Vista/Win7 Rounded Window corners

[QuadraQ]

Hi all,

I've noticed an annoying, albeit small, issue with Capture. I'm soon going to be updating screenshots of our program using the new Vista/Win7 Basic theme style. The upper left & right corners of this window style is rounded. (I suppose this is true for XP as well.) I'm capturing using the UI element options because using the application option crashes Capture. (I've sent our program to Flare for testing, but it hasn't been fixed yet.) Anyway, Capture appears to be grabbing a rectangle area, that includes whatever the background color is when taking the screen shot. Here's an example:

7-10-2009 11-07-04 AM.png

So I have to set my desktop background to pure white, to try and deal with this. SnagIt Pro doesn't have this problem. It's rather annoying to have to stare at a bright white screen all day. Is there some way to change this? Could it be improved in the future?

[doc_guy]

I also use the same solution: capture on a pure white screen. But I don't do screen captures every day, so I only have to use that background when I'm doing screen grabs.

[forfear]

i am posting a request for this. And i think it won't help to add your voices to this.
To be a robust screencapturing program that Capture is aiming for I think they should be able to meet this requirement if enough notice this.

[RamonS]

This has nothing to do with Capture. I encountered these issues when XP came out and had the FisherPrice inspired default theme. I find these round edges hideous and utterly annoying, besides that, the round edged themes use more space. I always set it to classic view, have smaller screenshots and don't have to deal with this mess. I am convinced that anyone using the help will not throw the arms in the air because the title bar looks a bit different. In other words, it takes 2 seconds to fix this problem.

[QuadraQ]

This has nothing to do with Capture.

I disagree. While you obviously feel strongly about what theme you prefer, and that's fine, this is an issue with Capture, because their competitors do this in a smarter, better way. That's relevant, since like it or not these themes exist, and many of us have to work with them.

[RamonS]

I say it has nothing to do with Capture, because you find this problem with any other graphics program - at least the several that I tried. Sometimes you end up lucky and the space happens to be filled with the same color as the background of where it needs to go, but often enough it won't work. One way is to make the corners transparent, but the majority of IE incarnations cannot handle this properly. In any case, when you capture the form you get a square capture and that is also how it will get saved. Filling in the corners with a defined background color is one way, but as soon as the background changes (think watermark) you are back to square one.
What I don't get is why one "has to work" with those themes? As I mentioned before, make the screenshots using the classic theme and the problem is not only solved, but nobody will even mention it. Or go with screen portraits, which are a bit more work up front, but they solve even more problems.

[QuadraQ]

Well Snag-It (one of the primary competitors to Capture) makes them transparent, which works great when you save them as a png (supported by all the relevant browsers for years).

And while anyone can change their theme to look like Windows 2000, it's not always our decision. Often the management requires that the screenshots be in step with the current version of Window's default theme.

I've never heard of "screen portraits" before. What are those?

[RamonS]

Screen portraits are graphic representations of the screen shots. Rather than having the text you show a line, buttons are only boxes, and so on. Fellow MVP AndyR has a nice tutorial here:
http://techwritetips.wordpress.com/2006 ... portraits/

In regards to the transparent PNGs. IE does those only since IE7. IE6 needs a hack and who knows how well that works. With 20% of all IE users still using IE6 (typically in businesses) I don't think the IE6 problem can be ignored. Or at least I'd consider it to be as (un)important as the "looks like Windows 2000" problem. Maybe it is that I am hanging out with too many developers and IT guys - the first thing we do on a new Windows install is turn the lollipop eyecandy off that just uses resources and screen space for no practical purpose. I think the default theme looks like a toy box of a four year old, then again, Windows sometimes behaves like that as well, so it might fit well.