7 ms·

Text-based terminal screencasts

293 points by daw___ 13y ago

beshrkayali 13y ago
Wow! This is quite awesome! Would love to have live streaming capability for this (though I can't think about a reason to use it yet, but I'm sure it'll be handy.)
- krishnasrinivas 13y ago
  Actually, I am working on something similar i.e being able to share terminals using browser.
  - beshrkayali 13y ago
    Cool! Realtime terminal hacking... now that's something I can use.
    - sdqali 13y ago
      This has existed for ages in the form of GNU Screen. (Or Byobu, if you want a variation with bells and whistles.)
q_revert 13y ago
the ability to copy/paste is particularly useful in this case, given that that's what most people end up doing anyway.. particularly for more complicated commands
- agumonkey 13y ago
  This, and also it's efficient. As much as I like video screencasts, I cringe everytime I think I am actually watching an ASCII streams exposed through highly complex high-resolution megabytes long compressed video. Makes me wanna finish my emacs-repl-screencast-mode.el ..
grk 13y ago
http://ascii.io/ http://ascii.io/ does the same and was around for a while, but showterm's text selection works better.
- matthiasv 13y ago
  shelr.tv is also doing the same for more than a year now but compared to ascii.io and showterm.io doesn't look as polished.
- a-nikolaev 13y ago
  ascii.io works great with ncurses games http://ascii.io/a/4682 http://ascii.io/a/4682 Showterm had buggy black background http://showterm.io/ff11970f1363de1386cbc http://showterm.io/ff11970f1363de1386cbc
  - sgtnasty 13y ago
    Where is that game "cursor war"? Looks cool, easier on the eyes than dwarf fortress.
    - a-nikolaev 13y ago
      it's called curse of war https://github.com/a-nikolaev/curseofwar/wiki https://github.com/a-nikolaev/curseofwar/wiki
- dlutcat 13y ago
  I have using ascii.io for quite a while, and it has repositories for share with others. I like it!
nkuttler 13y ago
I think the script should ask for a confirmation before uploading stuff. Somebody could get distracted and forget that script runs.
- davemaya 13y ago
  agreed. This is a dangerous utility akin to a key logger.
  - D9u 13y ago
    You don't have to install it in order to use it. bash <(curl record.showterm.io) Records everything in that terminal until you exit, then gives you a URL to share.
xSwag 13y ago
What happens if I run something like htop?
- beefsack 13y ago
  http://showterm.io/5837e92554dcbeaea129b http://showterm.io/5837e92554dcbeaea129b
  - gpmcadam 13y ago
    What about tmux?
    - daw___ 13y ago
      it does exactly the same as the above htop's screencast
reustle 13y ago
I've been thinking of better ways to do programming tutorials and something like this is roughly what I had in mind. Thanks for open sourcing it!
- markm208 13y ago
  If you are interested in seeing code examples from a text editor or IDE we are working on Storyteller: http://www.storytellersoftware.com http://www.storytellersoftware.com Everything is stored locally and the tool can generate an HTML playback file that can be passed around. One can also make comments during the playback. There tends not to be a great place to document how code evolves, we think a playback is the best place for this. Its not quite ready for prime time yet but it will be soon. Our long term goals are to make a web app to store playbacks and to make it the next generation of version control.
pdkl95 13y ago
Nice - it automagically translates "CSI 38:5:FG m CSI 48:5:BG m" properly. ( http://showterm.io/6ed840f381fd81a881176 http://showterm.io/6ed840f381fd81a881176 ) This will be very useful! That said, I have to second the concern above that it should ask for confirmation before uploading; just auto-uploading could be an in issue if somebody accidentally pastes sensitive information into the terminal.
- riskable 13y ago
  I just created a recording using Gate One of the same command (well, I think it is the same) for comparison purposes: http://riskable.com/files/GateOne_recording-20130810130840.html http://riskable.com/files/GateOne_recording-20130810130840.h... Try resizing your browser while that is playing back (go really small) for a special treat :)
plg 13y ago
Q1: is there a way to download the resulting screencast so that it can be viewed off the network? Q2: is there a way to do this without having to upload anything? e.g. pipe to a file locally?
- gopher 13y ago
  try script(1) and scriptreplay(1)
  - krishnasrinivas 13y ago
    Or ttyrec(1) and ttyplay(1)
  - poulson 13y ago
    This unfortunately doesn't support the use case of simply wanting to personally back up the screencasts sent to showterm.io.
daw___ 13y ago
Source code of showterm: client[1], server[2] [1] https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm [2] https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm.io https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm.io
- dannyrosen 13y ago
  Mind scrubbing your database.yaml and making a gist? I'm new to rails
bilalq 13y ago
This is such an incredible idea. I can already see tons of use cases for it. CLI apps can easily demo themselves through this. It even recognizes backspaces! I'm using a patched font with a git branch symbol in my prompt[0]. As expected, it only displays on devices that have that font installed. Colors don't match my actual terminal either, but that's just a minor problem. [0] http://showterm.io/e49d0900602104ae4850f http://showterm.io/e49d0900602104ae4850f
