ScreenSteps 2.5 Beta Released
I’m happy to announce that we have posted the first ScreenSteps 2.5 beta! We have been working on this release for a long time and hope that everyone will find something in it that will help them document more quickly and efficiently.
The primary focus in version 2.5 was integration with our new and improved ScreenSteps Live service. In order to take advantage of the great new features in ScreenSteps Live, uploading and updating of content between ScreenSteps and ScreenSteps Live is better than ever. This integration combined with the new lesson status tracking feature and the ability to hide manual chapters (formerly manual sections) that are not yet ready for publishing will make working on documentation in groups much easier.
In this release you will also find the often requested text annotation tool. We’ve also made dramatic speed improvements when dealing with large libraries and lessons can now display an unlimited number of steps.
We’ve posted a ScreenSteps 2.5 manual on our ScreenSteps Live account. To create this manual we duplicated the 2.1 manual in ScreenSteps, renamed it and uploaded the new manual directly to ScreenSteps Live. This week we will go through the manual updating screenshots where necessary and adding new lessons to cover new features. As we make these changes we will be able to instantly publish them to our ScreenSteps Live account where they are instantly available. Pretty cool.
There are more features, enhancements and bug fixes so be sure to check out the What’s New in ScreenSteps 2.5? lesson and take some time to read the release notes.
Version 2.5 will be a free update for customers with a valid 2.x license.
Tags: ScreenSteps Desktop
January 26th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Hi there,
I’m a registered user of Screen Steps and thought I’d try out the beta – unfortunately it keeps on expiring on me, even though I’m a registered user.
Is there any way to avoid this, or should I just install the old version again?
Cheers,
Alex
January 26th, 2009 at 10:22 am
The beta releases will always have an expiration date associated with them so that people will not use them indefinitely. What the betas don’t currently do (but which they will do shortly) is check for a newer beta or for the final release version using the auto update mechanism after they expiration. Once this mechanism is in place updating won’t be such a hassle.
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I downloaded the beta and will test it out. However I did not realize I covered my 2.1 or 2.2 install. Will this create any issues?
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:33 pm
@Steve – There shouldn’t be any issues. If you want to go back to the 2.1 version then you can just go to http://www.screensteps.com/downloads and download the 2.1 release version.
February 27th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Love this new beta; looking forward to the auto-update.
March 3rd, 2009 at 7:35 am
I am a registered user at well – you should enable sparkle framework updating – even if it expires. If i don’t open screensteps every day, it will expire on me before the auto update works – very inconvenient.
Also, when will you integrate with OSX text services? Its silly i cant use the built in Spellchecker there, when I can on Firefox, etc.
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:05 am
@james: Sparkle is a Cocoa auto update framework and ScreenSteps is not a Cocoa application. Plus it makes more sense for us to use the same auto update mechanism on Mac/Windows. We already have auto update available to us but we need to make it available in the dialog that appears telling you the beta is expired. That is on our list of things to do, it just hasn’t been done yet. We will hook up automatic checks at some point but there are some issues we have to resolve first.
We don’t have any concrete plans on when we/if will integrate with OS X text services. We do use the OS X dictionary for our spell check, however, so right-clicking on words or using Edit > Spell Check will give you the same suggestions.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:57 am
I want to try release 2.5, but my colleagues are still working with version 2.1, do I need to copy the library to a local folder and use this one to experiment on?
March 9th, 2009 at 8:05 am
@greg Thanks for the explanation. I only just saw this again having encountered another message saying the beta has expired
Downloading latest version again. Looking forward to the finished update!
March 11th, 2009 at 9:48 am
@raymond ScreenSteps 2.5 and 2.1 will work with the same libraries. So no, you don’t have to make a copy if you don’t want to.