Here is another video showing off some of the new features coming to ScreenSteps 2.7. In previous versions of ScreenSteps if you re-uploaded a lesson that had been added to your blog or wiki it would overwrite any changes or edits you had made to the post from your web authoring software. For example, think of the following scenario:

1. I create a tutorial in ScreenSteps
2. I post it to my WordPress blog
3. In the WordPress editor I add a section above the lesson content with some information about some event we are having.
4. I notice that one of the images in the lesson needs updating. So I update it and repost from ScreenSteps Desktop.

In previous versions of ScreenSteps the event information I entered would get overwritten. In ScreenSteps 2.7, only the content that ScreenSteps created will get updated. Everything else remains intact. This works with WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, MindTouch and Confluence.

Watch the video below for a quick overview:

If you are a frequent blogger then this will be a great addition to your blogging system.

ScreenSteps and WordPress Webinar

Next week on Tuesday, December 8 from 12pm-1pm EST we will be hosting a webinar entitled Advanced WordPress with ScreenSteps and ScreenSteps Live. In this webinar we will be covering how to get the most out of using WordPress and ScreenSteps together including:

• How to quickly create and publish visual blog posts and pages for your WordPress blog.
• How to customize your ScreenSteps templates to match the format of your blog.
• Inserting YouTube videos into your blog posts using ScreenSteps.
• New in ScreenSteps 2.7: Updating ScreenSteps content on your WordPress blog.
• Integrating ScreenSteps Live into your WordPress blog.

You can learn more about the webinar and register here: Register for webinar

Here is another video previewing some of the features coming to ScreenSteps 2.7. We are getting very close to having a public beta available but we still wanted to show you some of the new stuff.

This preview is all about annotations. We will be highlighting two new features that may seem small but that will have a big impact on your day to day use with ScreenSteps: drop shadows and annotations.

Drop Shadows

In 2.7 you will be able to add drop shadows to any of your annotations. Drop shadows not only look nice, but they make the annotations “hover” above your screen captures or images. This makes it much clearer what part of the image is your annotation and what is the original image.

Smart Selections

Smart selections are one of those subtle changes that make a world of difference. In previous version of ScreenSteps, working with different types of annotations could be a little cumbersome. To reposition different types of annotations you needed to use the Select tool, or choose the annotation tool that matched the annotation you wanted to reposition.

Not anymore. In ScreenSteps 2.7 you easily select, reposition and resize any annotation, regardless of the tool you have selected. We think that you will really love this improvement.

The Sale Just Got a Little Staler

Today (Wednesday, November 25th) the ScreenSteps discount went down to 30% off. If you haven’t purchased ScreenSteps yet be sure to take advantage of the offer today (30% off is still a great deal). Just use the coupon code THANKS. Be sure to do it today though. Tomorrow the discount will drop to 20%. You can order ScreenSteps here

ScreenSteps 2.7 Preview

We wanted to show you a bit of what is coming in ScreenSteps 2.7. We are always trying to make it easier for our users to communicate visually and ScreenSteps 2.7 is going to make a major improvement in that area.

Two big features coming to 2.7 are:

• Copy lesson to clipboard
• Drop shadows

Below is a video showing off the copy to clipboard feature. You can now copy the contents of your ScreenSteps lesson to the system clipboard and paste it into a new email message.

This is going to help you use ScreenSteps in a completely new way. Some great uses of this feature will be:

• Customer support
• Submitting bug reports
• Demonstrating the flow of an application to a colleague
• Any type of visual communication via email

We hope to have a public beta in the coming weeks. With 2.7 we are still trying to help you do more than just capture screens. We want to help you communicate visually. This upgrade will be free for all 2.x owners so, if you purchase during this weeks sale you will be entitled to the 2.7 upgrade at no additional cost. We think you are going to love this.

Starting Today! The Sale that Goes Stale

Last month we had our biggest sales month ever and two weeks ago we had our biggest single sales day ever. Thank you so much to all of you who are using ScreenSteps and especially all of you who are telling your friends and colleagues about it.

To thank everyone for their support and to celebrate Thanksgiving we are having a Thanksgiving sale. But this isn’t your standard sale. It’s the “sale that goes stale”.

Monday and Tuesday – Fresh – 40% off of all Blue Mango Products

Wednesday – Like day old bread – 30% off

Thursday – Why are you shopping anyways? You should be eating turkey – 20% off

Friday – stale – 10% off

The sale begins now (Monday, November 23, 2009) and isn’t combinable with any other offers. The percentage off can be applied to ScreenSteps Standard, ScreenSteps Pro, or to the first three months of a ScreenSteps Live account.

For ScreenSteps Live the discount applies to the first 3 months of your plan. So, if you signed up for a Solo ScreenSteps Live account at $19/month you would only pay $11.40/month for the first three months. This applies to any plan.

