
Take Better Screenshots - pavel_lishin
http://www.stilldrinking.org/take-better-screenshots
======
owaty
> Spot them all: the URL, the problem, the browser, how many tabs are open on
> that browser, the fact that this person has an unusual number of Facebook
> tabs open and probably isn’t overly invested in their job, some other
> applications that are open, that they leave system credentials in text files
> on their desktop, the time, the operating system, that they have a serious
> investment in someone named Alex, and whether the wifi is connected.

And that is _precisely_ why I would crop my screenshot to only the relevant
part.

------
pjc50
The downside of uncropped screenshots is information leakage from e.g. your
bookmarks, open tabs, unrelated emails, IM popups etc.

Another commentator mentioned annotated screenshots, and now I'm wondering
about the "semantic screenshot"; imagine getting a copy of someone's desktop
frozen in time with the ability to re-stack windows, check what's currently
available on menus, etc.

~~~
greggman2
I turned off the default Username in menu bar on MacOS so I had one less thing
to take off my screenshots.

~~~
bdcravens
Tangential to screenshots, but when doing presentations, I've taken to
creating a second user on my machine to prevent notifications, etc I'd rather
not show.

~~~
TacticalTable
MacOS seems to turn on Do Not Disturb when plugged into unusual external
displays or sharing my screen online, which has always been a big help.

------
indentit
I see a lot of cropped screenshots on support forums, when really it would be
better if the poster took the screenshot of the whole window, and then just
highlighted the area they are worried about with a red square (or if you are a
StackOverflow user, a freehand red circle ;)). Often the answer lies outside
the area the poster thinks is relevant and if one could see it immediately, it
would save lots of questions and back and forth.

That said, automatically annotated screenshots would be useful, or even
better: if someone invents a screengrab tool that would semantically tag all
parts of the image based on the data available so its not just a plain image.
I.e. screengrab a GUI window and all the text displayed in that window could
be added as metadata like titlebar/button/label text and then it becomes
searchable. I guess it would need an API that the developer of the app would
have to explicitly implement though for most useful results like debug state
information...

~~~
vthriller
Re: annotated screenshots, there once was a module that allowed making
snapshots of GTK windows as PDFs: [https://github.com/nomeata/gtk-vector-
screenshot](https://github.com/nomeata/gtk-vector-screenshot)

Edit: here it is in action, with selectable text: [https://www.joachim-
breitner.de/various/pdf_screenshot_3.pdf](https://www.joachim-
breitner.de/various/pdf_screenshot_3.pdf)

~~~
indentit
wow, that's awesome - thanks for sharing! :)

I'm surprised it's not more popular though, but I guess it has remained
undiscovered like it was for me until now, or it's simply not as useful to
others as I would think. Maybe because not all apps are GTK3 apps, or people
don't want pdf's because they can't be inlined on a issue ticket like plain
old images can, for example?

~~~
vthriller
> people don't want pdf's because they can't be inlined on a issue ticket like
> plain old images can

Well, this module can also produce SVGs, which, I guess, can be inlined in
some issue trackers. But, aside from being GTK3-only, the main reason this
sort of thing didn't become popular is simply due the fact that even JPEG
screenshots are just good enough and get the job done. Virtually nobody has
any need to search for text in older screenshots; selecting text—well, you
can't copy-paste from most of real error windows, so you're going to re-type
its content anyways; and nobody is bothered with other people's font sizes,
aliasing preferences, JPEG artifacts or whatever.

~~~
johannes1234321
One Thing where SVG isn't good enough is around fonts - PDF can embed fonts
needed, thus produce the "correct" result. SVG probably would pick a different
fallback font, which can lead to trouble.

Aside from that: jpeg with compression artifacts works well enough, so that
even png, giving better quality, often isn't used by non-technical folks.

And unrelated as an anecdote: The IT hotline at a bank where I once worked
asked for screenshots as Word documents (my assumption: "everybody" knows Word
and so teaching "press 'Print' on your keyboard and then paste into Word" is
relatively reliable teachable via phone ... this went to some level where we
as developers got screenshots of sessions containing customer info, where
customer details were "hidden" using black bars from Word, which of course
could have been removed easily)

------
wool_gather
> This educational blind spot leads Person Q to take a carefully framed
> picture of the 2 percent of their visual field that signaled a problem and
> email it to Person X, assuming Person X will immediately grok the necessary
> portion of Person Q’s life experience that motivated them to send it.

Bravo; I have never seen a more perfectly succinct illustration of the
fundamental problem of human existence.

It's a struggle to remember that nobody else is inside your head, but damn,
that realization makes everything easier to deal with.

------
kranner
To OP -- in the spirit of the article -- it's an uphill task to separate the
content from the witticisms here. IMO it would have been a better read with
fewer jokes.

~~~
exikyut
To _you_, this person wrote [https://www.stilldrinking.org/the-episode-
part-1](https://www.stilldrinking.org/the-episode-part-1) (and 18 more parts,
which I only put down because my body required sleep),
[https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-
sucks](https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks), and everything over
at
[https://www.stilldrinking.org/essays.php](https://www.stilldrinking.org/essays.php).

