Thursday, January 3, 2008

Delightful Download: SnagIT

I recently downloaded a nifty little program to use at work called SnagIT. It does screen captures kind of like using the Print Screen button on your keyboard, but with steroids. You can choose to do several different kinds of captures that only grab a certain area of the screen or even just one object (like an icon or button). I personally like that it will grab everything in a window that scrolls, such as a webpage or a folder that has a lot of files in it. I also like that you can capture just a menu in a program. It even comes with a timed 10 second delay so you can get your mouse on the exact submenu you need without having to rush to get to it. Very handy for those of us who like to make documentation on how to do things. SnagIT will capture video of your screen as well. I’m planning on using it to show users how to do certain tasks in their programs that can be a little harder to explain or follow. Home users might like it as well if you do a lot of screen shots. Even if you don’t, you’ll find yourself finding ways of using this program just to make life easier. If you’ve ever tried to copy and paste text out of a window and couldn't get it to work, SnagIT could help you with that. Just highlight the area of the window you want and after a click of the mouse you’ll have the text. What used to take me probably 5 – 10 minutes to get a screen shot and cut out what I want from it now only takes about 1 or 2 minutes at the longest to get the same thing, depending on what I am doing.

You can download a 30 day trial from
TechSmith. If you like it enough to buy it, a single user license is only $40.

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