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screenshots - to crop or resize, that is the question...
Subject:screenshots - to crop or resize, that is the question... From:Jennifer Maitland <jlm -at- kwi -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 21 May 2002 18:03:16 +0100
Hi everyone,
I want to ask everyone's opinion about screenshots. I am writing a user
guide that includes what seems like nine million screenshots. Quite often
they don't fit in (horizontally) the pages of my Framemaker templates, so
I'm faced with either resizing the screenshots or cropping them and losing
what often turns out to be a couple fields.
My preference is usually to crop the screenshots because I think shrunken,
difficult to read screenshots look terrible. Most of the shots I'm taking
serve to ground the user and reassure them they're on the right track rather
than to point out specific information, so to me it doesn't seem bad that
they might not be able to see three columns in a table or something. Of
course if those three columns are crucial, I'll often take a smaller
screenshot of them and feature that, which with our software seems more
appropriate - users often have to scroll across a screen just to view a
different column in a table anyway.
Anyway, my question is, does anyone have any set rules or recommendations
for this? My concern is that I'm getting so used to the software that I
might be cropping when I should be trying to show a whole shrunken messy
looking window. If anyone has any guidelines for screenshots that would be
great.
cheers,
Jennifer
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