In the process of creating screenshots to accompany applications submitted to the App Store, you can include up to 5 images. Although the images can be anything you like, typically the images consist of screenshots of an application running in the iPhone simulator. When working with the simulator there are two sizes used most frequently, 320w x 460h (Apple recommends not to show the status bar across the top) and 480w x 320h (landscape mode).

Until I found Capture Me, I would use the built-in screen capture, command-shift-4, to capture screenshots. Problem is, there was no means to specify the exact image size to capture, so this approach requires either a very steady hand and a good eye, or capturing an area obviously larger than needed and cropping in Preview or another tool.

To use Capture Me, you specify the size of the area to capture and then drag a semi-transparent window over the capture area. Clicking inside the capture area creates a screenshot. You can save screenshots to the desktop (filename will be automatically generated) or have the screenshot copied to the clipboard, or both!

Capture Me also offers a screen recording feature, however, I haven’t given this a go as of yet.

Additional Features:
Here are a few things that I think would make for some nice additions to Capture Me:

#1 – Specify the location to save the file

#2 – Specify the filename for the screenshot. For example, when capturing/uploading screenshots to the App Store I use the filenames “screenshot1.jpg” “screenshot2.jpg” etc. If I could tell Capture Me to use this same format, it would save me the trouble of renaming the files.

#3 – The third feature is a little harder to describe, so let me explain how I use the tool which should help clarify what I am after. As I mentioned above, I use Capture Me to create screenshots of the iPhone simulator, what this entails is dragging Capture Me over the simulator and clicking inside the Capture Me window. In order to create the next screenshot, I need to click/drag the Capture Me window and move it to the side, click on the iPhone simulator to setup the next screenshot, then drag the Capture Me window back over the simulator for the next capture.

If I could tell the Capture Me window to move to the left/right the same width of the area I am capturing (+/- a few pixles) I could quickly capture a series of screenshots with ease. Even better if one keyboard shortcut would tell Capture Me to slide to the left/right, and one shortcut to tell Capture Me to slide it back to it’s original location.

I hope to get some time over the coming weeks and/or months to poke around the Capture Me code and see how far I can get to add the features above. If you beat me to the punch, drop me a note, and count me in as a beta tester.

Many thanks to Chimoosoft for creating, and open sourcing, Capture Me.

Chmox is an open source application that displays chm files on Mac OS X. Viewing a file using chmox is as simple as downloading and extracting a dmg, pointing at a chm file and you are good to go.

Chmox is written in Cocoa (Objective-C) and uses both WebKit, and chmlib. If you are looking to dig a little deeper into how to work with chm files, Matthew Russotto’s site is also worth a visit. Matthew has included information on the chm file format, which you can find here.

A good way to learn more about how chmox works is to spend some time viewing the source files, which you can peruse on the chmox project at sourceforge.

Here’s how it works. First, you paste a block of code into a textbox, and choose the language for syntax highlighting. Enter a name and click Send.

\

Here is what the code looks like once uploaded to Pastebin.

Pastebin generates a URL that you can use to point others at your code block. People can make suggestions on your code, including calling out a specific line using @@. See the example below where I entered a comment and made a minor code change.

Once the change is saved, Pastebin updates the code block to look as follows:

One additional trick you can do with Pastebin is create a sub-domain for your own specific debugging needs. For example, if I type in http://macdevtips.pastebin.com, I get a private area for working with code snippets. This area is still viewable by anyone (who knows or guesses the sub-domain), however, posts are not shown in the “Recent Posts” section at the homepage of Pastebin (it’s easiest to understand by simply giving it a try).

Pastebin is a nice tool when you need another set of eyes to look at your code.

The first time this came about I simply needed to resize an image to post on this blog – from the Tools menu, click Adjust Size and save the file, that’s it, done (and of course it can preserve the aspect ratio). My most recent encounter was when I needed to convert a file type from JPG to GIF. Again, a few clicks and it’s done – open an image, from the file menu choose the Save As option and from the dialog box select the image type. The figure below shows the supported file types; notice you can even save an image as a PDF.

By no means a full-fledged image editing program, and never intended to be, Previewer is still much more than its name suggests.

I often find that a quick screencast is the most efficient means to explain something, from how to install/configuration an application to pointing out a problem spot in a block of code.

For example, in the video that follows I talk through the steps I recently explained to another blogger for inserting code into a php file on a WordPress blog to display a Digg icon. The video is short and to the point.

The same idea holds in the next video, no bells or whistles, just a simple description on how to choose a color using the Color Picker application and use the hex value of the selected color to configure style sheet information in an application.

If you are already familiar with creating screencasts, or would like to give it a go, you owe it to yourself to download a free trial of ScreenFlow.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

John

In a previous post on using ScreenFlow, I demonstrated some of the basics of this unique application for creating screencasts. What follows is another video demonstrating how to record video separately from audio. Unless you’ve spent time creating a screencast, and have experienced the challenges that come with the same, you might not fully appreciate the value of this feature.

Let me put it this way, I often find it challenging to synchronize all the moving parts, from typing code, clicking the mouse to verbally describing what I’m trying to demonstrate, and if there’s a means to simplify the process, I’m there.

