It has occurred to me recently (or rather the possibility was suggested by a friend) that as a computer scientist, I’ve become so far removed from the “normal” use of computers by “Joe Sixpack.” I have a set of tools, programs, utilities that I use and love and imperialistically think everyone should use and love. I caught myself suggesting that someone use a command-line tool called “ffmpeg” to convert his videos.
That said, there is something incredibly useful that I think more people should know about and use: screen captures. They’ve been around forever, but they’re usually a deeply-buried feature (at least in OS’s I’ve used). I clearly focus on how to do this in Mac (sorry fanboys of other OS’s).
How To:
- Command-Shift-3 – Captures the whole screen. If you have multiple monitors, it will capture everything visible.
- Command-Shift-4 – Captures a selectable area.
- Command-Shift-4, then Space – This is the one I use most often as it allows you to select a window. It’s quicker than drawing a box around the window, and the results look much nicer.
- Home-Power Button – On the iPhone / iPod Touch, hold the home button and press the power button. Release.
iPhone / iPod Touch:
- Quick-and-Dirty Save – I saw a friend scribbling down notes off of his iPod touch onto some paper. I asked if his battery was low, and he told me that it wasn’t, but he didn’t have wifi where he was going and might need to reference something. A screen capture is a great way to get a quick-and-dirty save of information you might need to reference. It’s not perfect, but it’s dead-simple.
- Slow Connection – Whether you’re out in the boonies or just on an incredibly slow connection or have had to navigate some terrible website, once you get some information, instead of playing Safari-Roulette (whether or not it will decide to refresh from the server), a picture might be sufficient.
- GPS – The built-in Google Maps doesn’t have waypoints, and so when I’m out and about with friends or on a hike, at the beginning, get your location on Google Maps and screen capture it. That way you don’t have to remember the intersection or where the trailhead was.
- Directions – I love the Google Maps app, and though it has destroyed my sense of direction, it’s pretty useful. However, when you see the list of directions, if you close out the app (and sometimes even if you don’t), it will re-ping the GPS and that consumes time and precious battery life. Screen capture all the directions for a quick reference.
- Anything Laggy – The general principle is if it might be slow to get back to, take a screen cap. I had a lab I needed to repeatedly reference in the field, but viewing the whole PDF was very laggy, but I didn’t need to see it in full resolution.
Computer:
- Diagnosing Problems – If you are friend, family or colleague get in touch with me on AIM or email to help you solve your tech problem, do me this incredible favor and include screen captures of what you’re trying to do and what’s happening.
- Describing How To – When conveying how something’s done, instead of describing where this button or that button is, or what text field to enter something, show the person. Screen captures make people feel confident that they’ve entered everything in correctly.
- Spotting Bigfoot – Being quick on the keystrokes can be essential for documenting anomalies. My favorite such screen capture is I once got a debugger (not just any debugger – gdb) to crash. The tool one uses to figure out why programs crash, crashed.
Look and Feel – Here are some examples of what the different methods look like:
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- Drawing focus to certain areas.
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- A demonstration of OmniDazzle
Bonus : Marking It Up – Whenever you want to mark things up a little bit to draw attention, there are a bunch of tools out there.
- Skitch – http://skitch.com/ – You can quickly and easily mark up pictures and upload them to Flickr, Skitch and other places.
Drawing focus to certain areas.
- OmniDazzle – http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidazzle/ – Highlight as if with a spotlight (or other visualizations) certain areas of the screen. I use this all the time when lecturing or demonstrating something.
A demonstration of OmniDazzle
