Filed under: Software
ScreenSteps gets blog-friendly
We do love our ScreenSteps here at TUAW. Following up on some great features introduced in version 2, bluemango is releasing version 2.0.3 today with a brand new post-to-blog feature. The feature makes use of a Screensteps Live account to host images, then provides the HTML markup to paste into a blog entry.
If you're not familiar with it, ScreenSteps 2 is an application that makes the process of documenting software and on-screen tasks simple and elegant. ScreenSteps Live is bluemango's online complement to their desktop software, allowing users to publish lessons on the web after creating them in ScreenSteps 2. The post-to-blog feature is documented at the developer's own Live account, with instructions for Wordpress that are easily translated to other platforms. The concept is very cool and will aid a lot of people in sharing tutorials and software documentation. The blog templates are also customizable to fit your stylistic needs.
I would love to see some closer blog integration and automatic uploading via XMLRPC, ala TUAW favorite MarsEdit. Taking into account that ScreenSteps is not aspiring to be a blog editor, though, and the fact that they're seeking integration with ScreenSteps Live, I think the simplistic cut-and-paste approach fits the bill and provides the flexibility to post the exported output in a broader variety of places.
In addition to our own Macworld show floor coverage of ScreenSteps, there are screencasts done by ScreenCastsOnline covering ScreenSteps 2 and ScreenSteps Live. There are free accounts available to try out ScreenSteps Live, and plans start at $12/month. ScreenSteps 2 Standard is $39.95 (pro version which allows the creation of full pdf and online manuals is $59.95) with a free demo and academic discounts. And it's available for Windows, too, for those with cross-platform needs.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sportsmedjosh said 9:11AM on 3-20-2008
I used ScreenSteps to document the steps for metabolic equation calculations for a lab I teach but have to say I spent a lot of time fiddling around with it because even though it looked great in screen steps once exported to PDF I have some images that would take up 1/4 of the page and others that would take up 1/2 a page. Which obviously doesn't look professional. I really wish one thing they would do would be to define how big the image would be on the PDF or just just like it looks on ScreenSteps, due to this reason I've gone to webcasting with Snapz Pro X and Mousepose.
Reply
trevor said 11:05AM on 3-20-2008
Hi,
One way to resize the output size of images in PDF and HTML export is to use the Resize Image control that appears at the bottom of each step image in a lesson. This might be worth a try if you were not aware of the feature. Here is a link to a lesson that explains it:
http://bmls.screenstepslive.com/topics/show_lesson/112?lesson_id=178
If you already tried this approach then we would love to see a sample of the offending PDF so we can see what is going on.
Utkarsh Sinha said 11:01AM on 3-20-2008
Hi TUAW,
Just an update on the refurbished iPhone from att.com - I ordered mine day before yesterday, and ot an email saying the phones are out of stock, and that they have back ordered it. Called the number listed on the mail aout order status, adn they were unable to give me an estimated date on when they will be able to ship.
Hope its soon!
~Utk.
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Dimebag said 10:37AM on 3-21-2008
Why would you post that here? That being said I love Screen Steps and use it to document every product our Co. makes.
Harvey said 12:37PM on 3-21-2008
It would be nice if the new version of ScreenSteps didn't blow away your registration information...
Process: Help Menu -> Check for Updates... -> Install
Version: 2.0.3b67
All that said, my wife told me that my colleagues were having trouble following my ScreenSteps documents because they look too professional and they're used to ignoring manuals.
I realize that Blue Mango is trying to make money via dot-Mac er... I mean ScreenSteps Live, but it would be nice if the blog option didn't require Live. I would love to post our lessons on our internal Wiki, but I can't host proprietary images on an external server.
Reply
trevor said 11:45AM on 3-22-2008
Hi Harvey,
Registration: We haven't had any reports or seen any cases of registration information being overwritten so I'm not sure what happened in your case. If you want to send any specifics of what you saw to support@screensteps.com we could take a look at what is going on.
Look of lessons: If it would help you could always make the output look unprofessional by customizing an HTML template :-)
Take a look at the "Working With Text Based Templates" section in the manual:
http://bmls.screenstepslive.com/topics/112
Blog: If there are features you would like to see in ScreenSteps please send them to feedback@screensteps.com. Providing details about what you would like to do, why you would like to do it and, in your case, what sort of wiki system you are working with can help us plan future features.