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Rate my startup: The easiest way to reply with step-by-step screenshots
- minalecs 16y agoThis looks like a solid project. Just signed up.. looking forward to using it.
- freshlog 16y agoThanks for the kind words minalecs, I'll be sending out invitations real soon, watch out for it :)
- spking 16y agoI think this is very cool. I could see myself using this to storyboard and document app flows. One thing that's not totally clear to me in the demo video is exactly what I can capture. It looks similar to Grab, where you can select any area you want and capture. It would be great if you could also capture an entire browser window by clicking on it, as with Grab.
- freshlog 16y agoThanks! Yeah I use Storyteller myself quite a bit to document user interface flows myself too :) After you click the 'Capture' button, you can press spacebar to capture your entire browser window with a single click. Is this what you were looking for?
- p0larboy 16y agofreshlog are you a singaporean?
- freshlog 16y agoYes I am.
- dalore 16y agoHow is it different to Adobe Captivate?
- freshlog 16y agoHi dalore, I created Storyteller to scratch my own itch. I wanted a quick, no-fuss way to send step-by-step screenshots to customers and co-workers without having to waste time or bother with complicated application-switching, picture-annotation and uploading steps. I just needed to send step-by-step screenshots to other people and wouldn't need all the features in Adobe's 10 pound gorilla :)
- jayair 16y agoI like it. This could give me a lightweight way to provide help to users that are having troubles on the site. Signed up!
- freshlog 16y agoYep! This is one of the use cases I made Storyteller for :)
- crocowhile 16y agoI like the project but I think you definitely need a new description for it. "The easiest way to reply" doesn't mean anything to me. Reply to what and to whom?
- aasarava 16y agoAgreed. I was confused at first. Maybe just call it "the easiest way to create step-by-step screenshots"? Or maybe something like: "Show them exactly what you mean: The easiest way to create animated, step-by-step screenshots".
- freshlog 16y agoI'm not sure about 'animated' unless you mean a powerpoint-like slideshow like what jasonkester suggested. I like "Show them exactly what you mean".
- freshlog 16y agoGood point, I was thinking: "Easily reply customers with step-by-step screenshots" but would I be boxing myself in, because I think it's good for regular sharing between friends, family and co-workers too?
- Terretta 16y agoSequencing the captures as shown in your video is a great idea--allows the person making the screenshots to stay in storytelling flow. After that, I find the easy publishing, commenting, and one click round trip annotation features of Skitch to be extremely compelling: http://skitch.com/ http://skitch.com/ For the part that comes after taking the screenshot, Skitch offers a particularly slick workflow without the separate Preview app. Since both your app and Skitch allow one click capturing with a history of captures, perhaps you could emphasize the storytelling aspect of your approach. Maybe they own the mindshare for annotated image discussions, but you own the category of screenshot sequences. Ideas: Eliminate subsequent capture button clicks until clicking Done. Drag to select and snap, use a key to switch between marquee rectangle and gui control? Show frames as a filmstrip while capturing. Flow the other commenting and annotation steps. PS. It's a different situation, but just yesterday I had to crop a dozen very high resolution JPEGs into 3 or 4 separate images each, and was disappointed that Preview couldn't just mark all the crops I wanted at once. Maybe yours could allow multiple rectangles at once, then "screenshot" them all at once.
- freshlog 16y agoI have the idea of "screenshot sequences" in mind when I made Storyteller, but I wasn't sure how best to highlight the concept, so I used 'step-by-step', which may not be good enough, considering you highlighted it, was hoping creative HN folks like you could suggest some :) Yup, continuously taking multiple screenshots without having to click the 'Capture' button, can be achieved by a global shortcut key (I've set it to Cmd+Alt+s for my current build). I like the idea of floating previously capture screenshots like a filmstrip while capturing, I'm considering using a semi-transparent HUD for that, thoughts? I'll be keeping Storyteller simple and easy to use, so I won't be implementing simultaneous image crops anytime soon . Good thoughts! :)
- evanjacobs 16y agoYou should try to tell the story of Storyteller using the product itself instead of the video.
- freshlog 16y agoHaha, I did! "Let's use Storyteller to teach you how to use Storyteller" If you have 1 minute to spare, watch this earlier screencast I made: http://vimeo.com/11276904 http://vimeo.com/11276904 The new user interface has changed quite a bit though :)
- jasonkester 16y agoNice. Is it only available for the Mac? (and if so, why???) The creation workflow looks really good. Pretty much everything you need without any excess features that nobody would actually use. The presentation piece looks like it's still under construction. I'd expect to see a powerpoint-style slideshow instead of a simple HTML dump of the whole thing. I also liked the irony of presenting the workflow for your screenshot workflow tool as a video!
- freshlog 16y agoYes, I made the mac client first because I'm using a Mac, but if this takes off I'll make a Windows version too, so stay tuned. Good suggestion for powerpoint-style slideshow transitions, it might help with focusing on one user interface screenshot at a time to better simulate it. I might implement this down the road with Javascript. Haha, a screencast video would pique your interest more than static images, wouldn't you agree? Yes irony :)
- dschobel 16y agoWhy not just make a web client? It wasn't obvious from the video that the desktop client does anything which can't be done in a browser window. It could be pretty compelling since you can drag and drop media onto the browser window, mark it up, and be right on the results/sharing page without having to mentally context switch from your app to the browser window.
