Screensteps, the software documentation generator we've come to love, has reached an official 2.1 status and has been released into the wild. Well, as wild as software documentation gets, anyway. This gem is a TUAW favorite and I'm personally very psyched about the new upload-to-blog feature, which has come a long way since we first announced it in the beta. The other 74 enhancements, changes and fixes can be found in the release notes.

You'd expect software in this genre to be well documented ... you won't be disappointed. In addition to the extensive, ScreenSteps-generated online manual, there are new screencasts available on the updated website. You can also grab a 30-day trial of ScreenSteps Pro on the download page. The Standard version is priced at $39.95 and the Pro version comes in at $59.95 (feature comparison).

I happened to have a chance to sit down with Trevor and Greg, creators of ScreenSteps, at WWDC. It's quite by coincidence that I managed to finish editing and uploading the video right before they let me know about the 2.1 release. Our chat is after the jump.

When Blue Mango Learning Systems released version 2.0.3 of (TUAW favorite) ScreenSteps, its software for creating screen-based lessons, they added the option to output blog-friendly code for pasting into your own site. But some of us were inspired by the possibilities and cried for direct blog posting. Taking to heart user input, they've just opened up the beta of version 2.1 to the public with the ability to post individual lessons directly to WordPress, TypePad and Movable Type blogs.

It works quite well. On a Wordpress install with a basic theme, it comes out looking great, and adjustments are easy to make if you have a more complex custom theme. It adds a new level of usefulness to the software, in that it makes it a breeze to write and post tutorials to your blog.

In the early beta tests there were some issues with repeating an existing post with the intention of editing it, but the folks at Blue Mango have been working diligently to smooth out issues. If you spend any time instructing others on screen-based tasks, give it a shot. The developers would love to get your input as version 2.1 comes to life.

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.