Posting a screenshot on the forum

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Revision as of 21:30, 1 November 2017 by Tanstaafl (talk | contribs) (Windows - snipping tool)
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Posting a screenshot when describing a problem is sometimes helpful. To do this, set up the programs the way you want them to appear in the screenshot, then:

Creating a screenshot

Windows

  1. Press the Print Screen button on the keyboard, normally to the right of F12. Nothing will appear to happen.
  2. Open an image editing program such as Photoshop, MS Paint, Paint.NET, or The Gimp.
  3. Press Ctrl+V to paste the screenshot into the program.
  4. Edit the picture & reduce it's size to about 600 x 500 and highlight whatever you wish to point out. (draw a red arrow or something)
  5. Be sure to remove any personal details.
  6. Save the screenshot as a .PNG file.
  7. Close the image editing program.

To take a screen shot of a single window, focus the window, then hold ALT while pressing the Print Screen key. If you need even finer control (or you don't have the privileges needed to create a screen shot) use a screen capture program such as MWSnap or PicPick that let you specify any rectangular area or a specific window.

If you use Windows 7 or later you can use the Snipping Tool instead. That is easier as it avoids the need to install and run a image editing program. See Using the Snipping Tool

Most screen shot capture programs don't explicitly support capturing a popup menu. If you need to capture a popup menu trying to use the mouse to tell it to capture the current window will make the popup menu disappear. Your best bet is to use a screen capture program that lets you press a hot key to capture the current window. You need to use a hot key combination that doesn't use the ALT key to avoid problems due to Thunderbird using ALT shortcuts to open menus. One way to do that is to start the MWSnap program, minimize it, bring up the popup menu you want to capture, press Control+Shift+W, and then click on the popup with the mouse.

Mac

  1. Press Cmd+Shift+4.
  2. Drag a rectangle around the item you want as a screenshot. A file called something like "Picture 1.png" will appear on your desktop.

To take a screenshot of a single window, press Spacebar after pressing Cmd+Shift+4, then click the window.

Linux

  1. Press the Print Screen key. A window will appear offering to save the screenshot as a PNG. You can hold down ALT to only capture the active window.

Uploading for general use

  1. Go to an image hosting site, for example http://tinypic.com/ , https://imgur.com/ , https://imgbox.com/ , https://www.dropbox.com/ or http://imageshack.us/ and upload the file you saved.
  2. Select the code listed as "Forum Thumbnail", copy the code and paste it in the thread where you report your problem.

Uploading for use on Bugzilla

  1. Click the "Add an attachment" link in your bug report.

External links