Adding Images and Screenshots

The old saying A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words certainly applies to software manuals and images of the N1MM screens. Authors are encouraged to capture explanatory screenshots and insert them into their documents. The Edit window is easy-to-use but may require a little explanation - particularly when you want to upload multiple images during a single Edit operation.

Imagine that you were writing this text, in Edit mode, and decide to insert a screenshot into the text. Four easy steps:

1. Capture the screenshot to your local computer using a favorite screenshot utility program
2. Position your cursor at the image insertion point in your document
3. Press the Browse button and navigate on your PC to locate the image to be inserted
4. Press the Save button

ta-da! - That's all there is to it. What could go wrong? Well... it's important to realize that the file is only uploaded upon pressing >Save. A >Preview, before a >Save, will display your work without the image. Also, only one image gets uploaded when you press >Save - the image whose name is in the browse field.

What if you want to upload multiple images during one Edit session? Press the <Add another image> to create a list of the images to be uploaded when you finally press the >Save button.

The optimal maximum width for screenshots is about 700 pixels - large enough to be legible on a 1600x1200 monitor, small enough to fit on a 800x600 monitor, and a good size for reading off-line on paper. If your screenshots are larger than that, you can adjust the height and width by pressing <Edit Plugin> button at the base of the image and entering 700 as the width.

Alternately, you can simply add a width statement to the img syntax:
-> img src="img/wiki_up/webdav-002.png"
becomes
-> img src="img/wiki_up/webdav-002.png" width="700"

You can choose from many methods to capture screenshot images - ranging from free to expensive. This author prefers a commercial program called SnagIt from Techsmith (www.techsmith.com) because it provides easy editing, annotation, and sequential naming (-001, -002, -003...) of images. However, you can produce similar results using the keyboard <PrtScrn> print-screen button and Windows' built-in Paint utility.

The following directions will produce screenshots using <PrtScrn> and Paint

1. Copy a full-screen image to the clipboard by pressing the <PrtScrn> button, or you can capture only the active window by using the Alt+PrtScrn button
2. Launch Paint by selecting >Start >All Programs >Accessories >Paint
3. Within Paint, select >Edit >Paste (or use the Windows hot-key <ctrl-V>) to paste the clipboard contents into Paint

At this point, Paint displays the full-screen image result of the <PrtScrn> button. But, you probably don't want to insert the entire screen in your document, only a portion of the screen.

1. Choose the <Select> icon at the top of the Paint toolbar in the left-hand panel
2. Use the mouse to draw a rectangle around the section of the screen you want to keep
3. Select >Edit >Copy to copy this section of the full-screen image to the clipboard
4. Select >File >New to begin work on a new image (do not save the old image)
5. Select >Edit >Paste to paste the desired section into Paint
6. Select >File >Save as... Give the screenshot a unique name, choose File Type = "PNG" or "JPG", then press <Save>

To avoid problems with the website and its unix operation system, save your files as either .PNG or .JPG files (not .BMP). Use filenames that contain only letters A-Z, numbers 0-9, and simple punctuation of an underscore _ or a dash -. Do Not insert spaces in the filename. If you plan to take lots of screenshots, consider naming them with sequential numbers. This will make it easier for you to locate and insert them into the wiki later. For example, screen shots for Chapter 1, Section 12 might be called ch1s12-001.png, ch1s12-002.png, ch1s12-003.png ... Filenames will not matter to the reader on the website, but will matter to you when you are editing your content.

It will usually be easier and faster for you to display your text and images in the wiki as a sequential stream of left-justified content. However, there are two instances in which it may be better to word-wrap text around your images. The first is a long, narrow graphic, like the Bandmap Window shown in Quick Start Guide Chapter 2. The second is a graphic that has a lot of supporting text, such as the final paragraphs of Quick Start Guide Chapter 4.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to word-wrap text in the wiki and have it display and print properly. If you decide to attempt it with your documents, visit the QSG chapters 2 and 4. Press the <Source> button, and examine how the QSG author positioned the img links at the beginning of the text and set the image property for imalign="left".