Edit. Like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1406553

I have a buddy who's a programmer at publishing house, specializing in niche magazines, and they deal regularly with non-savvy older users. He's got this story about one such customer who was complaining that something wasn't working on the website and when asked to send a screenshot he proceeded to:

1) Press PrintScreen 2) Paste it into Word 3) Print it out, and finally, 4) Fax it to the company.

I thought that was kind of related, and rather humorous.

"Cntl-PrintScr" is not an intuitive command to most people. Pressing the shutter button on a digital camera is.

Maybe this is a larger UI point than the author intended -- I'm not sure that the PC, Mac, or iPhone commands are the best way to solve the problem.

Often I find myself using it as a "cropping tool." For example, if I save some image from the web and I want to only save a certain part of the entire image, I just zoom into whatever area I want and take a screen shot and voila I have a cropped image. ;)

Unless you want to be a doormat like that guy in the commercials whose friends call him to ask him for driving directions and movie show times because your phone lets you browse the web while you're in a call at the same time. Let your friends look up their own directions.

/end campus rep plug

In the interest of fairness i take a HUGE number of screenshots (tech support) so the win 7 tool may be adequate for most, i still find it sub par ( also for a mac shift+ctrl+cmd+4 saves a snippet to your clipboard...better than the windows 7 equivalent IMHO shift+cmd+4 to save as a file to your desktop)

Can I capture a snip of a menu, such as a shortcut menu or the Start menu?

Yes. Here's how to do it: Click to open Snipping Tool. On the Snipping Tool toolbar, click the Minimize button, and then open the menu that you want to capture. Press CTRL+PRINT SCREEN. Select the type of snip you want, and then capture the menu.

I used to use an old japanese program called screencut that while useful was an abomination man. Snipping tool is so much nicer.

Link to script: http://thirderror.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/snipping-to... (if you're running Vista or 7 x64: Run, C:\Windows\Sysnative\SnippingTool.exe)

Gyazo (gyazo.com) is also very quick (automatically uploads the images for you).

    grep ss[fw] .bashrc
    alias ssf="import -frame -depth 8 -border ~/pic/ss/`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M`.png"
    alias ssw="import -window root -depth 8 ~/pic/ss/`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M`.png"

Other than capturing windows and full screen shots, it would also be nice to have some KISS solution for doing selections, like in Mac OS X.

http://iphonetoolbox.com/news/ultimate-list-of-iphone-tips-a...

I can't do that on my Android phone without rooting it (at least, according to the screenshot apps in the market).

For some reason, I think of taking screenshots as a poweruser feature (which might or might not be the case), and that Android would make it easy, while Apple wouldn't make it available to regular users.

I wonder what the thinking behind those decisions were. Did his Steveness demand the easy screenshot functionality to capture UI feedback on the go?

What would ever give you that impression? Before I went full-geek (I wasn't always this way), I considered myself a Windows power user. The first thing I ever published online (back in the nineties) was a short article titled "How To Be a Power User". It included what I thought was an exhaustive list of shortcuts that I used in my everyday computing life. I couldn't understand how other people got by using their mouse for everything. I once used my Windows PC for three weeks without a mouse, just so I could force myself to learn more keyboard shortcuts. I was in to it.

Fast forward 15 years and I'm a Mac convert. OS X contains a lot more "power user" features than most people would think. Your perception of a platform has a lot to do with familiarity, and I'd argue that the view summarized as "Apple doesn't make tools for power users" is wholly based in a lack of familiarity of their products.

Apple certainly doesn't make third-party developers its first priority, but they are decent at helping developers when it doesn't get in the way of Apple's desired user experience. One way they do this is by providing good developer tools and workflows.

It lets you market Apple's product for free. Of course they are going to allow that.

Usually I use The Gimp for screenshots.

Anyway, this thing should be easy to fix for Android.

There are four modifiers on a Mac keyboard: command, option, control, and shift. (Fn isn't a real modifier, but it likes to hang out with them on laptop keyboards.)

Option is also sometimes labeled "alt".

Command usually has a four-leaf-clover symbol on it, and sometimes also has an Apple logo on it. You might also hear it called "open-Apple" by people who remember the Apple II, which had open-Apple and closed-Apple keys which mapped to the joystick buttons.

All four of these modifiers have been on all of Apple's keyboards for over 20 years. (Control, the newest one on the scene, appeared on the Apple Extended Keyboard in 1987.)

If the key is labelled alt, call it alt, if it wants to be called steve, then have the documentation refer to it as steve.

It's a keyboard. It shouldn't be this complex.

I get that they want to be all zen and remove unnecessary stuff but some of this stuff is necessary. Not good for users.

1) Root* your phone or install Froyo

2) Install ShootMe (http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-bw-picme-loc...)

*: If you're reading this thread, and you have an Android but it isn't rooted, you're doing it wrong...

if not, I suggest someone file it (I dont have Android.. yet).

[Edit: renamed to fan.]

Screenshot pimp: I use the non toolbar buttons in the options. It lets you select the area in the browser you want to capture.

Works in mac, too (but not sure about other linux distros)

Not sure why it's not an OS level built-in, though.

It's right under the "More" menu entry man, dunna how you didn't look there. Also, lmgtfy.