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Archive for August, 2008

ScreenSteps - Now With MindTouch Deki Support

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

“That needs to be documented.”

This oft repeated phrase can cast a dark cloud over an otherwise sunny day. The process of sitting down at the computer and wrestling with multiple programs for a few hours while you create and publish documentation is not for the faint of heart.

Perhaps the only phrase to rival it is:

“This documentation needs to be updated.”

The more visual your documentation, the harder updating can be. If you created videos you may feel like crying in the corner for a while before you sit down and record again. Or if you enlisted the help of screenshots you have your work cut out for you as you replace images and reapply annotations.

I’m here to tell you that you needn’t suffer so. ScreenSteps is here to help and now it publishes directly to MindTouch Deki, the open source collaboration and integration platform.

You see, ScreenSteps is different then other documentation tools you have used. It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of some documentation software, but it will allow you to create and publish documentation faster than ever before.

With ScreenSteps you naturally go through the process you are documenting, capturing still images of each step along the way. With each new image you capture a step is added to the ScreenSteps’ lesson open in the background.

Once you have all of your images you can quickly add titles, instructions and image annotations. Need to update a lesson? No problem. Just click the image replace button and capture a new screenshot. The step image is replaced and the editable annotations are left intact.

Of course writing your documentation is only part of the equation. You need to publish it as well. With the release of ScreenSteps 2.1.2 we are happy to announce MindTouch Deki support. No need to upload individual images and write markup by hand. ScreenSteps does all of the work for you so you can quickly add and update your documentation in MindTouch Deki.

So cheer up. With ScreenSteps documentation gets done.

Posted in ScreenSteps Desktop | No Comments »

Skin Your ScreenSteps Live Account to Look Exactly Like Your Own Website

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

If you have used ScreenSteps Live you know that it is a great tool for managing your online documentation. But there is one major drawback that is a deal-breaker for a lot of customers.

You can’t make your manuals look like your own website. Your customers have to "leave" your site to see your documentation.

Not anymore.

We have just launched custom templates which make it a snap to make your ScreenSteps Live manuals look exactly like your own website.

Let’s look at an example.

Our ScreenSteps Live Account With No Custom Template

Above I have a picture of our ScreenSteps Live account. This is one of the standard templates available on ScreenSteps Live. We were able to add our own logo but not much else. There isn’t an easy way to link to other resources on our main site or even to our online store.

Our Own Site

This is a shot of our main site. Here we have complete control over the navigation and layout. Wouldn’t it be great if we could "inject" our ScreenSteps Live content into this layout?

Our ScreenSteps Live Account With a Custom Template

Here is our new ScreenSteps Live account with our custom template. Notice that we have completely customized the look and feel, including the navigation bar (1). But we also have our ScreenSteps Live content (2). We can literally make this page look however we want.

Here is a look at a lesson in our new custom template.

Another Example

Here is an example of another account on ScreenSteps Live with a custom skin. Same ScreenSteps Live service. Completely customized look and feel.

Custom templates take about 10 minutes to set up. All you do is:

1. Login to your ScreenSteps Live account.
2. Create a custom template.
3. Copy the source html from one of your pages on your site.
4. Change all of your relative urls in your source html to full urls.
5. Insert {{ content_for_layout }} in your html where you would like the ScreenSteps Live content to show up.
6. Save and activate your template.

That’s it. You are done.

Now, when our customers come to our site at www.screensteps.com and click on our manuals link they are taken to http://bmls.screenstepslive.com/manuals/screensteps - our ScreenSteps Live account. But, other than the url, the user doesn’t know that they have left the main site.

You don’t have to worry about recreating all of the great tools we have in ScreenSteps Live in your custom template. When you are logged into your ScreenSteps Live account as an admin or author you will still see the standard ScreenSteps Live interface. But any user who is not an admin or author will see your custom skin.

A Special Offer for the First 5 ScreenSteps Live Account Holders to Email Us

And as a special offer, we’re offering to setup a custom template for the first 5 ScreenSteps Live customers to email us at info@screensteps.com. Just send us your ScreenSteps Live account name, a link to the page on your site that you would like to use as the basis for your template and we will get it setup for you. You will be able to preview the site before the template is activated. This is available for any level account, from free on up.

Note: This offer only involves using the look and feel of a page that currently exists on your site. We won’t be doing any custom layout or design work. Basically you will say, "make it look like this" (your web page) and we will make it look like that page.

Additional Resources

If you aren’t one of the first 5 to contact us and want to do this on your own here are some lessons that will show you how to do all of this in a few simple steps.

1. Creating a Custom Template
2. Editing a Custom Template

The feature is available on all ScreenSteps Live accounts so give it a try. We think that you are going to love it. Now you can finally get all of the great functionality of ScreenSteps Live with a completely customized look and feel.

Posted in Miscellaneous, ScreenSteps Live | No Comments »