Tutorial creation tool ScreenSteps released a new version today and we’re excited to discover this very useful looking tool. This desktop app for Windows and Mac lets users create attractive screenshot-based support documents in minutes. You can capture full or partial screenshots, add relatively sophisticated annotation and then publish to the web or export in HTML or PDF formats.
The 30 day trial of ScreenSteps Pro took us just a few minutes to learn how to use and we’re already excited to use this service for product reviews and tutorials.
ScreenSteps lets you drag and drop to capture screen shots, then go back and title them, overlay annotation and make other edits to a long list of images you’ve captured while navigating through any process online. Beyond that, we’ll let the company’s demonstration video speak for itself but we can confirm that it’s very easy to use. The one thing so far that we wish ScreenSteps allowed was publishing to Google Docs as a PPT. We like embedding click-through tutorials from Google Presentation. Right now it appears that all your presentations are just shots lined up, one after the other, with annotation added on top.
We would guess that many people have different export preferences, so it would be nice to see those options expanded even further. See below for some other examples of presentation type services you might also find useful.
Asset management, or changing the order of the images in a presentation, could be easier to do too.
The video below looks much better when viewed full-screen; hit the TV button to view it that way.
Other Services to Check Out
Last weekend Corvida wrote here about a number of online presentation tools, and readers offered even more suggestions in comments.
A few services that could be of interest that weren’t mentioned include:
- Screenflow is the hottest new screencast video capturing tool on the market. It’s Mac (Leopard) only but tough luck Windows users, you’ve had all the good screencasting software for years.
- JingProject is a free, quick and dirty screencasting service from the makers of Camtasia. It’s Mac and Windows friendly. We’ve had it crash a lot and direct access to the files is not as simple as it should be, but when it works it’s really easy to use.
- There are probably hundreds of other services that combine powerpoint, video, audio and other media types to let you create presentations. What are your favorites?
The two mentioned above capture moving images, which can sometimes take way too long to get right. We think that ScreenSteps looks like a very intelligent entry into this field as it only captures screenshots and is really easy to use. If you’d like to learn more about the application, check out the interview with its developers posted today at The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Thanks to Jason Glaspey for bringing ScreenSteps to our attention.
