ATTENTION: You are viewing a page formatted for mobile devices; to view the full web page, click HERE.

Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Does this exist?

<< < (2/3) > >>

dhj:
Thanks for the input everybody but, unfortunately, none of these work. It might help if I explain what I want and why. I am a IT tutor and travel to clients houses to offer tuition. Often, I need to produce a step by step hand-out, on the fly, which I can leave with customer. At the moment I am using one-note and/or word to do this at home and the sending the document on but I am looking for a portable replacement, preferably with an outliner similar to the usual suspects  Allmynotes, Rightnote, MyNoteskeeper, Myinfo and so on. This is proving to be an impossible requirement as I can't find anything that offers the functionality I am looking for, namely, the ability to drag and drop screen captures into a drawing space that I can move anywhere on the canvas and put text instructions around the picture. At the moment all I seem to able to find is a linear approach, similar to word text input but without the drawing capabilities.

Thanks again for your help.

bob99:
Here are two you might want to look at.

http://www.clarify-it.com/
Off their web site:
"A better way to work with screenshots
Capture, sequence and annotate screenshots to create documents that are a great alternative to screen recordings"

http://www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps/
Off their web site:
"Creating documentation doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to be complicated or time consuming. ScreenSteps combines everything you need, screen capture, image editing and documentation authoring, allowing you to create better documentation in less time."

These are both by Blue Mango Learning but have separate web sites.  Both are paid apps. Clarify-it is a little less $$ and not as many features.  I have Clarify-it and it lets me take a screen shot and then add text.   And export as a PDF.

Edit:
Also take a look at their blog.  It's been a while since I have and they have some good info on creating manuals. 
http://www.bluemangolearning.com/blog/

I'm all about companies putting out GOOD manuals for their products.  I used to work with a gentleman that said "Manuals should be written like a 1st grade reader. This isn't meant as an insult to a person's education. Just that typically (and naturally) the person that writes the manual is the person that knows the MOST about that product.  And the one that in many cases reads it is the one that knows the LEAST about the product. It should be written with that person in mind."

dhj:
Many thanks for the response. I have used screensteps and it is an excellent product. Unfortunately, I was looking for a bit more functionality. For example, screensteps works on a text then graphics then text then graphics, linear style which, although great for manuals, is a bit too 'big' for what I am looking for. Often I produce a process and try to keep it to two sides of A4 as it is my experience the students (I mainly teach older adults) prefer a single sheet of paper (or 2 at most). The statement your colleague made is entirely true and I am trying to get as much pictorially as I can onto 2 sides of A4 and add instructions as well, hence the requirement to use as much of the space as I can without being too cluttered. That's why, at the moment, I am using the 'drawing' approach to have, say, some text and a small screen capture in a line on the screen as opposed to one on top of the other. Also, and this is the deal breaker, screensteps isn't portable. I also felt a bit restricted by the lack of proper outlining in that I was restricted to manuals and steps and would have liked a bit more flexibility (although that is a personal preference and no reflection on the software). In summary then, a great piece of software but not portable.

Many thanks again for your input.

MerleOne:
I second the "Clarify" suggestion, it is excellent, very intuitive to use yet powerful.

bob99:
I looked for something similar to what you describe a while back but didn't need portable or the free form and used Clarify.  I remembered seeing two others in my journey but didn't try.  I found my old notes.

Hypernotes
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hypernotes/
Hard to tell if this is still in development since the last update was 5-2-2011 and it's alpha.  But from the one screenshot they show it looks interesting and kind of onenote looking.

Freeplane
This one looks interesting too and according to one of the posts in their forum I think it may be portable. Freeplane also has a fairly active forum http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freeplane/viewforum.php?f=1
They may have some suggestions.

http://freeplane.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
From the web page:
Why Freeplane?
Freeplane aims for maximum ease and speed of use. Occupying the middle ground between an editor and a diagramming tool, Freeplane allows the user to add content as quickly and naturally as they would in a text editor, yet producing structured content that can be manipulated as easily as a diagram"

Not sure if it takes screenshots but might be able to use it along side Mouser's Screenshot Captor since it can be portable.

It was also mentioned once in this old DonationCoder thread on mindmap programs:  https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=5801.msg40627#msg40627

Let us know how it goes and what you finally decide on.



Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Go to full version