We tend to say “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. But would someone please tell Apple - It’s broken, please fix it!
Earlier this evening I was writing an article about some cool stuff on Mac, and I needed to capture the screen when selecting the application using Command-Tab, see below.
Whatever I tried it wouldn’t work, as I wasted my valuable keys onto switching applications function. I needed to press Command-Tab, then while the image is on the screen – capture it. The way to do it would be Command-Shift-3, but the Command key was already in use.
Then I thought – Grab ! Yes, Grab has that function where you can start the ticker and you have 10 seconds to get your screen ready before it fires off. I was in Firefox, so I just clicked Firefox / Services / Grab in the menu bar, and three options popped out; Screen, Selection, and Timed Screen. But I’ve got all three Grab options grayed out. (?)
Quick jump to Google and a few forums suggested that this will work only with cocoa applications. So I opened Safari, Mail, iCal – same story. Someone said, you need to select something before it will work, so I selected a few lines of text – same result, just greyed out. Even suggestion of having TextEdit open wouldn’t work.
Finally I thought I could open Grab as an application, couldn’t I? So, surely there it is, in the Applications / Utilities folder. Once you open it, just select Capture / Timed Screen (or Command-Shift-Z on your keyboard) and the ticker starts.
Funny thing is that the generated file is actually a TIFF, but since I need to crop and resize it, it really isn’t a big deal.
When I think back, I’m pretty sure the Grab worked as service just fine in Panther, but not in Tiger (10.4.8) Can someone with Panther check this and let me know? Or even better – let Steve know.
[tags]Grab, OS X, screen capture[/tags]
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