Screenshot Methodologies

[RichardLitt]

Currently, one has the option of saving a screenshot by selecting text and clicking 'take screenshot', which communicates with the Google Extensions API to take a 96dpi picture of the selected area. This is opened in a new tab, and not saved anywhere. This isn't optimal: the highlights are in the screenshot, the picture is marginally funny, and it is hard to select some areas of PDFs or websites using the default Chrome highlighter. Plus, the screenshot isn't really useful in the sense that you have to download it and you can't access it anywhere, and it isn't currently attached to an annotation or stored in the database.

As pointed out in the last SciRev call, there are other services which automatically take, share, and link to a screenshot. This is something we should do: Take a screenshot using an external service better than the Chrome extensions API (if possible), save it to the external database, and then provide a link to it. The reason we should do this is isn't just to copy other services, but because we can then extend that service to include annotating the image (or just storing it with a text note) and embedding it natively into conversations and notes.

This issue can both track those possibilities and serve as discussion for how to best implement screenshotting.

[adammarblestone-zz]

Sure.

Also how does Eliana do it (they don't save it?) but the interface to actually take a screenshot is nice in that version and hence a starting point.

On Jul 22, 2015, at 1:19 PM, Richard Littauer [email protected] wrote:

Currently, one has the option of saving a screenshot by selecting text and clicking 'take screenshot', which communicates with the Google Extensions API to take a 96dpi picture of the selected area. This is opened in a new tab, and not saved anywhere. This isn't optimal: the highlights are in the screenshot, the picture is marginally funny, and it is hard to select some areas of PDFs or websites using the default Chrome highlighter. Plus, the screenshot isn't really useful in the sense that you have to download it and you can't access it anywhere, and it isn't currently attached to an annotation or stored in the database.

As pointed out in the last SciRev call, there are other services which automatically take, share, and link to a screenshot. This is something we should do: Take a screenshot using an external service better than the Chrome extensions API (if possible), save it to the external database, and then provide a link to it. The reason we should do this is isn't just to copy other services, but because we can then extend that service to include annotating the image (or just storing it with a text note) and embedding it natively into conversations and notes.

This issue can both track those possibilities and serve as discussion for how to best implement screenshotting.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[RichardLitt]

Word. Will see if it I can use the code here to bootstrap that.