In the next few weeks, David is going to start putting together some “one minute tip” screencasts along the same lines as the great Photoshop Wednesdays screencasts available from One Minute Tip, except, of course, all about Scrivener. If you have any requests or suggestions for tips that might cover frequently asked questions or the sort of thing you think would either be useful to new users or just something you would like to see covered yourself, now is your chance for bid for future one-minute Scrivener tip screencast topics.
Hi Keith,
Personally one thing I feel I don’t know as much as I would like would be about using Bookends etc. with Scrivener. I know there is a big long thread on that topic, which I haven’t read yet because it is not something I need just now (my girlfriend is about to start writing a PhD thesis though, and it will be required then). If it is possible to do a screencast on that, it would be excellent.
Other areas I would suggest would be, mostly due to frequency of questions in these areas:
Importing existing documents into Scrivener from Word - eg. save as RTF, using Split at selection, etc.
Maybe some suggestions for potential uses of keywords, how to search by keywords, and so on.
Similarly, various suggestions for setting up the meta-data columns.
Some tips on marking up documents, how to export just the mark-up, how to search by mark-up. So things like Footnotes, Annotations, Highlights.
Probably something demonstrating the round trip to Final Draft, the round trip to LaTex via MultiMarkdown?
Definitely, as Jaysen said, something about correct practice in looking after files. So demonstrating best practice in cloud computing, best practice in using the ‘Backup To…’ option every day. Maybe some lessons on how Scrivener auto-saves, what to do if you think your project becomes corrupted etc.
I’m sure there are others, but they are the first ones I have thought of.
I agree with Matt - my first thoughts were “Importing” (because especially switchers will do this) and “Keywords” (because even after more than 2 years I can’t get my head around them).
Furthermore:
Basic interface features (Edit Scrivenings / fullscreen mode / corkboard)
Ways to organise the contents of the Binder
Export options (file format, handling of annotations, formatting)
Perhaps it would be useful to classify these screencasts into “Basic”, “Advanced” and “Expert”. My problem with many screencasts is: they’re either MUCH too long or way too specific.
About once a week I discover – on the forum, or by accident during use – some new feature of Scr. Should have kept a running log of them, but I didn’t. Maybe a Serendipiters’ Guide To All Things Scrivener?
If the target audience is new Scriv users, here are two suggestions:
Something to help new users understand the notion of Project and how it relates to the Scrivener window and to things in the Binder. Folks end up writing into or overwriting the Tutorial project because they do not get this right off–and so they start out with a confusion to clear up.
I think a good tip would be some simple suggestion that might give new users some idea of the appropriate scale for Projects. Tip (1) above doesn’t do the whole job, because a new user still does not know how the concept of project relates to their ideas and their content. “A book is a project” is simple enough, but the whole business is more complicated, because the idea for a book is not probably a project.
The idea is to avoid folks starting out by creating separate projects for every idea on the one hand or putting absolutely everything into one. Of course, different folks do different things, but some friendly examples could be a help. For example, using a single project file in which percolating ideas live, and that these get hived off into standalone projects when one gets serious enough with one. I am sure there are other popular strategies that could be suggested.
Tips on various ways to link documents together. After 10 months of use, I only recently discovered that you can drag a document into another document from the binder, and it will add a clickable, wiki-like link.
(1) I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I have never figured out how to get Apple’s Font → Styles to work properly in any program that uses it. Mail is the worse culprit. It’s insane that you can’t choose within Apple’s Styles box. And their Spacing dialogue box is not intuitive to me either; I’m partial to professional printer/graphic designer terms. Who calls it “inter-line-spacing?” What are your best practices?
(2) Explain the Scratchpad best practices. [When I say best practices, I mean this: you guys use this program every day. How do you use the features efficiently? Reference the doc template style its best for; ie: text, novel, play, any long document, etc.]
(3) Show Keywords HUD best practices.
(4) Show Layouts best practices.
(5) I like to format my screen doc the way it will ultimately look on the offset printed page. Does something for me to see the justified text with styled subheads. Am I better off creating elementary styles for subheads and body text, or creating a template, or does it matter?
I ditched Scrivener almost three years ago and went back to Word with all my other start-and-stop forays into research/database programs second-guessing that I would be more organized, when I was just procrastinating. But you’ve made such great improvements; and Word 2007 is like a girdle on a 80-year-old whore with bad makeup.
I love your screencasts. They are really useful, and great to reconnoitre with this fabulous program. I like the
You two ought to let 'er rip describing all the projects you use Scrivener for, because people can always watch the vids over and over again until they catch on.
This is a great tool for chunking technical documents if you work in a WIN environment because the output from Scrivener can go into programs like MadCap’s Flare.
This wouldn’t be a one-minute screencast, but I want Ioa to take us through the process of compiling the Scrivener manual. I tried Multimarkdown, and decided I couldn’t make it work. Obviously, I was missing something, because he is using it for the Scrivener manual.
Give us some examples of what he can accomplish with it, and then all the steps from Scrivener to the manual that we are reading.
Fear not though, it’s something I want to do. Maybe not a video, but a how-to and commentary on the documentation project would definitely be helpful for many.
It’s a great point though. Here we have Scrivener’s documentation… written and published in Scrivener (which is a great thing to be able to say about writing software). It would be useful to explain just how that works.
One for recommended document management. Ex: Do you prefer one folder that stores all saved documents? Then, after docs are saved when would you sync? And, what is the recommended backup scenario of the docs you created? Totally confused by all these options and would love to see a workflow screencast on this.
Will there be any more screencasts made by David? I look everyday at the youtube channel and the video tutorials in hopes that there will be something new!
I love video tutorials that present little tricks and tips that I might not have thought about. And even the usual tutorials I love.
I’ve actually watched the Introduction to Scrivener video more than ten times, at least. I’ll lie in bed with it maximized and have it play. Sometimes I’ll fall asleep to it!
I know, I’m a hopeless nerd.
Anyhow, David, if you’re listening: Please make some more screencasts for the lovers of Scrivener like I am. (However, I tend to like them longer than shorter. The more the better!)
Yes, don’t worry, there are a whole heap of other screencasts we have on the list for David to make. However, following the release of 2.0, and now us getting ready for the App Store, and then with the Windows version coming, David has been snowed under with other stuff. Hopefully he’ll be able to start working on screencasts again in the next couple of months though.
Workflows, especially complicated ones, would be nice.
And Kevin, they would be great selling tools bridging the Mac and Win worlds. It’s a helluva lot easier to say this feature is in Mac/Win only for the moment/ever than to cover it seven different ways on your site.
One idea that would serve the non-fiction crowd (journalists, lawyers, tech writers, long-book authors.)
If you’re working on a long non-fiction document with lots of research, including PDFs that you need to import, comment on, or link to. (What to do before importing into Scrivener, what to leave outside of Scrivener, and what Scrivener can handle better than spreading research all over databases, Evernote, the iPad, and files, etc., or even another Scriv proj.)
But, written documentation would be great too.