All you need to do to take advantage of the sale is use the coupon code: THANKS

• Purchase ScreenSteps Standard or Pro
• Sign up for a ScreenSteps Live account

NOTE:

• This coupon code is not combinable with academic discounts and won’t work in our academic store
• The coupon code is only applicable to new ScreenSteps Live accounts

We have just prepared a new video that shows how you can create a visual knowledge base in under 10 minutes using ScreenSteps Desktop and ScreenSteps Live.

Visual knowledge bases combine images and text to provide clear answers and instructions to your customers and users. Visual knowledge bases have the following advantages:

• They have full text search – unlike video libraries.
• They have clear visual information to help users complete tasks quickly – unlike traditional, text-based, knowledge bases.
• They are easy to update when things change – unlike video libraries.
• They are faster to create than either a video library or traditional knowledge base.

The video goes through the entire process of creating a visual knowledge base including:

• Signing up for an account
• Going through the new account setup wizard
• Configuring your ScreenSteps Desktop software to post to ScreenSteps Live
• Posting your first manual to ScreenSteps Live
• Customizing the design of your ScreenSteps Live site

You can view the video below.

The new account setup wizard on ScreenSteps Live really makes it easy to get your ScreenSteps Live site up and running quickly.

Webinar – Creating Visual Knowledge Bases with ScreenSteps Live

A lot has been added to ScreenSteps Live over the last month. To help introduce existing users to the new functionality and introduce new users to ScreenSteps Live we have scheduled a webinar for this Friday, Nov. 20, at 10am EST. Topics covered will include:

• The basics of creating visual knowledge bases
• Understanding the difference between buckets and manuals on ScreenSteps Live
• Introduction to the new “tasks” feature
• Introduction to new color customization options for spaces on ScreenSteps Live

We will of course leave time for answering questions from attendees. You can register for the webinar here:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/943393976

We hope to see you there.

We are happy to announce a slew of new features that have just been released for ScreenSteps Live. The goals for this update were to help you:

• Look better
• Be more organized
• Get more done in less time

The video below gives you a quick overview of all that is new:

Look Better

Until now, the only way to customize your ScreenSteps Live site was to add in some custom CSS or create a custom template. These are both great options but they require that you understand code. That can be pretty intimidating for most people. ScreenSteps is supposed to be about not having to deal with any of that messy code.

We are happy to announce that as of today you don’t have to anymore. You can now customize all of the colors on your ScreenSteps Live account without having to enter any CSS or HTML at all. Our new template designer lets you select colors from a color palette and then save your template. You can even choose a list of our preset designs.

If you still need the HTML templates, don’t worry, they will always be available. But for those of you who just want to change the colors around a bit but don’t want to mess with CSS or HTML this is going to be a great option.

Be more organized

ScreenSteps Live makes it so easy to create lessons that our users quickly find that they post a lot of content. But a lot of our users were having trouble keeping track of who was in charge of creating or updating specific lessons in their ScreenSteps Live account. Since we don’t believe that anyone should have to repeat work we are happy to introduce the new “Tasks” feature.

Tasks are simple to-do lists. You create a to-do for each lesson that needs to be created on your account. You can either assign it to one of your team members (they will get an email notification) or you leave it unassigned. Unassigned tasks can be claimed by any team member who logs in. Tasks offer a simple way to keep your team organized and let them know what content needs to be added to your ScreenSteps Live site.

Get more done

To help you get more done in less time we made ourselves look better. ScreenSteps Live has been completely redesigned with a clear, more polished look. We have also made it much easier to get access to public urls for your spaces and lessons as well as create new spaces, manuals, buckets, etc. on your account.

If you are current ScreenSteps Live user we think that you are really going to love the changes. If you haven’t tried ScreenSteps Live yet, sign up for a free 30-day trial. Our new setup wizard will have you going in no time. You will quickly see what a difference a visual knowledge base can make to your business or organization.

ScreenSteps has always had two goals:

1. Make it easy to create visual content
2. Make it easy to publish and distribute that content

MindTouch, one of the leading enterprise collaborative platform providers, focuses on making dynamic sites easy to create, update and manage.

For quite some time now ScreenSteps Pro users have been able to publish ScreenSteps Documents directly to MindTouch pages . This makes it so easy to create visual step-by-step guides in MindTouch that it is almost ridiculous.

We are now happy to announce that we are reaching out even further into the MindTouch community through our recent partnership with MindTouch themselves. Through this partnership MindTouch 2009 customers will receive one free license of ScreenSteps Pro with their MindTouch 2009 purchase. ScreenSteps Pro integrates directly with MindTouch 2009, allowing users to quickly create easy to follow, visual documentation and then upload it to their MindTouch wiki.

In addition, MindTouch customers will be able to purchase additional copies of ScreenSteps Pro through the MindTouch store.

The MindTouch developers have always been great to work with. We are really excited to expand our relationship with them, making ScreenSteps more readily available to MindTouch customers.

