Publish screenshots (almost) with one click

Sometimes an instrument comes to hand precisely at the moment when a need arises in it. Something like this happened 15 minutes ago with a service for quickly publishing screenshots of scrnshots.com.

From time to time there is a need to transmit to the interlocutor by chat or correspondence that is currently on your monitor. Such a “photo” is usually perceived more easily than a verbal explanation, and indeed, the easiest way to convey the context of the working environment is simply to show what it is about.

As a rule, to transfer a screenshot, you need to perform a simple, but tedious chain of actions. Click Print Screen, open a graphic editor, create a new document in it, insert a copied image into it, trim (if necessary) unnecessary, save to a format acceptable for network transfer, enter an image hosting browser, click the Browse button, take a long time and it’s boring to wander through folders, download the file you need and only after that get a link to copy to chat or somewhere else.
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Why not reduce these actions to two or three that really require human intervention? Namely, select the photographed area of ​​the desktop, press the publish confirmation button and get the ready URL of the image.

This is how the creators of the already mentioned scrnshots.com did everything . A screenshot is taken by a special client program (there are versions for Mac and Windows) and consists of two operations.

1. Selection of the desired area:

2. Optional commenting and placement of tags, which later you can organize your screenshots on the server:

Immediately after loading, the client offers to open a screenshot page in the browser, from which you can extract the permalink of the form:
www.scrnshots.com/users/dreikanter/screenshots/11857


Here, in fact, all the main functionality of the service. I will add the review with several subjective remarks concerning the implementation:

• The process of uploading a screenshot could be made even more minimalist by reducing the contents of the dialog box to two buttons - Upload and Cancel. It would be justified, since most users are still too lazy to arrange tags. The secondary cataloging function can be completely losslessly transferred to the web UI.
• The screenshots addresses could also be made shorter so that they can be easier to post on Twitter or dictate (if, God forbid, you need it) by phone. Obviously unnecessary details in the above address can be called "users /", "screenshots /" and completely meaningless " double-double-double ". In addition, ID can be written in some more concise form than the number in the decimal number system.
  The username, apparently, also does not have a serious functional load, because The numbering of pictures is continuous, but its presence in the address (presumably) can be justified by the social component of the service. when the address has a name, it is immediately clear who owns the screenshot.
• And the most important omission: they forgot to make a hot key. Or they did not document it, as a result of which two such long and boring clicks should be made, invoking the context menu command from the tray.

Smaller (or too global) comments and suggestions: frivolous glamor on the pages is superfluous, a simple tool should have a simple design; the client would be very good, if he could work with custom FTP servers; the Copy button is asked next to the generated HTML code for the embed.

And the social component, by and large, there nafig not needed. It only distracts with its noise from the main simple and beautiful idea of ​​the service - “screenshot-in-the-web-one-button”. Moreover, it is much more logical to comment on pictures using external tools (blogs, social networks and chats, for which these screenshots are laid out).

Related Links

• Service API description (yes, it is!).
• The page of registration and download client .

Crosspost from paradigm.ru blog.

Update: Continuing the topic of posting screenshots with one click .