TechSmith's SnagIt is the screen capture program that has had a lock on that classification of applications since the early 1990s. When I wrote about SnagIt in those days, I sometimes said that the program couldn't be improved. Eventually I stopped doing that because the developers invariably found a useful new feature to add or a process that they could improve.
That continues with the 2019 version of SnagIt, but the four primary new features are ones that won't appeal to all users. They will, however, become immediately essential for some users.
Some screen captures are too complex and the important information needs to be made more obvious. Boxes or highlights are the most common options, but arrows and other graphic elements work too. In some cases, the blur effect can be used to make the unimportant parts of the screen unreadable.
The Simplify tool takes another approach. It attempts to identify text and then replace the text or object with a colored line or shape. The advantage is that the colored lines retain the general shape of the text. Ideally, SnagIt should be able to add these lines without a background color, but transparency isn't yet supported.
Documentation writers sometimes need to illustrate a multi-step process that requires several images. If each step requires a significant amount of explanation, using multiple images is easy, but sometimes the steps may involve nothing more than "click here". In those kinds of situations, it's better to combine several screen shots into a single image.
This has been possible, but the manual process involves copying one screen shot and pasting it into another and then aligning the images. The Combine Images function allows the user to select several individual images and then have SnagIt's editor combine the images in a portrait or landscape arrangement.
The combined image can be edited as desired.
This might be the most popular of the new features because the user can move text and objects around on the screen. This could be done in the past, but the process would leave large holes. Now SnagIt tries to clean up the background when text is moved.
In this example, I've used Microsoft's website. A designer might be considering changes to the site and want to create a reference image that the team can consider.
The top image is the Microsoft website as it appeared on 28 Oct 2018. In the second image, I've moved the menu, changed some of the menu names, and moved the text blocks and the button to new positions.
In the third image, the change I've made reflects a new name for the computer. Changes like these can be made quickly and easily, and the results are far better than what could have been achieved before.
Your first thought about SnagIt's ability to grab text might be "Why?" After all, websites and many applications make it possible to just scrape text from the screen to the computer's buffer. But what about an image that contains text.
Here's some scanned text from the Franklin County Board of Elections. Because it's a scan, there are no letters in the captured image, just pixels. For this small amount of text, simply re-typing wouldn't be a problem. If you have a full page of text, or several pages of text, that would be more problematic.
In addition to capturing just the text, this new function also grabs the formatting, which makes it much more useful. So SnagIt's new optical character recognition is a welcome addition. It's a feature that won't be used as much as the more common functions, but it joins the other three new capabilities in giving users a way to do what they need to do.
Dreamweaver is Adobe's website development tool and the 2019 Creative Cloud edition adds some features that are intended for experienced developers.
Code refactoring is a time consuming task that involves restructuring existing code to improve its functionality without changing its external behavior with the goal of improving code readability and reducing code complexity. Refactoring can improve code maintainability. Usually many tiny changes are introduced. When done well, code refactoring helps developers discover and fix hidden bugs and vulnerabilities by simplifying the underlying logic and eliminating unnecessary levels of complexity. When done poorly, refactoring can change the functionality and introduce new bugs.
The new feature in Dreamweaver allows the user to refactor HTML, PHP, and JavaScript code. Refactor appears in a context menu that appears when the user right-clicks in Code View.
Dreamweaver now also supports ECMAScript 6, the scripting-language specification that was created to standardize JavaScript, which is the most common implementation of ECMAScript. The scripting language is used most often for browser-based functions, but also can be used on servers with Node.js.
Supporting ECMAScript 6 means that developers can work with the latest JavaScript updates.
Some security enhancements have been added in the 2019 version of Dreamweaver to the latest versions of OpenSSH and OpenSSL, LibCURL, Node.js, and zlib. If you're a developer, you'll recognize the importance; if not, just know they are worthy enhancements.
Dreamweaver is now integrated with an updated version of Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) so that Live View renders pages designed using CSS Grid layouts properly.
The Chromium Embedded Framework is an open source framework that embeds a web browser engine based on the Chromium core. It's intended to allow developers to add web browser control and implement an HTML5-based layout GUI in a desktop application. In this case, the desktop application is Dreamweaver.
Adobe uses CEF integration in Acrobat, Edge Animate, and Edge Reflow.
By default, Windows allows external USB drives to be powered down when they're not in use. The problem with that "feature" is that it causes more problems than it solves most of the time. Forums, blogs, and support groups are full of discussions about this issue, which Microsoft seems to fix occasionally and then break it again with a Windows update.
