Screencasts seem to me like they are the right tool for explaining standard paths through complex user interfaces. This is especially true of poorly documented

Screencasts seem to me like they are the right tool for explaining standard paths through complex user interfaces. This is especially true of poorly documented and/or very open ended interfaces (e.g., in my case, Emacs or Photoshop). (For example, I only realised that I could open a remote MySQL prompt through SQL-mode, using TRAMP, after watching a screencast.) That said, in the same way that people argue that good naming practices should obviate the need for many comments, I worry that people use screencasts as a crutch to avoid implementing needed usability improvements. I think screencasts also guarantee that your thing sort of works, which adds an air of professionalism. That said, gripes include: hard/impossible to speed up while watching, hard/impossible to bookmark a specific spot, hard/impossible to skip over bits that you already know, requires headphones/speakers/video, often hard to see what's going on, and easily goes out of date.