Extension:Screencasting

Description
This extensions adds a screecast recorder to MediaWiki. For this the videos are uploaded to the online service skoffer.com.

You will find a new button on the edit pages which can be used to start the Java based screencast recorder directly from the browser, without installing anything on your computer.

There are two demo screencasts available here, in case you want to get an idea about it.

The first screencast shows how the second one is recorded.

If you want to record a screencast by your self, without installing the plugin first, you can make a test run of the used screen recorder here.

Installation
Please upload the folder "skoffer" from the zip-file you downloaded into the folder "extensions" on your webspace. To activate the plugin, download your file "LocalSettings.php" from your webspace, add the line below to the end of the file (use you favourite text editor for that), and upload it again.

Please open your wiki in your Web browser and login as an Administrator. Type "MediaWiki:Common.js" in the searchbox and click on "Go". Click on the "edit" (maybe it says "create" instead of "edit") button just like everytime you want to edit a page (it´s not important if the page is empty or already has content). Copy and paste the content of the file "Code for Common.js.txt" to the bottom of the page and save.

Use
You will find a new button on the edit page which can be used to start the screencast recorder. Please note that since the screen recorder is Java based you need Java (equal or higher version 1.5, also known as Java 5), which is preinstalled on Apple computers and most Windows PCs, installed. If you don´t have Java installed, you can download a copy from Java.com. If you want to check if you have Java installed, you can check your Java version at http://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp. Please note that you don´t need the latest version. Java 1.5 was released in 2004.

Setup
You don´t need to setup anything after the installation. In case you want to change the width and height (default 600x450 pixels) of the video player (which shows the screencasts on your wiki), please open the file skoffer.php in your favourite texteditor and change the numbers in the lines

$width = 600; $height = 450;

to your needs.

Licensing and downloads
The extension is available under the GNU General Public License 3.0 or later. You can download a copy from

http://www.stefanschulzesteinmann.com/downloads/current_skoffer_mediawiki_plugin.zip.

If you need help, you can write me an email here, or in case you don´t have a mediawiki.org account via this contact form.

Downloading flashfiles
There is a small bashscript for downloading all the skoffer-flashfiles within a wiki. The script is stored in the discussion page.