Talking in Pictures

Category: ScreenSteps

ScreenSteps Desktop 2.7 Now Available! Download ScreenSteps 2.7

New ScreenSteps 2.8 Beta Available

March 5th, 2010

We just posted build 14 of the ScreenSteps 2.8 beta. In addition to numerous bug fixes, we also found time to add a couple of enhancements:

  • The tag widget for a lesson now expands to show all tags.
  • Holding down the Option key (Mac) or Alt key (Windows) when exporting a lesson or manual to PDF or DOCX will open the file in the default application rather than revealing the file.
  • You can now customize the “Table of Contents” bookmark label for PDF templates.
  • ScreenSteps now looks for a preference file alongside the application when launching. This allows you to store ScreenSteps and your registration/pref info on a USB drive.
  • Links are no longer carried over to the next line when adding a carriage return to lesson description/step instructions.
  • Updating a lesson on WordPress now overwrites existing images rather than making new ones (you will need to upload your lesson at least once with 2.8 for this to work).

This build of the beta has the final revision of the UI. At this point we are preparing for release and will be focusing on any bug reports we get. Test away!

Download the ScreenSteps 2.8 Beta

Want to Learn More About ScreenSteps Desktop?

ScreenSteps Desktop: Learn more and download a free ScreenSteps trial

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ScreenSteps Live Updates – API Docs, RSS, Search Widgets and Lesson Linking

March 5th, 2010

We have been working on quite a few changes over the last couple of weeks with ScreenSteps Live and just wanted to make you aware of some of the new features that are available on your account if you are a ScreenSteps Live user.

Updated API Documentation and API Change

Over the last few weeks we have been doing a lot of work on the ScreenSteps Live API. We are little embarrassed to say that our documentation of the API has been a little lacking. But no more. We have expanded the API section of our documentation with example xml from all of the different documented API calls. We have also consolidated all of the API resources into a single manual to make it easier to get information.

One important change – While working on the documentation we noticed a problem in the xml for the tag information of a lesson in a manual. Currently the xml node for tag information for a lesson in a manual looks like this:

<lesson>
  <tags>
    <name>The Tag Name</name>
  </tags>
</lesson>

It should be:

<lesson>
  <tags>
    <tag>
      <name>The Tag Name</name>
    </tag> 
  </tags>
</lesson>

There was a missing tag node. This will only affect you if:

  • You are using the API to display the contents of a lesson AND
  • The lesson is in a manual AND
  • You are displaying the tags for that lesson via the API

View the New API Documentation

RSS Feeds For Spaces, Buckets and Manuals

We have added RSS feeds for your spaces, buckets and manuals. With RSS feeds your users can keep up to date on new lessons that you are adding to your space, manual or bucket. If you are using the standard template, then the RSS feeds are already active in your account.

If you are using a custom template then you will need to add the new rss tag inside of the <head> tag of your custom template. The new tag is:

{{ rss }}

New Search Widget To Add To Your Site

We have also released a new ScreenSteps Live Search Widget that uses standard HTML and Javascript. This means you can insert it anywhere on your website or in other web applications that let you add custom HTML and Javascript. Here are a couple of links that can you started with the widget.

Adding a ScreenSteps Live Search Widget to Your Site

Or you can look at one of the implementations we have created using this widget in FogBugz:

Adding a ScreenSteps Live Widget to FogBugz

Linking Between Lessons in Manuals

ScreenSteps 2.8 is just about ready for release. One of the key enhancements is the new ability to link between lessons in a manual. You can see an example here. This really adds a lot of flexibility when publishing your manuals to ScreenSteps Live.

If you would like to get the beta you can download it now:

Download the ScreenSteps 2.8 Beta

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SquareSpace: Add Images to Your Journal Entries with ScreenSteps

March 3rd, 2010

We recently discovered that Squarespace supports publishing content using an XML-RPC blogging client. What does this mean for ScreenSteps users? That’s right, YAO (Yet Another Output). By configuring a WordPress Web Export account in ScreenSteps you will be adding visually rich journal posts to Squarespace in no time.

Check out the following screencast showing how it works. To configure ScreenSteps, check out the instructions showing how to configure ScreenSteps to post to Squarespace.

Want to Learn More About ScreenSteps Desktop?

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FogBugz Search Widget – Search Your ScreenSteps Live Knowledge Base From FogBugz

March 2nd, 2010

We are happy to announce the availability of a ScreenSteps Live widget for FogBugz help desks. This widget will allow FogBugz users to quickly search their ScreenSteps Live knowledge base right from within their FogBugz help desk. The video below give a quick overview.

You can find instructions on how to install the widget here:

Installing the ScreenSteps Live FogBugz Search Widget

Want to Learn More About Visual Knowledge Bases?

Download our free webinar: ScreenSteps Live – Key Concepts for Effective Visual Knowledge Bases

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The ScreenSteps Live API Ruby Wrapper

February 26th, 2010

Today we have released a new Ruby wrapper for interacting with the ScreenSteps Live API using ActiveResource. The video below shows some examples of using the wrapper in the console. The API will let you:

  • Retrieve spaces, manuals, buckets and lessons
  • Search spaces, manuals and buckets
  • Get lessons for a given tag in a space, manual or bucket
  • Create tasks in your ScreenSteps Live account

We hope that this will make it easier for Rubyists to integrate ScreenSteps Live with their Ruby applications.