There are tools available for recording video and audio separately, and mixing the two into a final product. However, ScreenFlow offers these capabilities in one tool.

Have a look at the video below to see how I create an audio recording inside of ScreenFlow and merge this with a video recording:

In my short time in working with ScreenFlow, I’ve been impressed with both its ease of use (read, short learning curve) and the powerful and well thought out (and implemented) features to take away some of the pain of creating screencasts.

In this post I will create three short screencasts, all created using ScreenFlow. The first will be a simple demonstration of a coding trick which is handy when working with column blocks in TextMate. The second will show how to make various modifications to the first video from within ScreenFlow, and the final will show the end result.

When watching the first video, understand that we haven’t done any editing as of yet, so the code/text is rather hard to read. This is even more pronounced in the second video where I demonstrate ScreenFlow to capture a video showing various editing features of ScreenFlow (it’s not as confusing as it sounds). Stick with me on this and I’ll make it right (click the image below to watch the first video)..

Now that we’ve captured the demonstration of the TextMate trick, we need to dive into some of the editing features of ScreenFlow to make the text more readable (click the image below to watch the video):

And with the changes complete, we can now see the final result (you know the drill):

Join me in the next post where I’ll demonstrate some additional features of ScreenFlow including how to record video separately from audio. If you’ve ever created a screencast, you’ll truly appreciate this feature!

In this post I’ll describe more about how all these tools come together to provide an interesting approach for using Ruby as an alternative to AppleScript, and working with NetBeans as the development environment for writing and building those same applications.

The screencast that follows will walk you through all the steps to download the tools you’ll need, build from source a scripting bridge (rb-appscript) for Ruby to AppleScript, and finally, create several short examples to demonstrate how you can use Ruby, from within NetBeans to control scriptable applications.

For more information, follow these links:

• NetBeans
• rb-appscript
• AppleScript

If you are interested to learn more about using Ruby as an alternative to AppleScript, I’ve written as series of posts you can find here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

If you write an interesting application in NetBeans, using Ruby and rb-appscript, drop me a note, as I’d like to post several good examples showing the interaction of all these tools.

As an aside, NetBeans is sponsoring a blogging contest for the 6.1 Beta. If you are interested in learning more, visit the NetBeans Blogging Contest. And who knows, you could walk away with one of ten $500 American Express gift certificates!

In order to make all this happen you need to create a ScreenStepsLive account, which ranges from free up to $149 per month, with the variations being number of users who can post lessons, storage space limitations, etc.

To see how the content would look when posting to this blog, I generated a ScreenSteps lesson, created an account on ScreenStepsLive and exported to each of the supported formats. The results are all shown below:

MacDeveloperTips Email Subscription

Step by step process to subscribe by email to MacDeveloperTips.com

Step 1 – Browse to MacDeveloperTips.com

Step 2 – Click on the ‘Tips by Email’ option

Step 3- Enter your email address and verification message and click Complete Subscription Request

Step 4 – Check your email for a subscription request confirmation

Click on the link in the confirmation email and you’re good to go!

Give it a try next time you are called upon from your non-techie friends or family for computer support :)

For example, in the figure below clicking the Script Editor icon that we created in yesterday’s post (to the right of the terminal window with green arrow) will copy the path /Applications/ to the clipboard. However, what if you intention was to copy the path of the highlighted folder, that is, /Applications/Utilities/Java/ ?

I’ve reworked the original example to add support for dragging a folder onto the icon and also moved the code for displaying a dialog box when an error occurs into a subroutine. Take a look at updated application below:

Click here to paste the code below into the Script Editor

-- When clicking on the icon
try
  tell application "Finder"
    set currentPath to (POSIX path of (target of front window as alias))
    set the clipboard to currentPath
  end tell
on error
  my finderErrorMsg()
end try

-- When dropping a folder onto the icon
on open {droppedFolder}
  try
    tell application "Finder"
      set the currentPath to (POSIX path of droppedFolder as text)
      set the clipboard to currentPath
    end tell
  on error
    my finderErrorMsg
  end try
end open

-- Error msg when unable to copy a path to the clipboard
on finderErrorMsg()
  display dialog "Unable to copy a path to the clipboard.
                      Make sure Finder is referencing a directory/folder
                      within the file system."
                      buttons {"Ok"} with icon caution with title "Error"
end finderErrorMsg

With the addition of the on open reference (line 12) you can now drag/drop a folder in Finder onto the application icon and its path will be copied to the clipboard. Before you can use the script, you will need to save the AppleScript code as an application and drag the script onto the toolbar (remove any previous version of the program by right clicking and selecting ‘Remove Item’).

As a quick debugging tip, you can add a dialog box as shown below to display the path that was copied into the clipboard:

tell application "Finder"
  set currentPath to (POSIX path of (target of front window as text))
  set the clipboard to currentPath
  display dialog currentPath buttons {"ok"}
end tell
...

Now you can view the clipboard contents (through the dialog box) which makes the debugging process a little easier should you decide to tweak this application.

Another good example of the power of scripting on a Mac.