Cropper Plugins v1.3.10

This is the Cropper Plugins v1.3 release. These plugins are extensions to the Cropper utility, that allow it to send screen shots to various places or online services. Cropper itself, and all these plugins, are free to use.

The Plugins

The plugins included here:

Installing the plugins

To install plugins, you must first have installed Cropper. After insuring that Cropper has been installed, copy the appropriate plugin DLLs and their dependencies to the Cropper plugins directory, typically something like \Program Files\Fusion8Design\Cropper\Plugins. You can copy only the DLLs that you want to use along with their dependencies (**see below). You should be able to figure out which DLLs provide which function, pretty easily, by their names.

Dependencies

All of the plugins in this package depend on the CropperPlugins.Common.dll assembly, which is included in the download. CropperPlugins.Common is not a plugin itself; it merely provides some commonly-used logic to all plugins. The CropperPlugins.Common.dll must be copied to the plugins directory of Cropper, if you use any of the plugins in this package.

The ImageShack, Imgur, and Picasa plugins all depend on the Microsoft.Http.dll assembly, which is shipped as part of the WCF REST Starter Kit beta 2, which is produced by Microsoft. You must copy the Microsoft.Http.dll and Microsoft.Http.Extensions.dll assemblies to the plugins directory of Cropper in order to be able to use any of these three plugins.

The Send-to-Flickr plugin depends on the Flickrnet library, which is produced under the Flickrnet project on Codeplex. You must copy the FlickrNet.dll assembly to the plugins directory of Cropper in order to use the Send-to-Flickr plugin.

Versioning

The plugins of a particular version of the CropperPlugins project, for example v1.3.10, are intended to all be used together. They share a common dependency, CropperPlugins.Common.dll, of the same version. Therefore it is not possible to mix plugins from different versions of the CropperPlugins project. If you use the Email plugin from v1.3.10, and you also wish to use the Flickr plugin, then you must use the Flickr plugin from v1.3.10. You cannot use the Flickr plugin from CropperPlugins v1.3.9.

When updating any plugins that you use from CropperPlugins, you should update all of the plugins you use. You need not use all plugins, but any of them you choose to use, should be of the same version.

Changes since v1.2 of the Plugins release

  1. The Send-to-Picasa plugin is new (in v1.3.2 of CropperPlugins). It uploads an image to the Picasa photo sharing service.
  2. The Send-to-Facebook plugin is new (in v1.3.4 of CropperPlugins). It uploads an image and caption to Facebook.
  3. The Send-to-TwitPic plugin is new (for v1.3.1). It uploads an image to TwitPic, and then posts the image on your Twitter feed. Optionally you can provide a Tweet message. New for v1.3.3, this plugin uses the OAuth protocol for authentication without a username + password.
  4. The Send-to-ImageShack plugin is new in v1.3.
  5. The Send-to-Imgur plugin has been updated to use the Imgur API. The v1.2 version of the plugin used HTML screen-scraping, and it broke when Imgur changed their transaction flow. The v1.3 plugin should be more reliable.
  6. The Send-to-S3 plugin has been changed to store its settings in the cropper.config file, in the standard way, via the IConfigurablePlugin interface.
  7. The Send-to-TFS-workitem plugin has been changed to store its settings in the cropper.config file, in the standard way, via the IConfigurablePlugin interface.
  8. The AnimatedGif plugin now supports configuration. With one option, you can elect to automatically pop the generated GIF in the default viewer on your computer. There are other options regarding generation of the animated GIF. All of this is done in IConfigurablePlugin - which means the dialog is hosted in the tabbed UI presented by Cropper (core) under the "Options..." menu choice. New for v1.3.8, the plugin allows you to disable the beep sound that signals the begin and end of capture. New for v1.3.9, the plugin lets you configure a program to use to open the animated gif after it is captured. This can be an editor or a viewer. For an editor, I like the free Beneton Movie Gif.
  9. The Send-to-Email plugin now allows you to choose the image format to use. Choices include BMP, JPG, and PNG. Previously you could only use JPG. Or was it PNG? I can't remember. Anyway, it's fixed now.
  10. The Send-to-PaintDotNet plugin now works on x64. Also new, it allows you to optionally upload the image to your choice of photo-sharing serviceafter editing it. In the options panel for Send-to-PaintDotNet, you can choose from ImageShack, Imgur, TwitPic, Flickr, Picasa, or Facebook. (The DLLs have to be installed in the plugins directory in order to be available as choices.) The upload happens as soon as you close Paint.NET, or close the file within Paint.NET. This feature is new for v1.3.5.
  11. The Send-to-TinyPic plugin has been removed. TinyPic is an online image-sharing service, similar to ImageShack or Imgur, except that the terms and conditions for the TinyPic service prohibit using scripts or tools (or anything other than a web browser, I suppose) for uploading images to the service. To discourage the use of tools, TinyPic has changed their transaction flow repeatedly, and recently introduced a Captcha page, which means the old TinyPic plugin no longer works with the current transaction flow required by the TinyPic website. While these are not outright barriers to updating the TinyPic plugin for Cropper to make it work again, they do represent obstacles, both legal and technical. For that reason, I've dropped the TinyPic plugin.
  12. The Send-to-Flickr plugin has been updated. It now uses the standard cropper.config settings file, via IConfigurablePlugin. The image format is selectable in the configuration menu. Also, it's been updated to use the current version (v3.1) of the Flickrnet library.
  13. The source code for all plugins has been fixed up and tweaked. Some of the plugins depended on old, outdated interfaces. I'm surprised they even worked. Now they should all work correctly.

CropperPlugins and Cropper are Separate

Cropper is a screen shot tool. It is produced in the Cropper project hosted on Codeplex.com. The designer of Cropper has made it possible for third-parties to construct "plugins" that enable Cropper to do different things with its screenshots.

The CropperPlugins project is a separately-managed project, also hosted on Codeplex, and it produces plugins for Cropper, as described here.

The versions and release schedules between these projects are totally independent. The contributors to these projects are different people. They are distinct projects.

If you have a problem or question related to Cropper, you need to go to the cropper project page for help or support. If you have a problem with one of these plugins, go to the cropperplugins project for support.

Confessions

  1. I don't have an account for Amazon's S3; also I don't have a credit card, so I can't even get a free account. Therefore I haven't tested the Send-to-S3 plugin, beyond basic configuration.
  2. I don't have a TFS 2010 server with which I can test the Send-to-TFS-Workitem plugin either.
  3. I haven't tested the OneNote plugin, for similar reasons.

I'm interested in getting test volunteers. If anyone wants to volunteer to test any of these, please let me know. Or, you could just test them and let me know what you find.

More Information

For more information, see the cropperplugins.codeplex.com website.