You can download the latest version of the library at GitHub: http://github.com/bluemango/ScreenSteps-Live-API-Ruby-Wrapper

Several of the ideas for setting up the library were taken from the Batchbook ruby library.

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Link to Lessons in Your Manual – New in ScreenSteps 2.8 Beta

February 25th, 2010

Documentation authors rejoice! Your life just got a whole lot easier. With the current 2.8 beta you can now link directly to other lessons in your manual. ScreenSteps will automatically update these links so that they work in PDFs, HTML, Microsoft Word and ScreenSteps Live. This has been an oft requested feature and we think you are really going to love it. It is going to make modular documentation so much easier. The video below gives a quick overview.

You can download the latest beta here:

Download the 2.8 beta

We have also incorporated a lot of the feedback we have received about the new UI. There is still more work to do but we hope you are happy with how it is coming along.

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New Zendesk Widgets and Zendesk/ScreenSteps Live Webinar Tomorrow

February 16th, 2010

We are very happy to announce that two new ScreenSteps Live widgets are available from within Zendesk. The ScreenSteps Live widgets are now native Zendesk widgets which means you no longer have to paste in any code to integrate ScreenSteps Live and Zendesk.

  • Search Widget – Search the content of your ScreenSteps Live account from within Zendesk. Click a button to automatically copy a link to one of your ScreenSteps Live lessons right into the current ticket.
  • Create ScreenSteps Live Tasks Widget – ScreenSteps Live lets you create tasks for lessons that need to be created by authors on your account. Now you can create new tasks right from within Zendesk. A link to the original Zendesk ticket will be included in the task.

Zendesk/ScreenSteps Live Webinar

Tomorrow (Feb. 17, 2010), Adria Richards of Zendesk and Greg DeVore of Blue Mango Learning Systems will be doing a joint webinar on using ScreenSteps Live and Zendesk. The webinar will be held at 4pm (EST). You can register here.

The video below gives you a quick overview of the two widgets:

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ScreenSteps Gets a Facelift

February 16th, 2010

Version 2 of ScreenSteps has been out for just over 2 years now. During this time, ScreenSteps has had numerous updates that improved workflow, added new features and extended the number of export formats. Now it is time for ScreenSteps to get a facelift.

Today the ScreenSteps 2.8 Public Beta is available for download. The primary focus of this release will be graphical changes to the user interface. As with any graphical change the aim is to make the software look better. It is more important, however, that the graphical changes improve how we interact with the software. We feel the UI changes in 2.8 do just that. Here is what the new UI looks like:

New ScreenSteps UI

As you can see we have darkened the colors used in the toolbar, the left column and the footer. This helps focus the eye on the content that is being written. We have also reworked the lesson editing UI to improve object alignment and spacing. We think the writing process is much more enjoyable now.

Download the ScreenSteps 2.8 Beta

During the ScreenSteps 2.8 beta testing period we hope to get feedback from our customers on the new look. The big question is this: Does the new UI improve your experience when working with ScreenSteps?

Let us know.

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A New Face for ScreenSteps Desktop

January 27th, 2010

Over 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.

Lesson Library

Lesson Library

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Manuals View

manuals

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Lesson Editing

lesson

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Experimental ScreenSteps for Linux Beta

January 19th, 2010

Tux penguin copyright Larry Ewing, Simon Budig and Anja GerwinskiEvery once in a while we get an email in support asking whether or not a Linux version is planned. We’ve been going back and forth as to whether or not we want to support another platform.

On one hand a new platform adds new support issues and while we use Linux on some of our servers we don’t use Linux on the desktop at all.

On the other hand companies that have to train employees that they migrate to Linux definitely had a need for a program like ScreenSteps.

Last week Greg and I decided that we were going to determine whether or not a Linux version of ScreenSteps made sense. Thanks to VMWare Fusion, an Ubuntu image from VM Planet and Revolution (our development environment) we now have a build of ScreenSteps that runs on Linux.

So today we are announcing the “Experimental ScreenSteps for Linux Beta”. What is the “Experimental ScreenSteps for Linux Beta” you ask? It is a version of ScreenSteps that (mostly) works on Linux but with no guarantee that we will ever release a final version. Our goal with this release is to gauge interest in a Linux version, see if ScreenSteps works reasonably well on the different flavors of Linux out there, and get feedback from Linux users.

We invite you to download ScreenSteps, test it out and email us any feedback you have concerning problems you experienced or successes you had. You can download the ScreenSteps executable and accompanying readme file at the following url. Note that you need to have ImageMagick installed for screencapture to work. See the accompanying readme file for additional details and installation instructions.

http://www.bluemangolearning.com/download/screensteps/2_0/beta/screensteps.tar.gz

If you would like to learn more about what ScreenSteps is you can get more information here.

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