Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

This is mainly a service release to correct some problems found in the original 2.0 release of Window Clippings. It also introduces some usability improvements that I think you will appreciate.

You can get the update via the “Check for Updates” button on the About tab. New users can download the latest version from http://www.windowclippings.com/.

The following bugs have been fixed in this build:

  • Users upgrading from 1.5 may notice capture screen appear immediately after login.
  • Users running Windows XP/2003 (or Vista without desktop composition) may notice flicker as different windows are selected.
  • The Options window icon may initially overlap the caption text on XP/2003.

I’ve also made some improvements to the startup options to allow users that preferred the startup behavior of the version 1.5 release to easily reproduce that behavior:

  • You can now specify the following command line to gain access to both the notification icon and the hot key support: “WindowClippings.exe /icon /hotkey”. You may want to create a shortcut for this.
  • The “Exit” command on the notification icon’s context menu is back!

As before, “Hide Icon” does what it says and removes the notification icon. The “Exit” command however provides similar behavior to the version 1.5 release in that it both removes the notification icon and terminates the background hot key process, thus completely exiting Window Clippings.

Finally, I’ve also added some help text to the capture screen to assist first time users as well as infrequent users. The text disappears as soon as you start interacting with the capture screen.

Enjoy!

© 2007 Kenny Kerr

Published Wednesday, May 30, 2007 4:22 AM by KennyKerr
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Comments

# re: Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 5:10 AM by Szajd

Hi,

Can't we have two of the menu items from the notification area icon context menu added to the capture screen context menu? I'm thinking about "Open Storage Folder", and possibly "Exit". If this was the case, I could run Window Clippings without the notification area icon, without having to worry about the great feature for opening the storage folder.

What do you think?

Also, it would be great if we could actually see a checkbox, or at least a label in the Options dialog about the Windows startup settings.

# re: Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 8:02 AM by Seb

As well as the ones made above, could I make a few  more requests too?

1) The ability to select *Windows Key* + Print Screen as the trigger in the Options pane.

2) The ability to toggle "Include Mouse Pointer" from the right-click menu.

Thanks for the update

Seb

# re: Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 2:50 PM by Leo Davidson

Nice work so far, Kenny!

I'd like to second the request for an Exit option in the capture context menu. I don't ever want to see the tray icon, since I use it so rarely, but when I have to exit WC it's a pain because I have to manually run it with the /Icon switch in order to gain access to the Exit option. (Or just kill the process.)

Will the automatic updater ever support UAC? Right now those of us with WC in Program Files and UAC enabled have to manually exit, download and upgrade the program.

Finally, and more importantly, I think it would be a big help if certain options were easier to access. Seb mentions being able to toggle the mouse pointer option via right-click menu, which I think is a fine idea.

Going beyond that, I'd like to also suggest the idea of having more than one hotkey to trigger different modes.

For example, I usually want to take an immediate screenshot of the current window. WC is great for this. I press Shift-PrtScn, double-click the window and I'm done. But sometimes I want to include some menus in the capture. To do that I have to press Shift-PrtScn, right-click, choose Options, choose Image, then set a capture delay, OK, and then press Shift-PrtScn again, take the capture... then do it all again to undo that setting so I'm back to having no delay. Painful!

If I could instead do Ctrl-Shift-PrtScn (or whatever) to invoke a delayed capture, while Shift-PrtScn would still do an immediate capture, then that would be much better.

This could be hardcoded in that way, or you could let people define hotkeys and associated options "profiles" that go with them. I don't mind which myself.

It could also simply be another option in the right-click menu. In other words, as well as Create Image there could be an action called Create Image With Delay.

I don't really mind how it works, just so long as I don't have to keep going into the Options dialog to switch between instant and delay.

Thanks for the continued development and good luck with the sales. I hope you sell enough to make it all worthwhile. (I've bought a copy already, of course.)

# re: Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

Wednesday, May 30, 2007 10:42 PM by KennyKerr

Szajd, Seb, Leo Davidson: Thanks for all the great feedback.

There are a few different points here while some are variations of the same thing so I will try to address them all as best I can. I encourage you to read through my response and continue to share your thoughts so I can continue to improve Window Clippings.

Startup mode and hot keys

With the introduction of command line flags it seems unnecessary to introduce additional hot key options for different startup modes. You can create shell shortcuts that invoke the different command line flags and then associate keyboard hot keys directly to the shortcut. Another option is to use the “Favorites” keys on modern keyboards. I have a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 and it has 5 programmable “favorites” buttons. I’ve assigned them different tasks such as launching the Options window, initiating a capture, opening the storage folder, etc. So there are a number of ways to use your keyboard to launch different Window Clippings operations today. Let me know if you don’t see these as viable solutions.

Switching between different settings

I have also found value in being able to switch quickly between different option sets; “profiles” seems like a good name for it. For example, when taking screenshots for the web I like to include the window shadow and save in PNG format. Screenshots I create for MSDN Magazine don’t include shadows and are saved in BMP format. In this example I might have a “Web” profile and a “Magazine” profile. Seb, you might have one profile that includes the mouse pointer and one that does not. Leo, you might have one profile with the delay before capture set to zero and another with the delay set to 3 seconds.

