Every 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.

Using a web knowledge base to answer customer questions can be a tremendous resource. They are easy to access and easy to update.

Most web knowledge base articles are text based, however. Adding screen captures or other visual elements to your knowledge base articles can dramatically improve the results your knowledge base delivers. Most people think that it is just because the articles are more clear (visual information makes instructions easier to follow). But they also affect the user’s decision making when they are determining whether or not to read an article. Let’s look at why that is.

Knowledge bases usually contain “how-to” type articles. When a user views an article in your knowledge base they need to quickly answer two questions in their mind:

1. Does the knowledge base article apply to me?
2. Is the knowledge base article current?

Adding screen captures to your articles helps them answer these questions instantly.

Does The Knowledge Base Article Apply to Me?

By just adding a few screen captures the user can instantly see:

• Where the starting point of the article is
  

  Are there certain requirements that need to be met before you can use the information in the article? For example, if your article covers a function of Excel, does the user need to have imported some data before they can do what is described in the article? A screenshot of Excel with the data already imported will communicate that immediately.

• What part of the application the knowledge base article applies to

  If the application you are supporting has multiple screens, a screen capture will instantly communicate what part of the application the article covers.

• What type of result the knowledge base article instructions will produce

  If the user can see an image of the end result the article produces they can quickly decide if that is the result they are after.

Is The Knowledge Base Article Current?

This is probably the most important question you can answer. There is nothing more frustrating for your users then to follow the directions in your knowledge base only to discover that the instructions no longer apply to the version of the software they are using. Screen captures help the user quickly determine whether the version of the software that is described in the knowledge base article matches the version that they have. This saves a lot of frustration and lot of confused email/calls to technical support.

Visual Knowledge Base Example
Here is the same article both with and without screen captures. Notice how much more information is communicated with the simple addition of visual elements. (Knowledge base example taken from http://help.hover.com)

Conclusion

If users can determine that an article is applicable to them then they are much more likely to put the effort into reading it. by adding screen captures you can help your users make that decision in less time and get them to engage more quickly. This will dramatically increase the effectiveness of your knowledge base.

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A couple of weeks ago I tried out Posterous. I was already familiar with the service as some of my friends use it for their blogs. When one of our customers started using ScreenSteps with Posterous I decided to give it a try.

What a great service. Posterous has removed all of the unnecessary steps from posting to your blog. I’m going to be experimenting with it more over the coming weeks but here is my first post showing how to make my favorite hot chocolate (tutorial made with ScreenSteps).

It turns out that ScreenSteps makes creating screen capture based tutorials in Posterous really easy. Here is a screencast showing how to integrate ScreenSteps and Posterous using the new copy to clipboard feature in ScreenSteps 2.7.

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Evernote is a great note/information collection application. Not only does it sync across multiple devices but it will actually let you search for text inside of images you insert into notes. I like to use Evernote to store information about tasks that I perform on a semi-regular basis. With the new Export to Clipboard feature in ScreenSteps 2.7 you can now easily do your screen captures and authoring in ScreenSteps and instantly insert the lesson or document you created into Evernote. The video below shows all of the details: