A picture is worth a thousand words. At an average of 5 bytes per word plus spaces, this means that the average picture can always be compressed to about 6Kb, impressive! Of course, the famous proverb is referring to the fact that pictures are often more efficient than words when conveying meaning, not storing data.

In an earlier post, I expounded the benefits and utility of using flowcharts for defining functionality. Screen captures are valuable when presenting and recording functionality. Here’s two concrete examples from my job:

A week or two prior to a software release, our team assembles a set of release notes for distribution to business stakeholders (e.g. Customer Service). Since much of our development output is website functionality, these release notes are mostly visual presentations of the new features. In the same way that flowcharts help to unambiguously specify functionality, screen captures serve to unambiguously present how functionality manifests itself to the users. A picture of a web page captures its essence far better than words alone.

(Click for larger version)

Another example is in documenting and tracking competitors websites. We maintain a competitor “database” in an enterprise Wiki called Confluence. Screen captures are a crucial component of this, since it allows us to not only record what functionality our competitors are offering to their customers, but also how they position their products, present features, and evolve their site design over time.

(Click for larger version)

There are many other uses for screen captures, to name a few:

• Enriching bug reports with context
• Giving context in user documentation or tutorials
• Creating more engaging Powerpoint presentations
• As part of a flowchart, showing page transitions
• A universal format for email attachments (e.g. emailing a small spreadsheet or CAD drawing)

Now that you are convinced, all that remains is to download a suitable screen capture tool. The built-in Windows XP print screen functionality is extremely basic, so I strongly recommend using a more powerful application. Apparently Microsoft Vista has a much enhanced screen capture capability, but I have yet to use it. Personally, I use Gadwin PrintScreen, which I find to have a good balance between speed of use and functionality. The basic version is free, though the professional version has additional features and is good value. InsideTonic also has a top-ten list of screen capture tools that are worth a look.

One final piece of advice on screen captures: never save to JPG format. JPG is a lossy format designed for natural images such as those in photographs. It does not work well for the hard lines and high contrasts of computer screens, and your captures will look grainy and unprofessional. The trade offs between different types of image formats is beyond the scope of this article, but as a general rule of thumb I recommend using the lossless PNG (Portal Network Graphics) format for all screen captures with very few exceptions.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.