In ScreenSteps, you need to do an export to PDF or HTML to get a sense of what your documentation will look like. I like the way the Preview mode in MacSnapper allows you to immediately see the effect of selecting different Template styles. One thing I would like them both to add to their text editing feature sets is bullet lists. MacSnapper allows for much more flexible formatting of text, employing a standard Font dialog box when editing text, while ScreenSteps offers a limited set of text formatting options. I have taken to linking directly to a dedicated help website from within my FileMaker databases.Īlas, there is a new contender in the screenshot documentation software marketplace called MacSnapper ($49) and I find myself tempted by this shiny new toy. I also believe that my documentation gets read more often, because it is more visual, accessable and easier to update for my clients. In the process of doing documentation, I often discover flaws or obvious user interface changes I need to fix. With ScreenSteps, I actually look forward to doing documentation for my software, as opposed to it being pretty much an afterthought that I might or might not get around to. ScreenSteps has literally changed the way I do documentation for the software I write. I have been a promoter of ScreenSteps since I discovered it a couple of years ago and have encouraged a number of other developers to start using it. It doesn’t seem right that I should mention the fact that one of my favorite programs ScreenSteps, ($39-$79) now has a competitor. I feel a tad guilty about writing a review comparing these two products. ScreenSteps vs MacSnapper - the battle of the screenshot documentation software Hopefully this feature shows up in ScreenSteps soon. ScreenSteps continues to be my documentation program of choice. This is useful for adding some text outside the boundaries of a screenshot. One of the cool things in Clarify is the ability to expand the area around a screenshot. The company has also released a lower end program called “ Clarify“, which will probably meet the needs of many people who just want to communicate ideas more effectively, and not necessarily create documentation. Blue Mango Learning has added a blur tool and my desire for in place typo correction has largely been fixed by using Typinator to fix my typos on the fly. ScreenSteps is in active development and continues to improve. UPDATE: – Since I wrote this review of the two packages, it should be noted that MacSnapper has only had a minor update and has made no progress in any of the feature areas that I felt it was limited in.Each document is a stand alone entity, with no larger organization feature. It has some very nice features that make it actually better than ScreenSteps in some ways (code block for text, resizable canvas, drop shadows!), but it lacks the manual creation features of ScreenSteps. Blue Mango Learning also offers a low-end alternative to ScreenSteps called Clarify ($14.95) and they have recently shipped a version 2 of the product. Their least expensive offering is a ‘Solo’ plan for $120/year, otherwise it starts at $29/month for two authors. Their pricing is quite high for individuals, as their target market now seems to be corporations, rather than mom and pop’s software developers. Following in the footsteps of Adobe, FileMaker and others, presumably, they are trying to set themselves to be a sustainable enterprise going forward. UPDATE: – ScreenSteps has gone to a subscription model.
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