I recently downloaded Scrivener for the free trial with high hopes, the video tutorials made it seem like a must if you wanted to write. But I begin to wonder if the “Free Trial” is the full version, or if I’m so stupid that I can’t figure a single thing out.
I can’t seem to find the Name Generator (one of the biggest reasons I wanted to try it out) and I can’t figure out the setup. When I made a new session I choose “novel” instead of “blank” so don’t know if that made a difference. And I tried to do/see all of what the videos showed, but I can’t seem to find/get what I need.
So my biggest suggestion is that you create the same video tutorials for Windows, if windows has those features. They don’t have to be perfect, just enough to show us the features and how to use them.
The trial is the full version, only time limited. Buy it and you get a key to remove the time limit.
You’re correct in saying the Windows version is secondary to the Mac version and that steepens the learning curve for Windows users. If you stay with it the learning curve will flatten eventually; it has for me and I don’t use half the features.
The least confusing way to learn Scrivener is via the Interactive Tutorial, which you can create (just like any other project) via File->New Project. It’s in the Getting Started section, and will only address what Scrivener for Windows can do, and will also take into consideration where the menu items are located as well. Because Scrivener keeps track of where you were when you last had a project open, you can go through as little or as much as you like and then come back to it later, learning at your own pace.