Anyway, with an animated GIF, it starts the animation right away. The benefit of Flash delivery is that you can have the start arrow (like the example above) so that the viewer can decide whether or not to view it.

So maybe using slower actions in the GIF would help, or perhaps adding a frame around it? Another problem, since I did not set the animation to repeat endlessly, is that when it stops, a viewer may not know that to view it again requires reloading the page.

Thanks for another informative post on screencasting. I agree there’s great potential for animated gifs in place of screencasts, particularly for illustrating short tasks that don’t require a voice explanation.

But (you knew there would be a “but”) when I first saw the animated gif in the display of this post in Bloglines, I thought it was an ad. Obviously, I didn’t look closely at the content of the “ad.” I simply noticed, and tried to tune out, the flashing graphic.

Had it displayed with the timing you intended I may not have had this reaction. But I can’t say that for sure. We’re so used to seeing flashing images as annoying that an ad was the first thought I had.

I wonder if there’s a way to start with a title slide and wait for the reader to activate it. If not, I’d stick to video mode until Camtasia addresses this issue. The reason is, I found it difficult to focus on the text because of the darn flashing. (But maybe that’s just my old eyes!)

Anyhoo, I’d be willing to test the file for you on The Virtual Chase. We don’t use blogging software. So, if you want to see if WordPress is the cause of the timing issue, you might be able to find out with a simple test on TVC.

Let me know.

Best,

Genie