The way I see it, the user starts with a default profile but can create additional named profiles. Each profile is a complete snapshot of all the Window Clippings settings and each can be edited individually. A default profile determines the settings that are used by default but the context menu on the capture screen allows you to switch between profiles. I believe this would be a more appropriate solution that exposing select options to be modified on the capture screen since everyone will have their own “top 3” options they’d like to toggle frequently.

It needs some prototyping but some early feedback would be great.

Check for Updates and UAC

It’s one of those things that I had to cut in order to release 2.0 on time. Right now I have it planned for the 2.1 release that will include many of the features and improvements that didn’t make it into 2.0.

Thanks again for the feedback and keep it coming!

# re: Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

Thursday, May 31, 2007 5:34 AM by Leo Davidson

All of that sounds good to me!

I think the idea of profiles will give everyone what they want. It's more work on your side than adding a couple of options to toggle specific things but I think you're right about everyone wanting to toggle different options, so profiles makes perfect sense.

Being able to select a profile from the context menu would work fine for me. Perhaps it would also be useful to add a command-line switch which changes the active profile? Then people could create hotkeys which do that as well.

My file manager allows me to create system-wide hotkeys for any keypress which run any command (regardless of the app/window that has the keyboard focus) so I'm not limited to the favorites hotkeys (although I never use them so that's not a bad idea!). Changing profiles (and showing the options dialog, etc. as you suggest) via command-line arguments would work perfectly for me, at least.

I can wait until 2.1 for UAC support. It's not a big deal to replace the exe manually and I can understand that it's got a low priority since it isn't core functionality and doesn't matter to a lot of people.

Thanks for listening to us!

I'm about to start updating a tutorial I wrote that is full of screenshots for a new version of the software and the 2.0 release is going to make my life a lot easier. I won't have to resort to Photoshop anymore to create an image that has both transparency and pop-up menus. Fantastic.

# re: Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

Thursday, May 31, 2007 4:45 PM by Nidonocu

Hey Kenny, I think I might of found a bug in the most recent version!

I took the following screenshots of the Windows Live Installer using the same settings and only one of the pictures had the custom blue background I requested for the backdrop.

nidonocu.com/temp_images/windows_live_installer/

No settings where changed while taking these shots and only the first one used the 'select area' rather than 'select window' mode.

Thanks for these quick turn arounds at addressing bugs/needed features! :)

Also, feature request! Would it be possible for a picture to be used instead of a solid colour for the backdrop?

# re: Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

Friday, June 01, 2007 12:15 AM by KennyKerr

Nidonocu: thanks for the feedback. That’s not a bug however. Let me explain:

The background color is *only* used when transparency is either not available (due to window animation) or an image format is used that does not support transparency.

The JPEG and Bitmap formats don’t support transparency so they will always employ the background color where necessary.

The PNG format supports transparency so it will only use the background color when the alpha channel cannot be calculated (due to window animation).

Finally, the TIFF format optionally supports transparency (when configured with 32 bit color depth).

Please note that image format settings can only be customized in registered copies of Window Clippings.

In your example, the various images were created using the PNG format which favors saving an alpha channel over using the background color. So those images that used the background color indicate that some animation occurred (however subtle). The animation can be avoided using the new “Freeze window during capture” option on the Image tab.

Hope that helps clear up the confusion.

As for your request about using a picture as a backdrop, this can be achieved using a “filter” type add-in.

# re: Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

Friday, June 01, 2007 1:25 AM by Marc Brooks

Paying customer here :)

Any chance you could get rid of the second running instance and handle the tray icon from the primary (capture) instance?  I hate wasting memory and 3.6MB for a tray icon seems a bit steep...

# re: Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

Friday, June 01, 2007 2:31 AM by KennyKerr

Marc: thanks for the feedback (and thanks for registering!).

I’ve considered combining them but I don’t believe there is a whole lot to gain in practice. Keep in mind when looking at memory usage that processes can share a large portion of their working set. For example, Window Clippings shares roughly 4/5 of its working set with the remainder being private. So let’s imagine the Window Clippings /hotkey and /icon processes each have a 5 MB working set (keep in mind that the actual value is very system-specific and subject to change at the whim of the OS), roughly 4 MB will be shared. So even though tools that display memory usage may report a combined memory usage of 10 MB (5 MB each), most of that is shared between the two Window Clippings processes and in fact among many other processes running on the computer since Window Clippings relies on many standard system libraries shared by Explorer and other applications that would typically be running anyway.

That is not to say that combining them would not reduce memory usage but simply that the value of doing so is not necessary that great.

As an aside, I’ve made some optimizations to my build configuration that resulted in around 10% reduction in executable module size. It’s not a huge saving since Window Clippings is already pretty small but it is worth noting. These improvements will be rolled out in the next released build.

Hope that helps.