- freshlog 16y agodschobel, You are right that it's possible to drag and drop media into a web browser and mark things up, but a web based implementation would miss out a ton of key benefits a native app can provide, in terms of uninterrupted flow and time savings. Here's a workflow using Storyteller: 1. Take multiple, consecutive screenshots (faster, with a shortcut key) 2. Immediately view your screenshots for annotation/re-arrangement/description 3. Click 'Create Story' 4. Get URL of new story (copied to your clipboard automatically), ready to paste anywhere With it, you'll be able to skip mundane steps like: - Locating where/which screenshot files to work with - Juggling between local files to open for annotation (unnecessary decisions get painful after lots of repetition) - Opening a browser window (Storyteller pops up when you need it) - Locating the files to upload - Waiting for the story to finish creating and copying the URL manually - Closing the browser window/tab I personally like the speed and general smoothness of a native app too. I have been uploading step-by-step screenshots quite a bit to reply my customers for a previous product of mine called Freshlog, a tool that helps create screenshot-attached documents in project management services like Basecamp and issue trackers like Unfuddle, Github etc (http://freshlog.com http://freshlog.com). My customers have found my step-by-step screenshot walkthroughs very helpful and it has always been a pleasure to go the extra mile to make these for them. However, after doing this many, many times a day, it can get very time consuming and tiring, so I made Storyteller. :)
- ebiester 16y agoThis looks like the perfect cute animal and story mail creator that my mother and her friends will send around, and I don't mean that in a bad way at all. You may want to look at that market.
- freshlog 16y agoSounds good, I'll get my mom to try out Storyteller to see if it's intuitive enough :)
- freshlog 16y agoI made this image previously, I wonder if it makes the cut for cute animal: http://alvinlai.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/storyteller-icon-300x241.png http://alvinlai.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/storyteller-i...
- xinsight 16y agoFrom your demo, I learned that Preview now has annotations that allows you to draw arrows and circles on images. Very handy -- don't know how I never saw that before.
- freshlog 16y agoYeah, I have step-by-step screenshots how to get the annotation toolbar in Preview.app, done by Storyteller: http://storyteller.freshlog.com/instructions/d290-How_to_enable_annotations_in_Previewapp_in_Mac_OS_X http://storyteller.freshlog.com/instructions/d290-How_to_ena... Your friends might find this useful :)
- orblivion 16y agoSo what's the price point? Pay for the software or a web service? If the latter, any inclination to open source the app?
- freshlog 16y agoI intend this to be a monthly subscription service for 2 reasons: 1. Reliability I want to use the stories generated and hosted by Storyteller for FAQ, customer support, prototyping and storyboarding purposes, which would remain on a company's website for a long while, requiring a good level of reliability. I'm hosting the images off Amazon S3 so huge traffic spikes for one member's image wouldn't affect other people's stuff. 2. No fuss I made Storyteller to be a no-fuss and easy solution, so users wouldn't have to bother with FTP, HTML, Dreamweaver or a web interface, hence I intend this to be a pay as you go service, for minimal configuration fuss. Unless of course the user explicitly deletes unwanted stories. Since I'll be paying the bill for S3, and actively maintaining the service for good level of reliability, that's my plan for billing. - Open sourcing I'm not sure about open sourcing everything but I do intend to open source parts of the project, because I agree with 37signals that when you make something, you can't just make one thing :)
- danudey 16y agoI would also consider the idea of having some kind of 'export' feature - export to an HTML file and a folder of images, upload to an FTP server, create HTML snippets, etc. I know a lot of people that would use something like this for a knowledgebase app for their companies, but would run it on their corporate intranet and wouldn't want to have to go to the outside world to fetch data (or, for that matter, have screenshots of their internal applications floating around on the internet). Perhaps this could be an enterprise version, an internally-hosted service, or some other pricing model (e.g. purchase a corporate license for a higher price, free upgrades for life). Once a corporate user makes the purchase, that's a lump sum in your pocket, and since they're using their internal systems to manage everything (rather than using your S3 account), there's little further cost to you (other than support, which should be minimal). What this gets you is larger one-time income (until the next paid upgrade), but lower costs. There would be no real change to your workflow, other than that you'd occasionally get big cheques from people you'd never hear from again.
- mingyeow 16y agoThink about allowing powerpoint uploading. turn it into a way for various people to collaborate around specific slides
- freshlog 16y agoDo you mean opening a powerpoint file on the native client and reordering/annotating the slides before uploading?
- danielhodgins 16y agoI like this, and would use it. Haven't researched your competitor's offerings, but you seem to have a good grasp on what I would need to quickly and efficiently create screen shots. My use case is creating a 'story' for task instructions involving multiple steps, one screen for each step. Nice work.
- danielhodgins 16y agoHow about: "Explain stuff - one picture for each step"!
- freshlog 16y agoI like this, will use this for my A/B test.
- marcamillion 16y agoHey freshlog, I am doing a podcast about various ideas/projects/stuff that HN members are working on. Interested in being on one of the episodes? I put up the first episode and am pivoting based on the feedback I got from the HN community: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1379942 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1379942 If you are interested, email me: marc {at} ideatin {dot} com The same applies to anyone else doing anything productive, that would like to do the same.
- freshlog 16y agoSent you an email