25 Comments for CrossGL SnapDraw

• Jan 31 2010 5:11am
  Frank Stephens (Visitor)
  The strengths of CrossGL SnapDraw lie in its annotation abilities. I'll continue to use NTWind WinSnap for its much more sophisticated capturing abilities, but I'll buy and use SnapDraw for annotation. The developer needs to fix the installer and other issues for Vista and higher, I sent several feedback messages. SnapDraw has lots of options, and high-quality output. Note that some panels have tabs at the top and the bottom, so look around the UI or you'll miss features.
• Jan 31 2010 5:55am
  Milan Marusinec (MicroInvention Ltd. Vendor)
  @Frank, Thanks for the installer issues feedback, I will fix this asap. For the past month, I've been working on a new features and the one visually very compelling is advanced gradients support (for fills and strokes), which should get in before the day of promotion.
• Feb 2 2010 8:10am
  Rick Gwayne (Visitor)
  Milan, do you plan adding the Scrolling Window Capture feature like in SnagIt?
• Feb 2 2010 10:31am
  Raymond S (Visitor)
  Milan, what image format can you save the image as? (jpeg, gig, png, pdf, etc.....)
• Feb 2 2010 11:01am
  Milan Marusinec (MicroInvention Ltd. Vendor)
  @Rick, I want SnapDraw to be on par with other capture tools, so the answer is yes. Just not decided yet, whether it will be a FireFox/IE plugin (to capture the whole web page at once) or the classic snap-shift-snap-shift-...-combine method.
  
  @Raymond, Currently - JPEG, PNG, BMP & JNG (JNG is JPEG with transparency). GIF is already on my todo list. Also playing with idea of animated screenshots - something like this one: http://bit.ly/a6cCJp - but with CrossGL graphics it would be like on steroids.
• Feb 2 2010 8:51pm
  Raymond S (Visitor)
  Milan, thanks for the answer.
  
  Many of my clients prefer PDF and from what I understand (albeit I am NOT a graphics guru!!!), you could take the JPEG's and add a PDF "wrapper" around them without too much trouble...
  
  Do you think that might be a possibility too??
  Thanks,
  -Raymond
• Feb 2 2010 9:03pm
  Milan Marusinec (MicroInvention Ltd. Vendor)
  @Raymond, Didn't thought about this JPEG-PDF possibility. Yes, that's doable. I once wrote a simple PDF reader so I have some insights - PDF uses its own bitmap compression formats so the major work would be to make it compliant.
  
  Another possibility would be to print to PDF thru some existing windows PDF printer. I am gonna to add printing (with preview) anyway and this might be sooner (and with better per-page formatting).
• Feb 2 2010 10:32pm
  Raymond S (Visitor)
  Milan, that sounds very interesting!!!! :-)
  
  Thanks for the feedback... I may just have to order on the 7th!
  
  -Raymond
• Feb 3 2010 3:49am
  Steve Newport (Visitor)
  Hello,
  
  what is your upgrade and license (for one user) policy? Thanks
• Feb 3 2010 4:27am
  Milan Marusinec (MicroInvention Ltd. Vendor)
  @Upgrade policy, I offer a one-year of free updates and support per delivered license key (each key has a date of purchase embedded). Key doesn't expires - it just won't accept update file newer than 12 months. In the future, you can update anytime at 50% of initial purchase price (that will be just $7.4 of the current promotional $14.95!).
• Feb 6 2010 7:26pm
  Daniel H (Visitor)
  Hi Milan
  still not full Unicode support so I cannot use for Eastern European languages (including Czech and Slovak :)). Also, is there any possibility to undo changes?
• Feb 6 2010 8:07pm
  Milan Marusinec (MicroInvention Ltd. Vendor)
  @Daniel, I promised you in private reply, Unicode support will be there on promotion day and I will deliver on this. Have a look at morning - there will be a newer 2.40 release. In this new version, there will be also one new, visually very compelling feature - Advanced Gradients for fills and strokes. Here's a sneakpeak - http://bit.ly/dhBO6R. I've been working on these gradients already a few months and it's one of the most advanced gradients you will ever find in any vector graphics software out there.
  
  Undo/Redo plus Copy and Paste functionality isn't there for now and It's on my todo list.
• Feb 7 2010 1:21am
  Jonathan Keener (Frequent Flyer)
  I'm a long time user of Snag it, and before that, Hypersnap, and this tool looks like is has enough unique things about it that I may just have to get it.
  
  However, I ran into two issues trying the demo.
  
  First, I have a triple monitor system, and when trying to manually select a window, the red selector only shows up on the primary monitor.
  
  The second issue, is that the 'Enter' and 'Esc' don't seem to be being captured when trying to manually take a capture. (I'm assuming this one could be some sort of conflicting program). I did set up the capture key for shift - prtscn and had it automatically take the snapshot of the window under the mouse and that worked well. the shift-prtscn works on two of the three monitors. on the third monitor I get a message saying 'No Source'. An interesting thing about this message is it only shows up visually if the application us already up on the screen. if the app is minimized or hidden, the shift-prtscn appears to not be doing anything. I have two video cards, an the monitor that isn't capturing is the secondary monitor on my main video card. Also, I'm running Windows 7, 64 bit.
  