riskable 13y ago
Gate One has had this feature for ages. You can export your terminal logs to HTML payback files or as traditional flat logs. You can then share them however you like... Web, email, whatever. It works with full screen apps like tmux, vim, htop, etc. It even plays back images (if the user output them to the terminal).
telemachos 13y ago
I agreed with the people saying that a confirmation before uploading would be helpful, so I went to file an issue. It turns out there is one there already. You can weigh in here: https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm/issues/12 https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm/issues/12. EDIT: A follow up: It turns out that there is a slightly hidden and indirect way to abort uploads. Start the program as `showterm -e`, and it will offer you a chance to edit timings before uploading. (This is intended to give you a chance to trim out long pauses.) At that point, if you can cause your editor to abort with a non-zero status, the upload aborts. For Vim users, the gem's author points to exiting with `:cq`. See here: https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm/blob/master/bin/showterm#L84-L99 https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm/blob/master/bin/show...
daw___ 13y ago
I'm doing some tests [1] with showterm's screencasts embedded in a web page and, argh, apparently you can't control the autorun feature, pretty annoying. I think that if it had a set of "play"/"pause"/"rewind"/"forward" buttons, tons of websites would benefit (for docs, examples, tutorials, etc). [1] https://googledrive.com/host/0B9lMEsFXwv0ZLVh5dkRfdmw1UnM/ https://googledrive.com/host/0B9lMEsFXwv0ZLVh5dkRfdmw1UnM/
voltagex_ 13y ago
So if you can work out how to add a red ● to your prompt, this'd be a really good way to indicate recording.
- geocar 13y ago
  That's easy enough: PS1=`printf "\033[1;31m\342\227\217\033[0m\\$ "` sh
  - voltagex_ 13y ago
    Thanks, I was missing the printf.
kaichanvong 13y ago
Would love to see most viewed showterm videos! :)
chjj 13y ago
Author of term.js/tty.js[1] here. Nice work. You guys should keep an eye on term.js. The version you're using is slightly old and actually contains a bug (now fixed) wherein all events will become unbound if the reset control sequence is received. I'm also adding fixes for a few other things currently, such as double-width character support, which has been a problem in the past. [1] https://github.com/chjj/term.js https://github.com/chjj/term.js
- cirwin 13y ago
  Hey chjj, thank you so much for tty.js! You definitely deserve the credit for doing all the hard work :).
tibbon 13y ago
One thing that I think could help out a bit would be to show key commands as they are pressed as well. I'd love to use this to show my students software development things (using vim or emacs for editor), but showing them the keypresses I make as well is critical for some text editors newbies.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  I regret I have but one upvote to give this feature. Can't wait to play around with this. edit: I actually was thinking about this feature on tty.js rather than showterm.io. I might see how hard it would be to implement it.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
hngiszmo 13y ago
I wonder about credentials leaking to the service. When I show off connecting to a server that uses login/password, will this also be recorded and uploaded or only keys that actually change the ui? How about ncurses apps?
- hngiszmo 13y ago
  http://showterm.io/5837e92554dcbeaea129b http://showterm.io/5837e92554dcbeaea129b answers the ncurses question and i'm impressed.
- krishnasrinivas 13y ago
  it records only the characters echoed to the terminal-emulator by the pty device (hence passwords are not recorded)
kolev 13y ago
Here's another interesting library by floobits: https://floobits.com/help/floomatic/ https://floobits.com/help/floomatic/
paddy_m 13y ago
awesome. I tried a while ago with terminalcast.com. hopefully this gets more traction. integration with native terminal emulators would be great, so you can start recording at any point in time.
rfnslyr 13y ago
If I want to go back on your site, it keeps me on your site. Absolutely infuriating, remove this.
prezjordan 13y ago
Pretty cool, but unfortunately it does not work with my PS1 [0]. Looks like any PS1 with a shell call in it won't work. [0]: http://github.com/impromptu/impromptu http://github.com/impromptu/impromptu
basicallydan 13y ago
This is really sweet! As well as some of the other features requested, real-time might be nice, too. Plus, the option to cut out backspaces and only go with the finished command might be cool, in case the screencaster has made some mistakes along the way.
shykes 13y ago
I've been using ascii.io for a while - I would be interested in a comparison between the two.
vysakh0 13y ago
I just tried to play around with showterm. Why does it have a different theme? When I use Vim with solarized theme, showterm shows it in a different ugly way. http://showterm.io/15104fd85863532b74150 http://showterm.io/15104fd85863532b74150 Am i doing something wrong?

