We have just released a new update to the Clarify public beta for Mac. This includes a lot of bug fixes as well as new tools for working with and exporting images. You can see a video overview here:
We are getting close to having Clarify ready for release so please keep the feedback coming!
Over the past few months we have been hard at work on a new application named Clarify. At first glance Clarify looks very similar to our other application, ScreenSteps. Clarify was designed for a very different purpose, however. In order to explain what Clarify does let me provide a little background.
I run a bootstrapped company, Blue Mango Learning Systems. I am a CEO, web developer, chief marketer, accountant, head of business development, customer support agent and all around fire extinguisher. In addition to my work roles I am a husband, father to 4 very energetic young boys, church volunteer, runner and basketball player. My life is a little busy.
Time is my most precious commodity and I am willing to bet it is yours as well. Clarify is designed to give you back your time by helping you communicate more clearly with less effort.
We believe that three attributes make up a perfect communication. We designed Clarify so that it would be easier to create communications with these qualities. We like to call them the three Be’s of Clarify.
Be clear
Zendesk will be hosting a ScreenSteps Live/Zendesk webinar on Wednesday, July 20 from 10 AM – 11 AM PDT. In the webinar you will learn:
You can register for the webinar here:
We hope to see you there.
Add a visual knowledge base to your help desk.
In our webinar Video, Screencasts and Still Images – Using the Right Tool at the Right Time we talk about four stages of person being introduced to a new technology or product for the first time:
If you have watched the webinar then you will remember that we felt like we had some good media for stages 2 and 4, but we have been missing a lot in stage 3. In preparing for our ScreenSteps 2.8 update we realized that our media for stage 2 wasn’t that great either. It was a little too specific. It focused on one aspect of the program but didn’t expose users to all that the product could do.
Since we were already working on updating our site for the 2.8 release we decided to redo all of our media as well. You might be interested in what we did.
The goal of stage 2 is to create a video or screencast that moves the prospective customer to stage 3. That is all it needs to do. It shouldn’t be instructional in nature. It doesn’t need to be a support tool. It just has to generate enough interest that the customer wants to investigate the product in more detail. To do this the video needs to meet the following criteria:
To create our stage 2 video we used Screenflow, Keynote, Garageband and YouTube. The video shows up on the main ScreenSteps landing page. You can see an example of it here:
This was the hardest video to create. It took several days with a lot of edits and a lot of revisions.
After watching the video we want to allow the visitor to investigate the product. To do this we set up a separate “Features” section of our website. On the left there is a menu that lists the features we are looking to highlight. For most of the features we include a short screencast highlighting that feature.
The purpose of this material is to make the visitor want to implement the feature. We aren’t worried about giving them enough information at this stage that they could implement the feature. Just enough to make them want to.
These videos need to meet the following criteria:
These videos were actually very easy to create. By focusing on individual features the scripts are easy to write and the video is relatively straight-forward to record.
Here are a couple of examples of our feature videos:
Finally, if the visitor has arrived to stage 4, we need to give them the tools they need to implement the vision we sold to them in stages 2 and 3. We didn’t change what we were doing here. We use ScreenSteps and ScreenSteps Live which work great for us and for our customers (see our documentation center).
But we did have to update almost every single lesson since the majority of the ScreenSteps user interface had changed. This meant replacing literally hundreds of screenshots in over 100 lessons. We will write a separate post on this process, but suffice it to say that it was much easier than we imagined. We had over 100 lessons updated in less time than it took us to record one video.
So, what do you think of the media we have prepared for stages 2 through 4? Are they effective? We’ll let you know what the results are in a couple of months, but we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
We are happy to announce that ScreenSteps 2.8 is now available for immediate download. We would like to thank our great customers who provided lots of feedback during the beta testing phase. It really helped improve the product. Let’s look at what is new in ScreenSteps 2.8.
Our major focus with version 2.8 was revamping the UI. We felt there were a number of areas that needed to be cleaned up in order to make the UI cleaner and more enjoyable to author in. We really like how it turned out. We hope you do too.
The URL dialog received a lot of attention in version 2.8. It is now the Link dialog and sports a couple of new options. For starters you can now specify that a link should open in a new browser window when the lesson is exported in HTML format (HTML, Blog/Web or ScreenSteps Live).
