Life Below the Fold

When you interface with customers on a regular basis for a web company, a significant portion of your time can be spent trying to replicate what they see but you do not and vice versa. Invariably somebody will ask for or offer a screen shot. The problem with Windows’ PrtScn functions are that no matter what the size of your monitor is, you likely lose information due to vertical scrolling — “below the fold” as some call it. You’ll likely spend time stitching together individual shots in Photoshop and if you opt to paste your screen shots directly into email, you’ll also embed a big, bulky bitmap that eats up bandwidth.

Recently I was helping a client understand the level of complexity with her site’s Drupal permissions, which go several screens deep. I checked out a program from TechSmith called Snag-It and found my ability to take screenshots taken to a whole new level. Snag-It runs in the system tray and maps to the PrtScn button, but offers so much more than the usual PrtScn variations of screen and active window.

While giving Windows some of those cool built-in Mac functions like snapping specific regions, it goes even further. The single best thing it gives me is the ability to target a window and take a screenshot of everything “below the fold.” And, it prompts you where to save it and in which image format, creating more compact, organized files than the usual bulky bitmap without the need to dump it into Photoshop or some other image utility first.

The developer says they are gathering requests for a Mac version at present, so if that’s your platform of choice, let ‘em know what you’d like. Meanwhile, if you’re a Windows user frustrated with the remedial screenshot operations that the OS offers, take a test drive at http://www.techsmith.com/snagit/features.asp and see if it’ll help you like it has me.