ScreenSteps for Mac

Crazy old fashioned app with a crazy pricing.

A MONTH? So Clarify still must be the preferred version for lighter / intermittent users?

Warning for all previous users of ScreenSteps 2.9: I just got a mail from the developers of ScreenSteps and Clarify. They say, Clarify 2 was the upgrade path for both Clarify 1 customers as well as ScreenSteps 2 users. As good Clarify 2 may be, its features are far behind from the features offered by ScreenSteps 2.9. So actually, Clarify 2 is a downgrade path for all loyal users of ScreenSteps 2.9. Furthermore, I found no possibility to import lessions of ScreenSteps 2 – so all lessions I made before are lost. Unfortunately, ScreenSteps 3 is a cloud based service with monthly costs of at least 29 $. If I had known that I would never have bought ScreenSteps 2! Now I'm stuck with ScreenSteps 2. As neither Clarify 2 nor ScreenSteps 3 are acceptable upgrade paths for me, I will have to look for a replacement of ScreenSteps 2. Perhaps anybody has any suggestions?

So sad good apps migrate to cloud based only services. I don't want my data to be stored on any additional 3rd party server especially if it may contain private or customer data. I won't give an application even a try if it can only be used in the cloud - or you have to sign up for a service. This happened to the great "Billings" app so I had to look for a replacement. The same is true for the beloved Screensteps. For me it was the best documentation tool available on the mac. But cloud based means it is dead for me. I have to look for a replacement but as far as I can see there isn't a real competitor on the market so far.

ScreenSteps has certain great advantages that make it worthy of consideration. I can output manuals to a variety of well designed outputs including pdf and html. It integrates with Zendesk which is very important to me. Also, it is cross platform which is very important if your are documenting a product runs on both Mac and Windows. It is very effective and easy to use when it comes to snapping screen shots which are automatically added as steps to an open lesson. This is a very quick and easy process that is seamlessly integrated into the process of using an application while you document it. At the end of a documentation session you are left with a lesson full of screen steps that can be nicely annotated and described with minimal text to produce a clear tutorial that teaches the end user well. Unfortunately, this is where things fall apart. It is extremely time consuming and tedious to reorganize steps into multiple small hyperlinked lessons All the time you save by creating steps easily is completely lost in the editing process. The editing interface is anti-productive. The standard system clipboard is not supported so there is no way to collect steps and improve efficiency using scrapbooks or multi-clipboards. There is no way to handle multiple steps so each step must be individually moved from lesson to lesson in a tedious multi-step process that wastes time and energy. In the end, the process of producing documentation becomes as frustrating and time consuming as it would be without the program. Because this program integrates with Zendesk I will continue to use it but only as a publishing tool. I will develop and organize all the content of my manual with other screen snap tools such as Little Snapper, Skitch and Voila and then move them into ScreenSteps as a final step. If you don't need multi platform or zendesk integration you are much better off with MacSnapper. If the time comes that the developer gets a productive editing interface in place, ScreenSteps could become the best product in the category of documentation development, but until then it is punishing experience to use this product.