Captured screenshots stretching in browser window.

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
March 17, 2010
2 replies
2769 views

Hello. I'm using RoboHelp HTML 8.0.2.208. I'm creating an online user manual (exporting as FlashHelp), for which I am capturing many screen shots of my application, and cropping to various sizes (using RoboScreenCapture). I'm editing the size of the new images, and generally "maintaining aspect ratio" and setting the preferred width to 80%. When I initially preview the topic and new image, the image is often (not always) stretched horizontally down the screen. If I close preview, and re-open (without saving or anything), the image is then displayed fine. The same thing is happening with my generated output file, both while viewing in a web browser, and within a JFrame: When you click on a topic in the TOC, the screen-captured images are distorted and stretched horizontally. If you simply re-click the topic and reload the page, the displayed image appears fine. Images in the same topic, further down the page, however, display the same behavior until you re-load with them in the viewing pane.

If there is a fix to this, can it be applied to all of my images? Thank you!!!

Chris

HTML

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A

Anonymous

Hi,

Resizing of screen shots is a problem I've wrestled with also. The way I usually do it is as follows:

Capture image using paintshop pro and do any cropping or special effects in there but leave size alone.
Save as a gif
Then if I need to resize the image I import into Viso which allows me to re-size the iamge with very little loss of resolution prior to re-saving as a gif.
For most situations I bring the image into RH at actual size.

C

csmysticAuthor

Participant

All - Thanks very much for the replies and helpful discussion. It seems the consensus is to resize the image before import (if necessary, but not recommended). I was hoping to utilize the '%' variable for "preferred width", however this doesn't seem appropriate unless you are specifically defining the size of your web page, which I am not. So, I'll have to decide on an appropriate static size for most images and stick with that. Thank you!!

Chris

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

If the image is in RH and then you resize it, you need to right click the image and select Reset Size. Could that be it?

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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C

csmysticAuthor

Participant

Thanks Peter, but I don't think that's it. 'Reset' brings the image back to the original size, which in this case is too big for the FlashHelp browser. It appears that the problem is with the "Preferred Height" setting, which is being captured as a percentage when I set my "Preferred Width" setting to 80%. When the page first loads, the overall length is not static, so the image is stretched. Once the page length info is cached, and the image re-loaded, it displays fine.

Maybe a better question for this forum is: What is the best practice for setting RoboHelp screen capture image sizes to achieve the optimal display for users?

Captiv8r

Legend

Yes but sometimes I find the original size is wrong only when seen in the context of the topic and other images. Then I have to resize outside RH. What's the difference between resizing first and importing and the method I described? Yes there may be some deterioration but that's true of either method. The trick is, as I think you mean, not to resize by double clicking the image and resizing there. Using the different resize tool in RH is also OK, or at least, that's what you taught me.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

Hi Peter

The method you described seems to mean the image is already existing in the topic at the larger and unwanted size. So in your method you have possibly opened SnagIt, Copied the image, maybe saved it and then imported into the topic. Either that or you just pasted from SnagIt into the topic. But you then open SnagIt again, scale it, save it, then reset the size in RoboHelp.

My method assumes the image has not yet been added to the topic. So my method is to capture the image from SnagIt, scale it and save it. Then import into the topic by pointing at the saved image.

Your method would be used for images that already exist in topics. My method is a suggestion for moving forward to avoid issues to begin with on scaling.