SnagIt Screen Capture Plugin for Windows Live Writer
Posted by Cynthia May 25, 2007
I’m a visual person. Maybe it’s one of those left brain/right brain type of things more than a male/female kind of thing.
I also love eye candy, as you might have judged from the colors of this site.
Finally, I like seeing something before I “buy” it. When it comes to plugins for Windows Live Writer I’m no different. And because I think some of you out there are living along the same lines I like to add images from the plugins I write about.
To take those screenshots I use TechSmith’s SnagIt which is one of the best, if not the best, screen capture tool out there. It comes with a powerful editor with effects: handy. It can capture a menu, a complete web page, region of your screen, a window. Handy. It can save, email, FTP and instant message that screenshot. Again, handy.
The Snagit Screen Capture plugin for Windows Live Writer makes the process of taking a screenshot with SnagIt two steps easier. After the automated installation you click on the Insert SnagIt Screen Capture menu option in your sidebar or insert dropdown.
From the capture menu that comes up you can select most of the same options you could as when you would have started SnagIt itself. By default the settings you choose here do not persist unless you click Save Settings.
Now there’s one important, handy option here which exact use threw me off a little bit: Don’t save image file. Check the option’s checkbox, take the screenshot — and SangIt still prompts you to save it. Cancel the saving and… no image.
As the plugin author puts it:
Images can be captured and optionally do not need to be saved to disk permanently. Checking the Don’t save image file option will capture the file to disk and let Live Writer pick up the image for internal storage, but the actual captured image on disk will then be deleted so you don’t clutter up your drive with captured images.
The key phrase here is: do not need to be saved to disk permanently. In other words, when you check the option SnagIt will prompt you to save the image in the folder you selected in tne Snagit Screen Capture plugin options screen. Upon closing SnagIt the plugin then picks up the image and deletes it from the disk.
A couple of times while still unfamiliar with the plugin I had a SnagIt alert popup telling me it couldn’t perform a screenshot. That hasn’t happened since.
SnagIt Screen Capture plugin is a solid solution for anyone who blogs using Windows Live Writer and regulalrly needs to insert a screenshot of some type or another. For me it is not a solution I can make use of simply because I upload my screenshots to Flickr. No harm done though.
Download page for SnagIt Screen Capture plugin for Windows Live Writer
