We have just posted beta versions of ScreenSteps 2.0.2 for both Mac and Windows. This is the first version of ScreenSteps 2 that has been made available for Windows. You can download the Windows beta from our main download page.

You can download the Mac beta here.

Here are some of the highlights from the new beta version:

1. You can now split a lesson in two (right click on a step to split the lesson at that step).
2. You can now package and export individual lessons for importing into other ScreenSteps Libraries.
3. Enter key will now open text fields for editing.
4. Various image cropping improvements
5. Fixed some problems users were having when the ScreenSteps window was minimized.
6. Improved spacing in PDF output.
7. Various cosmetic improvements.

You can see the full list of changes in the release notes.

After Macworld I had to come back and update/create the documentation for ScreenSteps 2. I had created some lessons during the beta but pretty much everything I had done had to be updated (the UI had changed since the beta) and I also had to create a lot of new lessons to cover additional content.

Well, in about 90 minutes I was able to get all of this written and published to ScreenSteps Live.

Here is a screenshot of the table of contents.

Updating lessons was especially great. All I did was hit that replace image button and I had the old lessons updated with the new UI changes in no time.

We just got back from Macworld last week and what a week it was. After many late, late nights getting ScreenSteps 2 and ScreenSteps Live ready we were finally ready to go Tuesday morning at 11am. Well, at least mostly. This was the first time we had really exhibited at a large show so we were doing a lot of learning on the job.

It went great though. The reaction of people who saw the software was really overwhelming. With ScreenSteps 1 I think we had created something that was interesting. It was a decent program and could be a big time saver. But it wasn’t great. With ScreenSteps 2 we wanted to strive for greatness and at least get to really, really good. I don’t know if we have achieved great software yet but, judging from people’s reactions I think we are a lot closer to really, really good.

The scenario would go something like this: someone would walk by and ask what we did. We would say, “We have a tool that helps you make really quick visual instructions for doing things on your computer. Is that something that you need to do?” They would either respond yes or no but almost everyone was intrigued enough to see a quick demo.

And the demos were very quick. We would do a lesson and have the images captured, annotated and ready for publishing in under 30 seconds.

If they had said that they did do documentation they were ecstatic. If they had said that they didn’t do documentation they almost always said, “Oh! I have to do that all the time.”

We had several people each day who said that seeing ScreenSteps had made it worth coming to the show. I’m not kidding.

It was also great to see existing customers. We talked to several users who were using ScreenSteps in ways we had never imagined. One user even brought us a thank you card and cookies. The card said that ScreenSteps was the best software that he never knew he needed.

Scott McNulty came and interviewed me for TUAW and did a nice write up. We got so much traffic on our site and people viewing the video that the videos stopped working for awhile. We moved the videos over to Amazon’s S3 service and everything seems to be working great.

All in all we were totally exhausted by the end of the week but also totally exhilarated. When you are working on this stuff you never know how people are going to react. Being able to interact with customers and see their excitement was really an amazing experience. We already can’t wait until next year. Until then we have a lot of work to do to incorporate all of the great feedback we got from people.

If you want to see the online version of the 30 sec demo (OK, it is actually 3 minutes long) that got people so excited you can see it here.

We at Blue Mango Learning Systems are pleased to announce the release of ScreenSteps 2 Standard and Pro for Mac (a Windows beta release should be coming out in the next week).

ScreenSteps 2 is the result of months and months of looking at the lesson creation process. ScreenSteps 1 make it possible to create short tutorials for others (customers, employees, family, etc.) quickly. ScreenSteps 2 makes it so much easier to do that and much more.

Check out the new info at www.screensteps.com.

Just wanted to let you know that the information about ScreenSteps 2 has been posted on the ScreenSteps site.

Here are some highlights:

ScreenSteps 2 New Features

There are now three version of ScreenSteps. You can compare versions here.

Information for upgraders.

We will hopefully be posting some more screencasts soon as well.

Yesterday we sent an announcement out to our mailing list about ScreenSteps 2. We will be releasing ScreenSteps 2 for Mac next week at MacWorld in San Francisco. The Windows version will follow soon after.

We were really pleased with the response from the preview release. A lot of people downloaded right away and got to work. We had one user that was so excited about the new version that she used it to prepare a project that was going to be due by the end of the day. Talk about living on the bleeding edge of technology! Unfortunately she found a bug that looked like it was going to be a show stopper. But Trevor got it fixed right away and she hit her deadline.

The feedback we have received has been great. We have been working on this one for quite awhile. It is a major change from the last version of ScreenSteps and we think its something that you are really going to love. With this release of ScreenSteps we are moving from a tool to create tutorials for others to software that can help you capture and retain knowledge for later retrieval. We will be writing more about that in the next couple of days and weeks. If you would like to see the preview video go here:

http://www.screensteps.com/screencasts/screensteps2preview/

Just wanted to let you all know that Blue Mango Learning Systems will have a booth at MacWorld next week in San Francisco. We are at booth 4336 in the West Hall so be sure to come by and see what is new with ScreenSteps! We have a lot of exciting stuff we will be launching at the show.