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:
- AnimatedGif - generate an animated GIF from your
screen. Really helpful for blog posts, illustrations.
- AviFormat - last update c. 2007. Not sure of the status of
this.
- CountdownPng - allows you to specify a countdown delay before
capturing. This gives you time to set up the shot, as is necessary,
for example, when the screen shot is a popup menu.
- SendToEmail - attaches the screen shot to a new message in your default
email client
- SendToFlickr - posts the screenshot on the Flickr web-based photo
sharing service
- SendToImageShack - posts the screenshot on the
free ImageShack web-based
photo sharing service
- SendToImgur - posts the screenshot on the
free Imgur web-based photo
sharing service
- SendToOneNote - attaches the screenshot to a note in Microsoft
OneNote
- SendToPaintDotNet - opens the screenshot in Paint.NET for
editing. Effective use of this plugin requires that you first
install Paint.NET, a free
image editing program. If you install the plugin, but not
Paint.NET, then the output option for Paint.NET will be visible
but not enabled. When using the Paint.NET plugin, there's an
option to automatically upload the image to a photo-sharing
service when you're finished editing. Which is nice.
- SendToS3 - sends the screen shot to Amazon's hosted storage
service, S3. Allegedly.
- SendToTFSWorkItem - posts the screen shot to a new workitem opened in
Microsoft's TFS. This works only with TFS 2008.
- SendToTwitPic - posts the screenshot on the
free TwitPic Twitter-oriented photo
sharing service.
- SendToPicasa - posts the screenshot on
Google's Picasa
photo sharing service.
- SendToFacebook - posts the screenshot with a caption to
Facebook. (Yes, this means that everyone will see your screenshots
and realize you are a nerd.)
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
- The Send-to-Picasa plugin is new (in v1.3.2 of
CropperPlugins). It uploads an image to the Picasa photo
sharing service.
- The Send-to-Facebook plugin is new (in v1.3.4 of
CropperPlugins). It uploads an image and caption to Facebook.
- 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.
- The Send-to-ImageShack plugin is new in v1.3.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- I don't have a TFS 2010 server with which I can test the
Send-to-TFS-Workitem plugin either.
- 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.