Is there a browser-based Snipping Tool? You betcha!
So today becomes the sixth full day in row where I've lived in nothing but a browser on my UMPC. I had planned to talk today about Snipshot, a Firefox extension (and IE add-on) that allows for very basic image manipulation. My needs for image editing are pretty meager, so this tool was working well for me. You simply right click any image on a web page and choose to Edit in Snipshot. That opens the image in a browser tab where you can resize, crop, enhance and adjust qualities as shown in the above menu. Once you have the image to your liking, you can save it locally, e-mail it, or store it on a server. It was working fine this past week, but just a few minutes ago it got supplemented. I now have a nicely featured, web-based equivilent of the Snipping Tool app I love to use on my Tablet PCs thanks to Amit at Digital Inspiration. He featured the DashBlog extension and in 60-seconds of usage, I knew that I had to add this to my browser.
This 42 Kb download adds most of the features I enjoyed in the Snipping Tool, but does it all in the browser. With one click, you can select an entire web page or you can choose to select any rectangular area by using the Crop feature. This function is identical to the Rectangular Snip in the Snipping Tool. Unfortunately, there's no Freeform selection, although it should be easy to replicate the Window Snip function by using the Crop in DashBlog.
DashBlog doesn't stop there though. There are three other key features that are pretty useful and raise this up from just a screen-cap extension. First, there's a Text feature: click it and you overlay a movable text box on the image capture. You can resize the text box, change the font and more... great for annotations with a keyboard. Next, there's a Pen function, which I'll use with my UMPC when it's not hooked up to a monitor. It's a basic inking tool that can be used with a mouse. Finally, there's a simple but useful Arrow feature where you can draw an nice-looking arrow to call out something specific in the screen snip.
Using all three features might look something like this:
You get the idea. Ideally, DashBlog is meant to capture images and then post them to your WordPress or Blogger blog, Tumblr and Twitter. However, the ability to save locally allows me to use it just like I would the Snipping Tool. Is it a full-featured replacement. Nope, but it's most of the way there and has a very small footprint. I'll be keeping Snipshot because it brings other features I need, but DashBlog just became a fixture in my browser. I'm not trying to suggest that these web extensions and services are better than their many full-featured client counterparts, but I do want to exempify things you can do in a browser that you might not have thought of.
Hmmm... I've installed Snipshot and like it. Thanks!
Dashblog does something weird, though. It does not upload an image, it places a link back to the source image. Isn't that bandwidth siphoning? I never, ever do that. I even upload separately the same images to my Blogger blog that I use on my WP blog, even though I could just link back.
Posted by: Mike Cane | June 12, 2008 at 01:42 PM
Link luv:
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/blog-notes-snipshot-test/
Posted by: Mike Cane | June 12, 2008 at 01:50 PM
hey, I resemble that remark.
Posted by: James Kendrick | June 12, 2008 at 01:55 PM
Mike, since we're on TypePad, I can't explain how DashBlog would work with WordPress. I saved my image locally and inserted it to my post like I would any other local image and it's hosted on our server. Here's the image link I created: http://jkontherun.blogs.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/12/dashblog.png
Not sure why it's using the source image link for you. I know I used the Select / Crop button and that there are more features / ways to use it then how I outlined. My guess is that you used the right click "Grab an image" option or something. Check your Toolbar and see if you have a DashBlog button. I do and when I click it, I get actions in my sidebar to use for image snipping with the cursor.
Posted by: Kevin C. Tofel | June 12, 2008 at 02:18 PM
Why don't you just run VNC on your computer, host it via http, and then use firefox java vnc viewer to access your own desktop. then you're still within the bounds of firefox, but you have your whole desktop to use, and you're not cheating (technically) :)
Posted by: DavidK | June 12, 2008 at 03:54 PM
Mark - Dashblog captures a screenshot and upload it to their own servers.
Alternatively, you can download the image locally and blog it using the web editor of WordPress or WLW.
Posted by: Amit Agarwal | June 13, 2008 at 08:55 AM
Thanks for the DashBlog tip; it's very useful to me. For full page screenshots with annotations I use Fireshot - you can email and upload screenshots, save them locally or open them in an external editor for cropping etc.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5648
I like the Picnik extension for image editing online
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4889
Posted by: Adam | June 14, 2008 at 03:12 AM