The big new feature, however, is that you can now easily link between lessons in the same manual. When editing a lesson that is part of a manual the new Manual Lesson tab allows you to select other lessons in the manual to link to.
Links between lessons are preserved when you export a manual to any format – Word, PDF, HTML or ScreenSteps Live.
Version 2.8 contains over 40 enhancements, changes and bug fixes. We always try to make little changes here and there that improve the program but aren’t necessary newsworthy. Getting known bugs fixed so they don’t interfere with your work is always a major focus as well.
You can read all about what is new in this version by reading the release notes.
Version 2.8 is a free upgrade for 2.x customers.
You can download version 2.8 from the downloads section of our website:
http://www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps/downloads/
ScreenSteps makes it fast and simple to talk in pictures.
Learn more and download a free ScreenSteps trial for Mac and WindowsOver the last few weeks we have been working on putting a new face on ScreenSteps. We wanted to give you a few glimpses at what the new UI will look like.
Our purpose in redesigning the UI is to make it easier for you to focus on the content you are working on. We also wanted to tidy up the arrangement of things to give the application a better visual flow.
This is what we have so far and would love to hear your feedback. The new UI will be available in the 2.8 update which will be free to all 2.x license owners.
During our webinar today on new ScreenSteps 2.7 features (learn more about ScreenSteps), a customer asked about Joomla integration. The question comes up every once in a while and I actually had investigated ScreenSteps and Joomla integration a while back. I remembered that one of our customers was able to get it to work after jumping through a number of hoops.
After the webinar was over Greg and I started discussing Joomla and I decided to look into it again. It turns out there is a great Movable Type plugin for Joomla. Since ScreenSteps uses the Movable Type API to post content to TypePad and Movable Type, the Joomla Movable Type plugin works perfectly with ScreenSteps.
I’ve posted a new manual on Integrating ScreenSteps with Joomla that will walk anyone through the process with Joomla 1.5. You will be publishing visually rich tutorials to Joomla from within ScreenSteps in no time.
I will mention that the ease of creating the manual in ScreenSteps while installing the plugin, and then instantly publishing to ScreenSteps Live brought a smile to my face.
ScreenSteps 2.7 is now available for download. Thank you to everyone who participated in the public beta. Your feedback really helped us improve the product.
View the video below to see a quick overview of all that is new.
We consider this one of our most significant releases ever. With the new Export Lesson to Clipboard feature, you can now use your ScreenSteps content in a wide variety of applications. Here is a short list of the applications that can now accept content created in ScreenSteps:
This means you can now:
We have also made improvements to the way your lessons look including:
You can see previews of the new templates here:
Examples of ScreenSteps Output
We have scheduled two webinars to help you learn about the new features in ScreenSteps 2.7. The first one is this Friday, and the second one is in early January. We will also show you how you can implement these features into your daily workflow.
You can download the latest release of ScreenSteps here:
You may also want to check out the chapter in our manual on the new Export to Clipboard feature.
The 2.7 public beta is rolling along. Thanks so much to all who have sent in such great feedback. We have already incorporated a lot of the feedback that we have received, adding some new twists to the features we are introducing in version 2.7.
The video below points out some highlights.
HTML works great for sending emails to customers, colleagues and customers. But help desk ticketing systems often mangle HTML emails. We really think that ScreenSteps is a great tool to use when you are trying to submit bug reports so we had to come up with a solution. And thus was born the copy PDF to clipboard feature.
If you are submitting a bug to a help ticketing system, just select Copy to Clipboard > PDF and paste it into an email. This will also work for attaching PDFs to web based email systems such as Gmail.
In addition you can use the copy PDF feature to send lessons via instant messaging applications.
You can now drag tags from the Tags Palette into the search field to quickly filter your lessons by tags.
The other day we were preparing for our WordPress and ScreenSteps webinar. When using ScreenSteps with any blog or wiki you need to make sure that you set the maximum width of your template to the width of your blog/wiki. While preparing for the webinar we decided that the process doing that was too cumbersome. So we made it easier. You can now set the maximum width for your templates right in the ScreenSteps Preferences screen.
The 2.7 release is coming soon. You can download the latest version here.
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.
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.
Your lesson content is replaced but all other content is left alone.
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.
Blue Mango Learning Systems
© 2011