My computer has 4 physical drives in a single enclosure and these present 6 logical drives to the operating system. When the operating system turns off the drives, several bad things happen: Outlook can no longer find its file on drive D and must be restarted, OneDrive loses the connection to local files, the same thing happens to Google Drive, and all 6 drives disappear from the Windows file explorer.
Ideally, fixing this would involve using the Control Panel's Device Manager to disable "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option for all USB controllers. That used to work, but doesn't now. Those who contact Microsoft support will be told to check this option even though Microsoft support technicians should know that it doesn't work. Registry edits are suggested sometimes and some people recommend a Powershell script. None of these works for me.
Fortunately, there's a workaround using a small, free utility called KeepAliveHD. The utility occasionally writes a tiny file to each disk drive you specify so that the operating system won't allow the drive that's connected to a USB port to sleep.
The default setting has the application write a file every 7 seconds. That seemed excessive, so I increased it to 10 minutes but later moved it back to 2 minutes. You can experiment with any setting between 1 second and 100 days. There is an option for KeepAliveHD to read instead of write, but write seems to be a better option. Select the Enabled check box and add the drive to the list of drives you want to protect.
On the Settings tab, you can set KeepAliveHD to run when Windows starts, minimize to the Tray, and to minimize instead of close when the Close button is pressed. That last option eliminates the ability to close the application by accident. You can have KeepAliveHD delete the file it writes, but I decided not to do that for several reasons: The file is tiny, each new file overwrites the old file, and the file contains a timestamp so you can confirm that it's working. The file "KeepAliveHD.txt" will be written to the drive's root unless you specify a directory and it will contain text like "This file was generated by KeepAliveHD application on 10/31/2018 7:58:50 AM".
So if Windows keeps shutting down your external hard drives and you'd like to stop that behavior, download the free KeepAliveHD from a location on GitHub. And if you like it, consider donating to the author.
Microsoft released its original Surface tablet six years ago. I thought it was interesting. Then came the Surface Pro 2, which was more interesting, and the Surface Pro 3, which I liked almost enough to buy one. I came on board with the Surface Pro 4.
The screen is too small. The keyboard is an extra-cost add-on. The virtual keyboard doesn't offer a swipe function that even the most basic smart phone does. But it's a handy little device. Perfect for traveling. And, if you have the docking station, it can even be connected to large, high-resolution monitors.
Surface devices are generally more expensive than competing devices, but there's now a wide range of prices -- from $400 for a barely usable Surface Go to the $2300 Surface Pro 6 with an Intel i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. For each of the computers, you'll still need to spend another $260 for the keyboard/cover and the pen.
If you need that kind of power, you'd probably do better with some of the competitors. A Surface Pro 6 with an i5 processor, less RAM, and a much smaller hard drive starts at $900 (plus the necessary "optional" keyboard and pen for $260).
Last year, the virtual keyboard received an essentially worthless upgrade that allows for limited swipe typing. Among the many problems: It works only with the tiny phone-like virtual keyboard, not any of the larger versions, and even that functions only with a limited number of applications. Not even some common Microsoft applications work with swipe typing. So beware if that's an important option.
Instead of the virtual keyboard, using the handwriting recognition panel is promising. Microsoft has done an excellent job with that feature, but correcting mistakes can be a bit clumsy.
Overall, the Surface devices are specialized computers that are perfect for those who need to be mobile with a full computer or who need a computer that's also a tablet. Those who have no need for those capabilities will be better off with more standard computers.
The 15th annual Cyber Security Awareness Month ended on October 31st, but the importance of maintaining security and being aware of threats never ends. The month-long event is led by the National Cyber Security Alliance and the US Department of Homeland Security.
Security measures aren't just for businesses, organizations, and government agencies. Home users have challenges that must be addressed and threats vary with the ages of the users. Children may have connected toys, adults use smart-home appliances that can be controlled remotely, and teens stay connected with social media.
Adults teach children basic safety precautions such as not talking to strangers and looking both ways before crossing the street. Today's children need to learn about careful sharing of information, understanding the value of personal information, and more. For guidelines about teaching children, teens, and adults how to stay safe on-line, visit the National Cyber Security Alliance website.
Some 77% of US adults now own smart phones and about 20% of those use only smart phones when connecting to the internet. These devices contain significant information about the user, including contact numbers, photos, and locations. This information is valuable to data thieves and the NCSA has recommendations for securing the information on these devices.
So although it's no longer Cyber Security Awareness Month, it's important to be cautious, if not paranoid, about using connected devices.
