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Archive for June, 2008

What’s New in 2.1

Friday, June 27th, 2008

ScreenSteps 2.1 is finally released! It has taken awhile but we think that you are really going to like this update. I just wanted to highlight a few of the key enhancements in ScreenSteps 2.1, namely:

  • The Post to Blog feature
  • Improved PDF output
  • Improved PDF manuals

Post to Blog

One of the most exciting things about 2.1 is the new Post to Blog feature. You can now post to your WordPress, TypePad or Movable Type blog. Just go into your ScreenSteps preferences, create a new web account, choose the account type and you will be all ready to post lessons instantly to your blog. You can even choose which category you would like your post to appear in, or publish the lesson as a draft. If you like to create tutorials for people we think that you will find this to be a great way to get your lessons out.

IMPORTANT: If you were using the 2.1 beta you will want to update your blog templates to the new defaults. You can see how to do that here: Updating Templates

Improved PDF

We have also dramatically improved the PDF quality. In previous versions of ScreenSteps some images could appear a little blurry. In 2.1 this has really been improved. Look at these two PDF files. See the examples below.

Old PDF Output

Notice the blurriness in the header image and the screen capture.

2.1 PDF Output

Here you can see how much clearer the PDF export is.

Improved PDF Manuals

For users of ScreenSteps 2 Pro we have also really improved PDF manuals. In ScreenSteps 2.0 you could export a PDF manual but the cover page and table of contents looked a little shabby.

In 2.1 you can now add an image and footer to your title page and the table of contents now has better formatting and page numbers.

Title Page

Here you can see the new options for the title page. You can now add a footer and image.

Improved Table of Contents

This is the new PDF table of contents. The formatting has been cleaned up and page numbers are now included.

Conclusion

There are also a lot of bug fixes and small improvements. We hope you like all of the additions.

You can download the latest version by selecting “Check For Updates” from the Help menu in ScreenSteps or by going to our Downloads page.

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Posted in ScreenSteps Desktop | No Comments »

Redesign Coming to ScreenSteps Live

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

Sometime in the next week or so we will be pushing some changes to ScreenSteps Live that we wanted to let you know about. The changes are mostly cosmetic but we have also reorganized some of the menus to make things a little easier to get to.

New Tabs

We have changed the main navigation to tabs. We thought that this would make the navigation a little easier to understand.

Admin Tab

You will also notice that the "Account" tab has been renamed to "Admin". This tab only appears to admin users on your account. We have also re-organized the settings under the new "Admin" tab. This is where you can do your bulk editing of Lessons, Manuals, Comments, Readers, Groups and Users. You will notice that the account settings are no longer in this section.

Settings

You can now get to the settings here.

Settings Tab

When you click on "Settings" (1) you will now see a new "Settings" tab (2). Here you can edit your profile, account settings, and, if you are the owner of the account, your plan and payment details.

Plan and Payment Settings

Here you can upgrade/downgrade, update your billing information as well as cancel your account.

Other Stuff

We have also improved the screens for creating new users, groups, readers, etc. We hope that you like the new look!

Posted in ScreenSteps Live | No Comments »

Document the Experience

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

When describing how to write documentation in ScreenSteps Greg and I often tell people to create task-based lessons. You think of a task that the user needs to accomplish and you show them how to do it. I’ve been thinking about this lately and while accurate, I don’t think this description fully communicates how ScreenSteps should be used.

So here is another stab at it- Document the experience.

People should use ScreenSteps to create documentation centered around the experiences the user will have with the software. Imagine different scenarios that the user will find themselves in. What questions will they have? What will they want to do?

When you sit down to write documentation consider the following:

  • What questions will the user ask the first time they launch the software?

  • What tasks will the user want to accomplish with the software?

  • What questions will the user ask the first time they use a particular feature?

If you begin your documentation with a list of questions that a user might ask then you can sit down and create lessons that respond to those questions. What ends up happening is that you write documentation that is really useful to the user because you are showing them how to get something done.

In addition, if you are a software developer you will find that by using this approach your application will go through a refining process. As you ask questions and document the software step-by-step you will find things that don’t quite work as they should or a workflow that could be improved.

Posted in Documentation Tips | No Comments »

ScreenSteps 2.1 b48 Public Beta

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

We posted another build of the 2.1 public beta today. Lots of bug fixes and a couple of enhancements. We are getting very near release so if you have any issues to report please send them into support using the Help->Email Feedback menu option.

  • You can now customize the title page of a PDF manual.
  • You can now specify the horizontal alignment of the PDF header logo.
  • When posting to a blog account the last blog and category are saved and used the next time you post a lesson to a blog for the first time.
  • Added %LessonTags% to the lesson HTML templates.
  • You can now cancel PDF export.
  • You can now cancel HTML export.
  • A step image would retain focus visually if the step did not have focus when selecting another step.
  • Fixed a bug where the application database could fail to initialize on Windows if ScreenSteps was launched in quick succession by double-clicking on a file that opened ScreenSteps.
  • Better error detection for supported files when selecting graphics for use in PDF templates.
  • UI tweaks in toolbars.
  • When posting to a blog account the last template used is saved and used the next time you post a lesson to the blog.
  • Tidied up the annotation inspector controls.

You can use Help->Check for Updates… or you can download the installers here:

Download 2.1 Beta for Windows

Download 2.1 Beta for Mac

Posted in ScreenSteps Desktop | No Comments »

New ScreenSteps 2.1 Public Beta

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Over the weekend we released an update to the 2.1 public beta. This update includes further enhancements to the new post to blog feature as well as the long awaited improvement to image quality in PDF files when viewing at actual size. We have also improved support for proxy servers. You should now be prompted for your proxy server username and password if a proxy server is detected.

You will also see a new Welcome Center window when you first launch ScreenSteps. In our company blog you can read about how we are using some new features of ScreenSteps Live to do this.

For those of you wondering, posting to a blog using the https protocol does not work reliably yet.

You can use Help->Check for Updates… or you can download the installers here:

Download 2.1 Beta for Windows

Download 2.1 Beta for Mac

Here is a list of changes:

  • New Welcome Center.

  • Images in PDF output are no longer fuzzy at actual size.

  • Export to blog now supports accounts with multiple blogs.

  • Export to blog now allows you to assign a category to a lesson.

  • Lesson tags are now posted to blogs.

  • You can now publish a lesson to a blog as a draft.

  • Added authentication dialog for proxy servers.

  • Tooltip now appears when hovering over URLs in fields.

  • Improved error handling when posting to ScreenSteps Live.

  • Editing fields resize correctly again.

  • Lesson color in topic outline now updates correctly depending on whether you add or delete steps while editing.

  • Fixed a bug where the step instructions editing field would lose focus when tabbing from a step title field to step instructions, the step title had been changed and the user had “Sync Image Names to Step Titles” enabled in preferences.

  • Better ScreenSteps Live error reporting when logging in.

  • If you exported a PDF document using a template with a logo, removed the logo from the template and then exported again the header of the PDF was still allotting space for the logo.

  • Fixed a possible divide by zero error when viewing a lesson.

  • Finally got rid of the 1 pixel offset that would occur in the Tags/Manuals lists when they were first populated.

Posted in ScreenSteps Desktop | 2 Comments »