Looking Forward to Window Clippings 2.0: Selection
Continuing my look at some of the highlights in the upcoming Window Clippings 2.0 release, today I want to share what I’ve done to improve the selection features. In Window Clippings 1.5 you can only select top-level, non-maximized windows. Window Clippings 2.0 supports selection of virtually anything you can see on screen. You can select maximized windows (one of the most frequently requested features), MDI child windows, disabled windows, individual controls, etc. You can also create images without ever selecting a window.
Take a look at the new context menu provided by Window Clippings 2.0:
The first thing you should notice is the new selection modes.
Select Windows is the mode used by Window Clippings 1.5 where you can simply click on a window to select it. In version 2.0 this mode gets more powerful. Here is an example illustrating how a number of window (controls) were selected using the Ctrl key. You can add and remove windows from a selection in the same way that you might add and remove files in a selection in Windows Explorer by holding down the Ctrl key and selecting or deselecting a window.
The resulting image is what you might expect with transparency making up the space around the buttons:
You can of course use the Ctrl key to include arbitrary windows from different applications together:
Crop or Expand Selection is a powerful new selection mode allowing you to either select an arbitrary rectangular region on the screen or to crop a selection of windows. Assuming no windows are selected, you can simply select a region to capture by dragging the mouse and adjusting the selection as necessary:
The resulting image is what you might expect:
It gets really interesting however when you start combining the different selection modes. You can start by selecting a window or two and then changing the selection mode to “Crop or Expand Selection”. If a crop rectangle has not yet been created, one will be created matching the bounds of the selected windows and optionally include space for the window shadows, assuming you opted to include shadows when configuring Window Clippings’ options. You can then adjust the rectangle to crop some part of the resulting image.
Here is the resulting image:
This is a handy way of creating a screenshot of just a portion of a window, saving you from having to open the resulting image in an image editor just to crop it.
There are even more features related to selection, including being able to automatically select common areas such as the entire desktop, a particular monitor, and so on.
Stay tuned for more highlights from the upcoming Window Clippings 2.0!
Version 1.5 is the current release and you can download it here.
© 2007 Kenny Kerr