293 points by daw___ 13y ago

Wow! This is quite awesome! Would love to have live streaming capability for this (though I can't think about a reason to use it yet, but I'm sure it'll be handy.)

krishnasrinivas 13y ago
Actually, I am working on something similar i.e being able to share terminals using browser.
- beshrkayali 13y ago
  Cool! Realtime terminal hacking... now that's something I can use.
  - sdqali 13y ago
    This has existed for ages in the form of GNU Screen. (Or Byobu, if you want a variation with bells and whistles.)

q_revert 13y ago

the ability to copy/paste is particularly useful in this case, given that that's what most people end up doing anyway.. particularly for more complicated commands

agumonkey 13y ago
This, and also it's efficient. As much as I like video screencasts, I cringe everytime I think I am actually watching an ASCII streams exposed through highly complex high-resolution megabytes long compressed video. Makes me wanna finish my emacs-repl-screencast-mode.el ..

grk 13y ago

http://ascii.io/ http://ascii.io/ does the same and was around for a while, but showterm's text selection works better.

matthiasv 13y ago
shelr.tv is also doing the same for more than a year now but compared to ascii.io and showterm.io doesn't look as polished.
a-nikolaev 13y ago
ascii.io works great with ncurses games http://ascii.io/a/4682 http://ascii.io/a/4682 Showterm had buggy black background http://showterm.io/ff11970f1363de1386cbc http://showterm.io/ff11970f1363de1386cbc
- sgtnasty 13y ago
  Where is that game "cursor war"? Looks cool, easier on the eyes than dwarf fortress.
  - a-nikolaev 13y ago
    it's called curse of war https://github.com/a-nikolaev/curseofwar/wiki https://github.com/a-nikolaev/curseofwar/wiki
dlutcat 13y ago
I have using ascii.io for quite a while, and it has repositories for share with others. I like it!

nkuttler 13y ago

I think the script should ask for a confirmation before uploading stuff. Somebody could get distracted and forget that script runs.

davemaya 13y ago
agreed. This is a dangerous utility akin to a key logger.
- D9u 13y ago
  You don't have to install it in order to use it. bash <(curl record.showterm.io) Records everything in that terminal until you exit, then gives you a URL to share.

xSwag 13y ago

What happens if I run something like htop?

beefsack 13y ago
http://showterm.io/5837e92554dcbeaea129b http://showterm.io/5837e92554dcbeaea129b
- gpmcadam 13y ago
  What about tmux?
  - daw___ 13y ago
    it does exactly the same as the above htop's screencast

reustle 13y ago

I've been thinking of better ways to do programming tutorials and something like this is roughly what I had in mind. Thanks for open sourcing it!

markm208 13y ago
If you are interested in seeing code examples from a text editor or IDE we are working on Storyteller: http://www.storytellersoftware.com http://www.storytellersoftware.com Everything is stored locally and the tool can generate an HTML playback file that can be passed around. One can also make comments during the playback. There tends not to be a great place to document how code evolves, we think a playback is the best place for this. Its not quite ready for prime time yet but it will be soon. Our long term goals are to make a web app to store playbacks and to make it the next generation of version control.

pdkl95 13y ago

Nice - it automagically translates "CSI 38:5:FG m CSI 48:5:BG m" properly. ( http://showterm.io/6ed840f381fd81a881176 http://showterm.io/6ed840f381fd81a881176 ) This will be very useful! That said, I have to second the concern above that it should ask for confirmation before uploading; just auto-uploading could be an in issue if somebody accidentally pastes sensitive information into the terminal.

riskable 13y ago
I just created a recording using Gate One of the same command (well, I think it is the same) for comparison purposes: http://riskable.com/files/GateOne_recording-20130810130840.html http://riskable.com/files/GateOne_recording-20130810130840.h... Try resizing your browser while that is playing back (go really small) for a special treat :)

plg 13y ago

Q1: is there a way to download the resulting screencast so that it can be viewed off the network? Q2: is there a way to do this without having to upload anything? e.g. pipe to a file locally?

gopher 13y ago
try script(1) and scriptreplay(1)
- krishnasrinivas 13y ago
  Or ttyrec(1) and ttyplay(1)
- poulson 13y ago
  This unfortunately doesn't support the use case of simply wanting to personally back up the screencasts sent to showterm.io.