Previous to this week, authors and admins on ScreenSteps Live all had access to the same lessons. If you were using ScreenSteps Live to create tutorials and you had a team of 3 authors, then everything worked great. Any user could update any lesson at any time. But what if you wanted to add a new space that was just for the accounting department? Or you wanted to have a user contribute some content to a space but didn’t want them to have access to other buckets or manuals in that space?

You couldn’t do it.

Now you can.

Earlier this week we pushed an update to ScreenSteps Live that will give you much more control over what content authorized users can access, create and update in your ScreenSteps Live account.

The video below gives you a quick overview of the new permissions.

If you want to learn how to add Editors and Authors to spaces, see here:

• How do I Add an Editor to a Space?
• How do I Add an Author to a Space and Manual/Bucket?

New Draft Support

You can now upload draft lessons to ScreenSteps Live. This means you can put lessons that are in progress anywhere in your manual. They won’t show up to your end users until you change the draft status. In addition, you can also mark buckets and entire manuals as drafts.

ScreenSteps Live is all about making you a customer support star. That means integrating into your workflow and your branding. We have already added custom templates and host mapping to provide complete white label support.

This week we added another key component — Remote Authentication.

What is it?

Remote authentication allows you to use your existing user authentication system to grant users access to your ScreenSteps Live spaces. This gives you single sign on when integrating ScreenSteps Live with your existing systems.

How does it work?

The example below shows remote authentication integrating with a WordPress blog. When a user requests protected content on your ScreenSteps Live site ScreenSteps Live normally displays a login screen. But with remote authentication enabled you take control of user authentication. Here is how a request for protected content works:

• The user requests (1) protected content on your ScreenSteps Live account (2).
• With remote authentication enabled ScreenSteps Live redirects the user to a url that you specify (3).
• This url contains a login screen where the user enters a username and password (4).
• When the user successfully enters a valid username and password your system tells ScreenSteps Live to let the user in (5) at which point ScreenSteps Live grants access to the protected content (6).

But remote authentication does more than just log a user in. Here are some other benefits:

• If you update user information in your existing user management system, the next time that user logs into ScreenSteps Live the information will automatically be updated in ScreenSteps Live.
• If you remove a user from your user management system they will not be able to access ScreenSteps Live anymore.
• You never have to keep track of separate logins or passwords. All user management happens in a centralized location on your servers.

You can find out more about remote authentication, try our free WordPress plugin and view example code at our online manual.

Remote Authentication Online Manual

Your can sign up for a free 30-day trial of ScreenSteps Live here.

Over the last couple of months we have really seen our customers take off with new ScreenSteps Live accounts. It is great to see a new account get created and fill up with 20, 30 or even 70 lessons within the first 2 weeks. There simply isn’t an easier way to create, publish, distribute and update visual tutorials and guides.

Now we want to make the ScreenSteps Live purchase process just as easy as everything else in the service.

With that goal in mind we are happy to announce a new pricing model for ScreenSteps Live that includes a license for ScreenSteps Desktop Pro. For $19/month you get a ScreenSteps Live account and your ScreenSteps Desktop Pro software. You also, automatically get all future upgrades to ScreenSteps Pro for as long as your account is active.

Previously the purchase process of ScreenSteps Live was a little confusing. You had to:

1. Figure out how many users in your organization were going to post lessons
2. Purchase a ScreenSteps Desktop Pro License ($79.95) for each user
3. Sign up for the appropriate ScreenSteps Live Plan

Things got even more complicated when you needed to expand the number of users on your ScreenSteps Live account. You had to go purchase more desktop licenses and then upgrade your ScreenSteps Live account.

Now all you have to do is pay $19 per user per month and you get everything you need. This new pricing model makes it much easier to scale your documentation team up and down depending on your needs.

New Pricing Makes ScreenSteps Live More Economical For Solo Users

This new pricing also makes ScreenSteps Live much more economical for solo users. Previously a solo user would have to pay over $100 to get started with a ScreenSteps Live account ($79.95 for the desktop software, $24 for the monthly service). Now for $19/month they get everything they need.

Special Benefits for Existing License Holders

If you already own a ScreenSteps Desktop Standard or Pro license and are interested in a ScreenSteps Live account please contact us. We have special discounts available that allow you to apply some of your desktop license cost towards a ScreenSteps Live account.

Sign Up for a Free Trial Now

If you haven’t tried out ScreenSteps Live yet, sign up for a free trial account.

You and your customers will be glad you did.

We are very excited to announce the release of ScreenSteps 2.6. This adds some of our biggest feature requests yet:

• Embedding of videos
• Export to Microsoft Word/Apple Pages (Pro only)

We have also added some nice updates for ScreenSteps Live users. Checkout the video below to get a quick overview of what is new.

This is a free upgrade to all 2.x users. As you may have heard, with this update the price of ScreenSteps Pro will increase by $20 to $79.95. We have extended the old price of $59.95 through Monday, June 22 so purchase a copy before then to save $20. The price of ScreenSteps Standard will stay the same at $39.95.

Download ScreenSteps 2.6

Purchase ScreenSteps Now