((Who gets the reference?))

~~~
kranner
I'm not sure how that is relevant to this essay, which I found almost
unreadable.

------
chx
Ah yes, the famous stilldrinking.org where
[http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-
sucks](http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks) comes from :D It's the
best essay written about programming, ever. Just one quote:

> This file is Good Code. It has sensible and consistent names for functions
> and variables. It’s concise. It doesn’t do anything obviously stupid. It has
> never had to live in the wild, or answer to a sales team.

------
rcarmo
This piece is so littered with ads (one per paragraph) that it is impossible
to read without an ad blocker.

~~~
dredmorbius
That's, sadly, the Web these days.

Even _with_ adblockers, I see the "advertisement" lines remaining in articles.
Often every paragraph or two.

~~~
progval
With Javascript disabled, I don't see them at all

~~~
exikyut
With /etc/hosts blocking, I still see them, and I like it. It's like a TV
that's gone to ads and then glitches out and the show comes straight back on.

~~~
penagwin
That's what Hulu is like with ublock. It goes to show "ads" but just shows a
blank screen, and the countdown goes from 30 seconds to 0 instantly.

~~~
exikyut
:D

------
artsyca
That's because this article is not about screenshots, it's about the human
condition with a dialectical analysis centered on the banal medium of the
screenshot vis the existential angst we suffer as human beings now that the
floodgates of communication have been busted wide open yet we still have very
little of substance to relate

This is a person who truly gets it and knows how to paint a picture with
words. Try taking a more visceral approach or listening to Baba Ram Dass in
order to truly appreciate the mastery of verse contained in this blog post

------
miki123211
My advice is to avoid taking screenshots wherever possible, particularly if
you want to share something in a public setting. The're an accessibility
nightmare and may make your content unreadable for certain groups of people,
screen reader users in particular.

~~~
bauerd
What's the alternative?

~~~
bipson
Learning to describe your problem.

Specific knowledge aside, I am always astonished that people not being able to
coherently read and write is getting worse.

That's something YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook don't teach I
guess?

~~~
bauerd
The two are not exclusive

~~~
thrower123
Exactly - together they make a wonderful synergy.

I die a little inside every time I get a bug report that is just a couple
sentences saying that something didn't work.

I also die a little every time I get a bug report that is just an out-of-
context downsampled screenshot of some dashboard, where it has been shrunk so
the text is not readable, and there is nothing highlighting what the issue is.

I have to really, really fight back the urge to send back a message with
nothing but a gif of the Jerry Maguire "Help me help you" scene

------
makapuf
Screenshots for asking help are not the same as screenshots for showing to
people. A screenshot is a good way for someone who does not know to send
something he does not see himself to someone that will see it. You will
capture more than you know in a screenshot, and that's the point. So grab
large and you might capture an interesting point that, if you knew was
important, you could have communicated as text. But of course be careful you
will send more than you think (again it's the point) and try not to include
sensitive info as in the last article's screenshot.

------
squeaky-clean
> Then there are the well-meaning spirits who discovered the developer console
> and send these with worried emojis:

All too true. The worst I've ever gotten was an email titled "Problem!" (or
similar), the body was several of the grimacing and throwing up emojis, and
attached was a screenshot of a (long and ugly) SQL query without the attached
results.

When I asked if they could send the results over, or at least a copy-pasteable
version of the query, they said they had closed SQL Workbench already along
with the query and results...

~~~
exikyut
If a tree crashes to the ground but nobody is there to see it, did the tree
actually fall?

In this situation I think there was never a real, valid problem in the first
place.

------
crispyporkbites
You know what would be helpful? A button in the web browser that the user can
click, which creates a full page screenshot and dump of a bunch of helpful
data points for debugging (e.g. URL, cookies, history, console logs, network
requsets, assets, RAM use, IP address, user agent etc etc.)

Basically a neat way to export a pseudo-stack trace from the application
environment with screenshot and all potentially useful info.

~~~
mook
Firefox at least does the screenshot part.

[https://screenshots.firefox.com/](https://screenshots.firefox.com/)

------
dspillett
Or even better, if you can reliably reproduce the problem perhaps record
yourself doing so using something like
[https://www.cockos.com/licecap/](https://www.cockos.com/licecap/)

------
dsego
As a dev, the worst offenders are not sending the url and a screenshot with
new copy annotated within the image file (and an obligatory arrow to content
it replaces).

------
letsgetsilly
ShareX provides the best windows-based screenshot in my experience.

[https://getsharex.com/downloads/](https://getsharex.com/downloads/)

~~~
ASalazarMX
For me, Greenshot is the most convenient. Not only you can select what area
you want, you can edit the screenshot (proverbial red circle, text, etc.)
before saving it.

[https://getgreenshot.org/](https://getgreenshot.org/)

------
dwags
Checking out the browsers / desktops of my coworkers when they are sharing
screens is fun. We still make fun of one guy who had google bookmarked in
chrome.

------
bureaucrat
No, I favor full screen screenshots because people tend to not include
important things when they crop.

~~~
jmkni
Also you get to spy on people a little

------
myroon5
Related:

[https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-
eradicator](https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator)

~~~
RussianCow
How is this related?

~~~
myroon5
"Actually, the end of the Facebook feed would be great"