daw___ 13y ago

Source code of showterm: client[1], server[2] [1] https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm [2] https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm.io https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm.io

dannyrosen 13y ago
Mind scrubbing your database.yaml and making a gist? I'm new to rails

bilalq 13y ago

This is such an incredible idea. I can already see tons of use cases for it. CLI apps can easily demo themselves through this. It even recognizes backspaces! I'm using a patched font with a git branch symbol in my prompt[0]. As expected, it only displays on devices that have that font installed. Colors don't match my actual terminal either, but that's just a minor problem. [0] http://showterm.io/e49d0900602104ae4850f http://showterm.io/e49d0900602104ae4850f

riskable 13y ago

Gate One has had this feature for ages. You can export your terminal logs to HTML payback files or as traditional flat logs. You can then share them however you like... Web, email, whatever. It works with full screen apps like tmux, vim, htop, etc. It even plays back images (if the user output them to the terminal).

telemachos 13y ago

I agreed with the people saying that a confirmation before uploading would be helpful, so I went to file an issue. It turns out there is one there already. You can weigh in here: https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm/issues/12 https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm/issues/12. EDIT: A follow up: It turns out that there is a slightly hidden and indirect way to abort uploads. Start the program as `showterm -e`, and it will offer you a chance to edit timings before uploading. (This is intended to give you a chance to trim out long pauses.) At that point, if you can cause your editor to abort with a non-zero status, the upload aborts. For Vim users, the gem's author points to exiting with `:cq`. See here: https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm/blob/master/bin/showterm#L84-L99 https://github.com/ConradIrwin/showterm/blob/master/bin/show...

daw___ 13y ago

I'm doing some tests [1] with showterm's screencasts embedded in a web page and, argh, apparently you can't control the autorun feature, pretty annoying. I think that if it had a set of "play"/"pause"/"rewind"/"forward" buttons, tons of websites would benefit (for docs, examples, tutorials, etc). [1] https://googledrive.com/host/0B9lMEsFXwv0ZLVh5dkRfdmw1UnM/ https://googledrive.com/host/0B9lMEsFXwv0ZLVh5dkRfdmw1UnM/

voltagex_ 13y ago

So if you can work out how to add a red ● to your prompt, this'd be a really good way to indicate recording.

geocar 13y ago
That's easy enough: PS1=`printf "\033[1;31m\342\227\217\033[0m\\$ "` sh
- voltagex_ 13y ago
  Thanks, I was missing the printf.

kaichanvong 13y ago

Would love to see most viewed showterm videos! :)

chjj 13y ago

Author of term.js/tty.js[1] here. Nice work. You guys should keep an eye on term.js. The version you're using is slightly old and actually contains a bug (now fixed) wherein all events will become unbound if the reset control sequence is received. I'm also adding fixes for a few other things currently, such as double-width character support, which has been a problem in the past. [1] https://github.com/chjj/term.js https://github.com/chjj/term.js

cirwin 13y ago
Hey chjj, thank you so much for tty.js! You definitely deserve the credit for doing all the hard work :).

tibbon 13y ago

One thing that I think could help out a bit would be to show key commands as they are pressed as well. I'd love to use this to show my students software development things (using vim or emacs for editor), but showing them the keypresses I make as well is critical for some text editors newbies.

pessimizer 13y ago
I regret I have but one upvote to give this feature. Can't wait to play around with this. edit: I actually was thinking about this feature on tty.js rather than showterm.io. I might see how hard it would be to implement it.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

hngiszmo 13y ago

I wonder about credentials leaking to the service. When I show off connecting to a server that uses login/password, will this also be recorded and uploaded or only keys that actually change the ui? How about ncurses apps?

hngiszmo 13y ago
http://showterm.io/5837e92554dcbeaea129b http://showterm.io/5837e92554dcbeaea129b answers the ncurses question and i'm impressed.
krishnasrinivas 13y ago
it records only the characters echoed to the terminal-emulator by the pty device (hence passwords are not recorded)

kolev 13y ago

Here's another interesting library by floobits: https://floobits.com/help/floomatic/ https://floobits.com/help/floomatic/

paddy_m 13y ago

awesome. I tried a while ago with terminalcast.com. hopefully this gets more traction. integration with native terminal emulators would be great, so you can start recording at any point in time.

rfnslyr 13y ago

If I want to go back on your site, it keeps me on your site. Absolutely infuriating, remove this.

prezjordan 13y ago

Pretty cool, but unfortunately it does not work with my PS1 [0]. Looks like any PS1 with a shell call in it won't work. [0]: http://github.com/impromptu/impromptu http://github.com/impromptu/impromptu

basicallydan 13y ago

This is really sweet! As well as some of the other features requested, real-time might be nice, too. Plus, the option to cut out backspaces and only go with the finished command might be cool, in case the screencaster has made some mistakes along the way.

shykes 13y ago

I've been using ascii.io for a while - I would be interested in a comparison between the two.

vysakh0 13y ago

I just tried to play around with showterm. Why does it have a different theme? When I use Vim with solarized theme, showterm shows it in a different ugly way. http://showterm.io/15104fd85863532b74150 http://showterm.io/15104fd85863532b74150 Am i doing something wrong?