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SnapperSome hints and tips in its use |
The easiest way to capture a single menu is to use Snapper in window mode. A menu is a wimp window of specific layout. Simply raise the menu by clicking the mouse menu button, leave the mouse over the menu, and then use the trigger key combination to snap the menu. See below for some screen shots of single menu capture, which show the effect of the pointer settings in the control window.
A full menu structure with submenus or dialogue boxes is constructed from more than one window, and cannot be captured in one shot while in window mode. You have two choices. Firstly you can use window mode to capture the main menu and each of the submenus in turn, and then use other software to stick the component parts back together again.
Secondly, you can use the area mode to capture the whole menu in one shot. This would normally require a dummy run in order to size and position the snap area to enclose the menu. Once satisfied, raise the menu again, and use the trigger key combination to grab the menu. You might end up with something similar to that shown below.
This may be suitable in some cases, but the image shows the background window(s) and desktop backdrop, which may be distracting.
Here is where the Fill option comes in. The snap shown above was taken with the default fill of Trans (transparent) so everything within the snap area is shown. If we set the fill to a colour, in this case I have used light blue to contrast with the white html page background, then we get the snap shown below, which is much cleaner. The only difference in obtaining these two snaps was in the fill setting. The two images are exactly the same size, and the menu was opened as near as possible to the same place in the two cases. To eliminate the large border, either position the snap area and menu structure more accurately, or use image processing software to crop the final image. Normally, the fill colour would be chosen to be the same as the background over which the image was to be shown - on this page, for example, white would be used.
For the technically minded, here is a brief explanation, which shows the power of David's program. The red area borders are made up of a total of eight separate wimp windows, corresponding to the sides and corners of the area. Thus there is nothing owned by Snapper within the delineated area, so it is normally transparent, and the desktop can be seen through. A snap under these conditions will capture everything visible, as in the first shot above. If you have been moving/resizing the area using the Select mouse button then the red border will be at the top of the window stack i.e. in front of all the other windows. When a menu is first opened it is always shown in front of (on top of) all the other windows, so it will be in front of the border. If a snap is now taken with Fill set to a colour, Snapper temporarily creates a new blank window (with no window furniture) within the snap area with a background colour set to the fill colour and at a level in the window stack corresponding to the area red border position. In this particular case only the menu will be still visible because it is in front of the area red border. The snap is now taken showing the menu against the plain colour background (second shot). Then the temporary fill window is deleted and the border area is once again transparent.
The zap menus shown shown below demonstrate the effect of the pointer settings move and show on what is captured when a snap is done (you may need to increase the width of your browser window to show everything side by side correctly).
The snap below was taken with Move on and Show off. Snapper first moves the pointer off the bottom left of the screen. The wimp detects this and uninverts the menu item under the pointer. With Show off, Snapper does not superimpose the pointer on the image after capture. | The snap below was taken with Move off and Show on. The menu item under the pointer is inverted, and Snapper superimposes the pointer in its correct position so the final image is the same as would be seen on-screen. | The snap below was taken with both Move on and Show on. Snapper moves the pointer off the bottom left of the screen and the wimp then uninverts the menu item under the pointer. Snapper inserts an image of the pointer in its original position after capture is complete. | The snap below was taken with both Move off and Show off. Since the pointer position is still over the menu item the wimp keeps the item inverted, but Snapper does not superimpose the pointer. |
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The iconbar is simply a window without any furniture. Therefore the iconbar can be captured by selecting 'Window', placing the pointer over the iconbar and snapping in the normal way.
Specific parts of the iconbar can be captured easily using the snap area option, positioning the area to cover just the part of interest. However, there can sometimes be problems. Here is a question asked by several users.
"I was trying to capture some icon bar icons, using the "area" option for this. I set the area window to cover the icon/s I want, and then trigger the snap. The whole icon bar then moves smartly to the left, and I'm left with a screenshot of different icons to the ones I wanted! How can I stop this?"
This is due to the setting of the Move option. If Move is ticked, then on snapping, the pointer is moved to the bottom left corner of the screen. If the iconbar is too long to completely fit the screen width, and has been scrolled to the right, then moving the pointer to bottom left will immediately cause the iconbar to scroll back. Thus Snapper copies the incorrect area. The answer is to untick Move before snapping. This effect would also be observed when trying to capture the whole iconbar if it has been scrolled to the right.
When the save method is set to 'use save path', all saves will be made into the directory specified by this option. The filename numerical suffix is incremented after each save, so saves do not overwrite each other. Snapper checks the file does not already exist, and if it finds it does, then the filename suffix is incremented until there is no clash.
The path is set up in one of three ways.
If you are using e.g. Transient, and want to always save into the 'today' directory, it is no good simply dragging the directory icon into todays directory (or todays directory into Snapper), because that will fix the path to that particular directory for all time. You need manually to enter the appropriate system variable which points to the current day directory. For Transient you should enter <Transient$TodayDir> directly into the Save Path icon. Remember to press RETURN to action the change. Then the saves will always be made into the current days directory.
The paths required for other temporary directory applications will vary. For the application TempDir the path should be <tempdirworkingpath> to save into the current day directory.
In all cases you should then save choices from the iconbar menu to remember the new setting after a restart.
This document last modified on 8th June 2015