Once I have chosen the region of the screen I wish to work with, the remainder of the screen is switched to monochrome, firmly emphasizing my choice.
This is a nice approach, and will make sense to those not familiar with more complex screen capture and screencasting solutions. From there, once I have selected the region of the screen, I can decide what I would like to do with it. What I like about the cross-hair is that it pops up straight away for my selection of a screen region whether I am going to record video or capture an image.
The third option opens up a larger sun in the center of my screen, from which I can access help files, quit the application, send feedback to Techsmith or change my preferences in terms of whether or not I would like Jing to open on startup, and the hot key I would like to use to launch its capture capability. The second icon opens a new window with my previously recorded items in thumbnail format ready for me to scan through and preview if need be. When I roll over this minimized sun icon, it enlarges, presenting me with three icons - a cross-hair, photo-set and cog.Īs you'd expect, the cross-hair is for capturing images or videos, the photo-set is for accessing your library of files, and the cog is to change your settings.Ĭlicking on the first automatically creates a full-screen cross-hair with which I can drag and drop the portion of the screen I would like to record or capture. Minimalism is key here.Īt the top right of my screen there is a small, semi-transparent sun - apparently this can be changed to a menu-bar icon on the Mac. The Jing interface is its greatest asset and it is evident that a lot of time and care has been put into making it as accessible and intuitive as possible. In this short video from the Jing Project website you can get an instant feel for the capabilities and style of this useful tool: That said, if you are looking for a screen capture and screencasting tool that puts usability and simplicity at the forefront of its features - the kind of tool you could have your mother using in a minute or so - Project Jing is well worth checking out. This isn't to say, however, that the Jing Project interface is anything short of excellent, or its simple two-in-one capabilities a very welcome addition to the Techsmith line-up, but rather that there are a couple of minor flaws that let an otherwise great service down a little. Certainly, both are in evidence at this stage in development.
The idea is to provide a free tool to the public and gather their feedback on its strengths and weaknesses. Jing Project is less a beta-release than an experiment created to gather feedback in the creation of a new tool that aims to make screencasting and screen capture intuitive and straightforward.Īs such the TechSmith people are keen to stress that the features that may go into a final version of the product may not all be in evidence at this point in time. This is a simple but great achievement - bringing screen capture and screencasting to the masses. It is in this type of simple scenario that Jing Project really shines, making it easy for non-technical users to send and receive the kind of information that might be long-winded and confusing over the phone, or written at length in an email.
Equally, if you then want to show him how to fix it, step-by-step, you can easily do so by recording your screen with Jing Project. If your uncle on the other side of the planet is trying to show you what went wrong with his email application, Jing lets him take a screen grab, or take a quick video. In offering both means of recording your screen, Jing Project borrows a little something from its two well-known predecessors.īut where Camtasia and SnagIt pack the kind of feature-sets suitable for professionals, Jing is a pared-down, ultra-simple tool dedicated to making it super-easy for anyone to share the contents of their screen in seconds. Jing Project is the latest offering from Techsmith, the company behind popular Windows-based screen capture tool SnagIt and best-of-breed screencasting application Camtasia Studio. A new free tool allows you to do both from one incredibly simple interface. One of the easiest ways to communicate an application-based feature or issue is to take a screen capture or screencast of it.