2.7 Public Beta Released – Visual Communication Moves Forward Again
We are thrilled to announce the availability of the public beta of ScreenSteps 2.7. We think that you are going to be able to find some very creative uses for ScreenSteps with this new release.
The Biggies
Copy lesson to clipboard is the feature I am personally most excited about. I have been using this feature over the last couple of weeks and being able to insert pictures and text into an email is truly fantastic. It is great for sending a quick how-to to a client (or family member) or for submitting bug reports.
So far we have tested this feature with Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail and everything seems to work great. Entourage users – we are sorry but it doesn’t look like it is going to work out for you. We don’t know what Entourage does with rich content that is pasted in but it certainly isn’t what you would expect.
Drop shadows on annotations is a close second as far as favorite features. Annotations really stand out with the new drop shadows. We think that you will agree that everything looks much better.
Smart selections make working with annotations so much easier. You no longer have to switch tools to reposition annotations. Just click on the annotation and move it.
The Tags palette makes tagging your lessons a snap. Just select Window > Tag Palette. You can now drag tags onto any lesson in your library or in your manual.
Replacing content is also very exciting for our WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, MindTouch and Confluence users.
- Post a lesson to your blog or wiki
- In the blog/wiki editor, add content before or after your lesson.
- Change your lesson in ScreenSteps Desktop and repost.
Your lesson content is replaced but all other content is left alone.
Other Improvements
- You should notice that ScreenSteps is a bit faster. We have added a lot of optimizations to improve launch time and other functions.
- We have expanded the search options to allow you to sort lessons by status and also find all of your draft lessons.
- Markdown has been added as a template style.
- ScreenSteps Live users can now attach files to lessons they upload right after they post the lesson to ScreenSteps Live.
Download The Public Beta
You can download the public beta here: Download 2.7 Public Beta
You may also want to register for our WordPress and ScreenSteps webinar next Tuesday. We will be showing off some of the new 2.7 features during that webinar.
December 5th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
I have been trying the copy to clipboard with Apple Mail and Posterous.com. For some reason Posterous won’t show more than nine (of thirteen) images when sent by Mail. But strangely, I am able to email all thirteen images to my Gmail account and then Forward the email from Gmail to Posterous and all images are shown correctly at Posterous (I removed the forwarding bit from the email and renamed the subject line).
I mention this because being able to send from Mail (or Outlook?) to Gmail (Google Apps) and then Forward from Gmail may be helpful for others who work the Gmail because copy and pasting straight into Gmail doesn’t work.
Neil
December 7th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Thanks for the tip Neil. Question: If you drag and drop 13 images into a new Mail email and send to Posterous.com does it work?
December 8th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Hi Trevor, I have done some testing and the problem seems to be with the character length of the image file. I tested drag and drop as well as copy and paste of the images used in my previous comment. I did this by exporting to HTML and using the images in the image folder. The problem was the same each time — 9 of 13 images showing on Posterous. I then renamed the images, testxx.png, and all 13 images posted. In ScreenSteps, I have the Preference checked for Sync Image Names to Step Title. I was using long Step Titles.
By trial and error, I find that the maximum character length of an image name is 74 characters including the extension. Therefore, the maximum Step Title needs to be 70 characters long (half a tweet) or less to successfully post to Posterous.
2.7b26: Good news: beta 26 Now copies HTML with embedded video without an error and this post to Posterous correctly. Bad news: I still find that the same Lesson will not export the embedded video to WordPress. –Neil
December 8th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Mac tip of a couple of days ago, Rob Griffith wrote an article called “Start a new Mail message from any application”. With OS X 10.6 you can create a Services menu shortcut that launches a new email; so you can copy the ScreenSteps Lesson to clipboard, start a new Mail message and paste the Lesson into the email all in a few keyboard shortcuts — which makes for a neat workflow. This is a link to the article (delete if it not OK to post links): http://www.macworld.com/article/144773/2009/12/mailanywhere.html