Window Clippings 2.0.28 is now available

7 Comments

• 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.
  

• 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
  

• 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!
  

• 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?
  

• 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.
  

• 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...
  

• 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.