Re: screenshots - to crop or resize, that is the question...

["Chuck Martin" <twriter -at- sonic -dot- net>]

"Jennifer Maitland" <jlm -at- kwi -dot- com> wrote in message news:154823 -at- techwr-l -dot-  -dot-  -dot- 
> 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?

A long time ago I took a Visual Literacy course from William Horton. As I
recall (I don't have the information handy), one of the info tidbits was
that screen shots in a manual serve only to orient the user, to reassure
them that they are in the right spot in the procedure. They are *not* there
to show actual detail of what should be on the screen.

He referenced research that differentiated between screen shot sizing,
between 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25%. The amazing thing was that, even at 25%,
users were able to get the information they needed. At 25%, pretty much no
detail is discernable. The conclusion was that users don't actually try and
"read" anything in a screen shot.

When I'm doing manuals, I typically resize screen shots to 50%. That usually
makes it about the right size for the page.

There's nothing wrong, either, with cropping screen shots to remove
irrelevant or distracting information. For example, if you want to identify
the icons on a specific toolbar, a screen shot of the whole window really
isn't necessary. But if context is important, then use the whole window
(which can be resized or configured before the screen shot is taken, if
necessary.



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