  One other feature that is a must have for me, is capturing a screen region. This is what I use snagit for constantly.
  
  I'm not wanting this comment to sound too negative, because despite the issues I pointed out above, the uniqueness of this screen capture tool may still convince me to get it, because I do see some very powerful things in this tool compared to snagit.
• Feb 7 2010 1:43am
  Bob S (Visitor)
  I really like the effects you've built-in and will add to my "tool kit."
  
  Two features will determine whether this becomes my primary screen capture tool. I currently use SPX Instant Screen Capture (switched from SnagIt) - right click, drag and drop for selecting portion of screen very fast.
  
  Two features most important to me for everyday use are:
  1. Ease/speed with which one can specify region of screen to capture. Can you describe how this is done w/ CGL?
  2. Ease/speed with which one can specify border around screenshot. I'm often switching between "no border" and "gray line border," depending on how I intend to use the image. How easy is to set and change line border around image captured?
• Feb 7 2010 2:55am
  Milan Marusinec (MicroInvention Ltd. Vendor)
  @Jon, Multimonitor support is a simpe one so far. All the feedback I am getting here is just great so I can improve it now better.
  
  Screen region capture (shapes & freehand) is going to be there.
  
  @Bob, I would wish to provide you with a new primary capture tool ! As I said above, region capture is going to be there. The second thing - border around is there already. You can check it either on "Border" tab (this one will eventually scale up/down on resize). The second Border option is on "Resizing" tab (this one won't scale - it keeps exact width in pixels regardless of final image size). Generally, you can define custom user profile of most of the settings and drawing tools - so you can quickly switch to whole bunch of settings at once.
• Feb 7 2010 3:32am
  Frank Stephens (Visitor)
  Daniel H, there are easy workarounds for undo/redo. If you've simply added an object that you want to get rid of, delete it. The primary file save options aren't for the final image, they're SnapDraw Screenshot Composition (what many applications would call a project), which includes the objects and settings. That means that you can simply save before each major change, and open previously-saved compositions for undo/redo. You can name the files manually, but an easier way is to use a version-tracking utility, such as http://www.FileHamster.com/
• Feb 7 2010 7:29am
  Milan Marusinec (MicroInvention Ltd. Vendor)
  @Daniel H, SnapDraw It's updated now with full Unicode support, so you can use also Czech/Slovak characters. More details at - http://bit.ly/bSC629.
• Feb 7 2010 4:19pm
  Frank Stephens (Visitor)
  Milan Marusinec, there are several different download links, and I'm receiving different files from them. Please update all of the links.
• Feb 7 2010 4:32pm
  Milan Marusinec (MicroInvention Ltd. Vendor)
  @Frank, Please tell me which links on which page do you mean ? From your comment I have no clue what files on which web page you refer to.
  
  Thank You
• Feb 7 2010 5:21pm
  Frank Stephens (Visitor)
  As I recall, http://www.crossgl.com/index.html, and both of the links on http://www.crossgl.com/asc_download.htm (in the body and on the right) all returned different files.
• Feb 7 2010 5:42pm
  Milan Marusinec (MicroInvention Ltd. Vendor)
  @Frank, Good catch, it's updated now. Alpha Screenshot was initial name of the SnapDraw software. Despite the different installer exe name the Alpha-Screenshot link was (is) containing the same SnapDraw installer. I had to keep these links alive due to many old links on existing download sites.
  
  Thanks
• Feb 7 2010 10:52pm
  Bob S (Visitor)
  CAUTION - I was surprised to find that the program's Help file contains minimal if any explanation of key features.
  
  The program is very promising and the developer seems sincere and responsive, so I'm assuming documentation will be forthcoming. Until then, however, users are on their own.
• Feb 7 2010 10:55pm
  Bob S (Visitor)
  Bits du Jour - I think you should caution users whenever a program is offered that doesn't contain any documentation of key features.
  
  Buyers should know that they're buying based on "good faith" that the developer will document key features.
• Feb 7 2010 11:34pm
  Milan Marusinec (MicroInvention Ltd. Vendor)
  @Bob S, This is the downside of not being a big corp with a team of people working on the product. Instead, I'm just a single person (microISV) with wife and kids trying hard to create something that would be eventually better than e.g. SnagIt. I've been building the graphics technology (CrossGL) that's behind SnapDraw for the past 5 years, so speaking for myself, I'm pretty sure the product Help/Documentation is just going to be there. But firstly, I have created an advanced help system that allows addition of help topics directly in running application (on client/user side) without the need of update or reinstallation. It works this way - whenever I create/document a new topic - user will be notified (on app. start/manual check) about new help items available. User then just clicks on "download" button right inside the application - and that's it. Help topics are very context sensitive - each tab in program will have (after in-app download) a "?" button enabled, that will display detailed info about included functionality. In any case, if user would have any questions/need for help - the web form for quickly posting a support message can be invoked directly from the help window and the response will arrive in user inbox.
• Feb 8 2010 12:13am
  Patrick N (Visitor)
  thanks milan, great program and new to my knowledge
  i had great fun for some hour before i decided to buy this

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