Madcap Capture and Windows 7

[Techno]

Apologies if this has been raised before, but has anyone had an opportunity to use Madcap Capture with Windows 7 yet? As we have to produce some documentation for software to be released very soon after 7 is released, I've set up a system with Flare 5 and Capture Version 3.0.16. Checking "Updates" claims both are up to date.

What I am finding is that capturing the active dialog appears to clip it all the way round. For example if you look at the red X Close button is clipped more or less level with the top of the X.

That said, I had been working on this Capture problem for about 30 minutes, and when I closed the application down, I got a Windows message to say that a component was missing, noteably Adobe Flash. "Problem solved!", I thought, but even after installing Flash the dialogs are still clipped.

I've just repeated the exercise on a Vista system, and Capture works are expected there, as indeed does Snagit.

[RamonS]

Hi!

MadCap won't provide any official support for unreleased Windows versions. Although RTM is available and I am sure that MadCap is testing against W7 there is likely to be no official word until October when W7 is officially released.
You may want to pass your findings to MadCap using the bug report form, but if that is indeed a bug that applies only to Windows 7 my guess is that an update won't be available before the W7 release date.

Given that W7 is 95% Vista make the captures on Vista and use that. The number of customers having W7 for the next months should be negligible. You also want to try capturing using a different theme. I found the round edged, FisherPrice insprired default themes of the recent Windows versions always troublesome for captures.
As a workaround you can capture a region and prevent clipping that way, although it is more work.

[Techno]

Hi, and thanks for the quick response.

I would however just like to say that I feel very much between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, I do have the utmost sympathy and understanding for Madcap's position as regards Windows 7. But on the other hand, we have to produce documentation for a product which will be released to run on Windows 7. Part of that involves capturing screens which are part of Windows 7 - as opposed to Vista or XP. Capturing an area is certainly a possible work around, but as I have discovered, still rather flaky. For example that "Close" button often appears monochrome, while the rest of the dialog is O.K.

[RamonS]

Well, it depends on when your software is released. If it is before the official W7 release date I think it is business suicide to claim that your software works with W7. I don't know how it is with your customers and in the UK market in general, but despite the marketing BS touting that trillion of licenses were already sold I think that adoption of W7 is flat and will only see an uptick in six to twelve months from now when companies are out of the rough patches of the recession.
I don't think it is likely, but Microsoft could pull the current RTM build of W7 and replace it. That said, anyone who installs a Microsoft OS before Service Pack 1 is out is IMHO insane anyway.

[Techno]

What you say makes sense. However we're certainly NOT going to release any software until we are 100% certain that the RTM version is what is actually released to Jo Public on day 1.

Unfortunately (or otherwise), it's fact of life that many of our clients will be installing Windows 7 just as soon as they get it. The majority will be private users, but recesssion or not in the U.K. there are also many organisations who will be testing it in their I.T. labs for multi-various reasons.

Additionally we ourselves are in the adaptive/access technology business, and like it or not, we have to provide support for the likes of screen reader users who rely entirely on speech output.

It's heading off topic I know, but I have to say that I'm way far less worried about Windows 7 support generally than I am about the schools and colleges over here who have upgraded to Office 2007 over the summer vacation. As the chairman of a major computer association here said recently, "Office 2007 puts a new meaning of the word 'upgrade', not yet in the Thesaurus!".

[KevinDAmery]

What you say makes sense. However we're certainly NOT going to release any software until we are 100% certain that the RTM version is what is actually released to Jo Public on day 1.

... and I think you'll find that Madcap takes the same view of it, more or less.

Anyway, as a workaround, what you could do is instead of automatically capturing a window / dialog, capture a region and draw the region with a little extra space around the area you need. Then you can crop the image to fit exactly after. It is more steps, true, which will have an impact on how much time it takes to get all the captures, but if you absolutely, positively have to have W7 screen caps with no clipping, this way will do it.

[Techno]

Well I have actually now found out why Active Windows in Windows 7 get clipped. It's due to Aero being turned on.

Turn Aero OFF, and all is well. Not quite the answer I was wanting, but I have probably saved 20-30 hours of work. (Rather than copy an area of the screen)

I have to say that I did report this in the formal way, and did recieve a "thank you - we have passed this on to our developers" message, doubtless from a robot of some kind.

However, having reported this as a Capture Version 3 problem, I then discovered there was a Version 5. (Shame V3's check for updates doesn't tip you the wink that there's actually a later version). So I downloaded a trial V5 and commented accordingly about the problem.

Within a hour, a very nice lady came back to me asking for more details. That was around 8pm GMT yesterday, bearing in mind Madcap are around 8 hours behind GMT.

Cutting a number of message exchanges later, when I finally found out how to turn Windows 7 Areo off, 24 hours later the issue had been prooved.

[RamonS]

This is an issue with most non-classic Windows themes. When XP came out with the rounded FisherPrice-inspired desktop theme it was the same problem. The graphics subsystem that reports the position of windows on the desktop was off. My guess is that Microsoft fixed that at some point or the graphics tools compensate for that, but in this case as well, it is clearly a Windows bug that probably will never get fixed.
I always recommend to use the classic theme. Sure it may not look like what the customer has, but who says that they have the standard theme enabled. When the look of the perimeters of a window throw them off, then they will be challenged by anything that is inside of any window. The classic theme has straight edges and smaller frames and title bars, so no funky corners with varying background fill (keep in mind that the outside of the round edge is still there, it is just transparent) and the minimum possible in wasted space. But no, every time I propose that I get bashed. Maybe not this time?