Last updated: September 10, 2001

How to Make Screen Shots

Most of the screens we shoot are browser screens. To ensure that browser screen shots have a consistent look in our documentation, please conform to these specs.

Before You Take Screen Shots

Use Internet Explorer instead of Netscape for all screen shots. In the past, these directions said otherwise, but IE is pretty much the standard at the moment.

By default, most IE browsers should be set up correctly, but just in case you might have customized yours, make sure the preferences under Tools > Internet Options are as follows:

• Links should be underlined.
• Default Windows colors should be ok, but if the screen shot has colors that make viewing difficult, you can try using the Color tab to, for example, make the background white.
• The font should be Times New Roman for the web page font and Courier New for the plain text font.
• Make your browser wide enough to hold the image at the bottom of this page with the same amount of space on either side of it:

Taking the Screen Shot

You can use any tool you like to take screen shots as long as you save the screen shot as a GIF87 file -- FrameMaker cannot read GIF89 format. We recommend using Paint Shop Pro.

Content Etiquette

Things you don't want in your screens (or maybe you do, but don't include them anyway):

• Names of Open Market employees, machines, or internal URLs (some external web site URLs are okay).
• Complete names of your spouse, your s.o., your pals, or your enemies (this is neither an opportunity for fifteen minutes of fame nor an opportunity for vengeance).
• What Barry so tactfully refers to as "questionable material." As the Big B. sez: "Please, no buyers named I. P. Freely and no buyer addresses of 69 Shakedown Street. Think Peoria!"
• Don't ever -- EVER -- EVER -- include a credit card number in a screen shot.

Width Stuff

If your tool allows you to shoot either entire windows or rectangles within windows (as does Clip 'n Save), the general rule is to shoot the whole window. This minimizes the variation in images within and across chapters and books. If you only want or need one field or button, you have permission to vary the width.

Also, include the scroll bar. Why? So your readers don't get confused and think they're supposed to be looking at a screen that's only three inches tall.

Height Stuff

Your picture should not contain IE window dressing (such as the Menu Bar at the top of the window or the scroll bars on the side and bottom). In the Options menu, if you set up your browser to not show all the things it can show, you'll find yourself getting at least another inch of height (if you typically show everything I do).

If a screen is too long to fit in one screen capture, then take two screen shots (one of the top part of the screen and the other of the bottom part). Do not paste the two screen shots together. Have your text state that this is the top part of the screen (and then show the top screen shot) and that this is the bottom part of the screen (and then show the bottom screen shot).

Importing Screen Shots into FrameMaker

When importing screen shots into your document, FrameMaker asks whether you want to Copy Into Document or Import By Reference. Always choose the latter.

FrameMaker then asks you for a resolution. Select 150 DPI. If the image won't fit into your document at 150 DPI, feel free to select something slightly higher than 150.

Put the anchor for the image's frame on its own line. This sometimes looks a little too roomy on paper, but definitely gives the groovy look for HTML.

When you import the image, Frame puts it into an anchored frame. The Anchored Frame dialogue allows you to set up the frame at import time and to alter it later:

The settings of choice are:

• Anchoring Position -- Below Current Line
• Alignment -- Right, with Cropped on and Floating off (but make sure the image itself lines up on the left under the preceding text, unless it's a wide image)
• For the Size, set the Width to the appropriate dimension for the paragraph after which the image is appearing -- 5.0" is for body paragraphs, 4.5 is for bullets and steps, and so on; set the Height to leave a little space below the image..

Once the image is in your document, set its properties in the Graphics-Properties dialogue box:

The general rules here are:

• Leave alone Width, Height, Leave Color, Angle, Border Width, and Scaling (except for ultra-special exceptions, below).
• Set both Offset From Top and Left to 0.0" -- which puts the image in the upper-left corner of the anchored frame.

Ultra-special exceptions (don't do these everywhere):

• If the image a little too tall and you're desperate to fit it on a particular page (or a single page), reducing the height a little is an effective brute force measure. However, this is only for minor reductions -- if you do it too much, the image gets squished.
• If the image is a little too wide, you can play the same game with the width or increase the scaling slightly.

The Image That Specifies Our Standard Screen Width

Where else, but from the New York Times?