I've been posting here for a little while, and maintain some tutorials over at my site Up Your A11y, but so far it's all written content.
I'm toying with the idea of creating some YouTube videos that cover similar content, just so people can choose the medium they prefer.
Do people like/prefer video tutorials? What do you find most useful in a video tutorial and what are your pet peeves with them?
Latest comments (61)
Which one is helpful what do u think?
Poke poke, here have a recent answer from someone you don't even know: I like written tutorial, and also on occasion I like written tutorials, and did I mention written tutorials? There are far too many bloated, cannot-find-the-gist-of-it, hard-to-understand-that-persons-voice, poorly-structured, way-too-long-introduction, ended-up-not-even-having-what-I-was-looking-for video tutorials out there!! On the flipside, a well-made video could save time, however, the ratio of good:bad is like 2:98, which cancels out that one pro :( I hope that was clear enough to understand :) (oh I was writing, so you probably did hahah!!)
Both, the only thing that i think it ruins a tutorial is showing the code at the very first of the tutorial or while you explain it, the code snippets have to go at the very end of the tutorial, that's the best way to learn, but if i have to choose one i prefer written tutorials because i can go at my own pace.
For just code I prefer it written. But when it is focused on styling I would enjoy it better in video.
video for overview and basic understanding of concepts
written for in-depth and for tutorials to follow
I’m a visual learner so I love video tutorials. I think my only pet peeve is when videos don’t show real world applications to what they are trying to teach. I want to excited about learning something new and at the possibility of using it!
Written, written, written. No doubt about it. Videos are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too slow (not to mention the audio quality of some videos)
Very interested in this subject and surprised to see a lot of people prefer written tutorials. I think written works best if there are step by step instructions (e.g. commands to run), and video if you need to really learn a subject. I am a fan of video and I am very picky about the video format. It must be already zooming to code, explain only one concept at a time, be free of sentences that don’t improve your understanding, clear of words that don’t add meaning (actually, um, really, possibly), not be slow paced,- every second counts, should go in depth. Here is my tutorial where I tried to adhere to these rules (became #2 nodejs video on freeCodecamp) getbuzz.io/c/learning-expressjs
Thanks for the link - I'll have a look! I think the general consensus seems to be that, like you say, thought and care needs to go into making videos concise and clear, otherwise they end up just being a frustration! Definitely good to have some examples to look at 😁
I go for video tutorials divided into small sections with maximum duration of 10mins. This helps me to watch the tutorial first and then practice them part by part.
Yeah I think length is key. Ten minutes seems like a good amount of time
As a lot of concepts, it depends - I certainly prefer video tutorials as it it most cases include some examples with explanations on-the-go, last resort would be written tutorials/documentations, but they are not great everywhere and a lot of times lack different use cases / examples.