. With written docs, I print and read them at my leisure wherever I want, then I set them by my keyboard and follow along as I try to carry out tasks. And I can back up, slow down, or do whatever necessary to go at my own pace.

In contrast, with screencasts I begin with a big download, which presents problems because I am in a medium-bandwidth world ("hello" from Central Asia). Once the download is successful, then I can watch the screencast only at my computer. When it comes time to work on my site, I can watch the screencast, then pause and close windows in order to do my work. Then I have to re-open the window to start again. And backtracking is a pain. The whole process presents major obstacles.

Screencasts are okay for screening presentations, but rarely if ever have I seen advantages to screencast/audiocast documentation over printable text/graphics. The one exception to this is a screencast combined with excellent printable documentation. I'd make the printables the first priority.

@femrich: Those are good comments, and for the most part I agree. But just in case you aren't familiar with the Panels2 story, merlinofchaos, who is the lead author of Panels2, is also working on Views2 and other projects important for many Drupal users as well as the drupal.org web site itself. Unfortunately, he is one of the the few people who understands Panels2 at this point.

The idea here was to get a screencast that demonstrated some of the awesome new features of Panels2. The hope is that such a screencast will help users get an idea of how to use Panels2, but also help to build interest in the module in the community with the hopes that then more people would use it, become familiar with it, and be able to write documentation for it.

If merlinofchaos were to sit down and write documentation for Panels2, that's time that he's not doing something else that is likely important to him and the community. It's much easier for the community to help out with documentation than it is to help write the code itself, so that's why he's asking for help.

You might not have noticed but there are also 2 separate GHOP issues for writing Panels2 API documentation (see http://drupal.org/node/200677 and http://drupal.org/node/200683).

So, while I understand your point, we'll take any kind of help we can get with documenting Panels 2, and if a screencast is what interests a student most, that's awesome. We've had several other GHOP tasks that have also resulted in awesome screencasts also, and I expect this will as well.

Hi aclight.

Points taken. I was not at all familiar with the specifics of the plan in this case. And certainly any documentation is better than none. Wasn't trying to suggest, either, that Merlin of Chaos stop coding and start writing docs. I have learned that his contributions to Drupal are enormous, and I appreciate them greatly--even the ones I cannot yet grasp. And I have directly benefited from several of his contributions all the more because drupal community members pitched in with docs and discussion. I guess really I was letting out my general frustration with what I see as a growing tendency online to produce more screen/audiocasts rather than written docs. In any case, I am looking forward to Panels2 and to Views2, and I will keep watching discussions to try to learn how best to make use of them.

Best regards,

Frederick

I'm out of time so I can't polish it up right now but I took a stab at making this a task:

Panels 2 is a great deal more complicated than Panels 1, even while having a much more friendly and intuitive user interface. A screencast walk-through of the basic features could be extremely useful. The task is to create a short
(not more than 10 minutes) video to walk the viewer through the process of creating a panel page containing a mini panel.

* Preparation: You will need an example site with panels 2 beta 1, panels_tabs, and panels_carousel, and their dependencies installed. You will also need to thoroughly familiarize yourself with panel pages and mini panels.

* Create a mini panel:
* Use the tabs style
* Add some dummy content to each tab. Funny newspaper headlines are good. Use your imagination. If you can't think of anything, Lorem Ipsum will work.

* Create a mini panel:
* Use the carousel style
* Add enough content to loop through the carousel

* Create a panel page:
* Use the two column stacked layout
* Add some dummy content to the top, perhaps a lead in story.
* Add the tabs styled mini panel to the left pane.
* Add the carousel styled mini panel to the right pane.
* Leave the bottom panel empty or close it off with more dummy text.

* Post the resulting screencast in the videos and slides section of the handbook and link to it from http://groups.drupal.org/panels .

Resources:
http://drupal.org/project/panels
http://drupal.org/project/panels_tabs
http://drupal.org/project/panels_carousel

Michelle

merlin, in your opinion does this hit the highlights of what users are likely going to want to know? If so, it looks good to me.

I'd be interested in doing this, if we move this forward.

I'm setting this to code needs work only because the videocast guidelines at http://drupal.org/node/62196 should be included as a reference and the task description should specify that they be followed.

There's no need to get another RTBC here, however. Merlinofchaos, Michelle, or anyone else, feel free to taskify this (with the above mentioned change) at your pleasure. See instructions at http://groups.drupal.org/node/7360#tasks (starting with the 3rd bullet point) for more information. You don't need to be a member of the GHOP group to post a task, however. If you aren't you won't be able to set the status or clean up the tags, but one of us will take care of that once you post the issue. But you're welcome to be a member--just contact me or one of the other GHOP admins in IRC or whatever.

Just an FYI, I'm getting ready to go out of town so likely won't be able to do anything with this before Monday.

Michelle

Task submitted and finished.