-- by Joseph Riden
You’re clipping a web-published article for your portfolio. With tongue in your teeth, you ‘Select All’ in the browser, and print the page to a .pdf file. Grinning, you open the .pdf. Your face goes poker.
“Arrrgh,” your neighbors hear you say. Only the top part of the article is showing. The rest is cut off, because your little gem of a sample is longer than the browser window.
“Oh. Cut and paste doesn’t scroll. . .” Deep furrows invade your forehead.
Great news! That article you slaved over for a prestigious web-based newsletter was published on line. Surly editor didn’t even hack it much. And he bylined you!
OK, you think, maybe if I select it all, and copy to the clipboard, then paste it into MS Word. . .
Give it up. Doomed to failure. Per Murphy’s Law, the sample, in its graphical context, will always be longer than the browser window. When you cut and paste, you only get what you can see without scrolling. But when you scroll down to see the bottom of your gem, the top (and maybe the middle, if it’s long) are off the screen. Uh-oh.
But you need the whole graphical surround, not just the text (what would be the point, you have that) to ‘authenticate’ the web publication of your work. You want a clip that shows your creation in its web context, the way it looks when you land on the page where it resides.
Undaunted, you decide, “Uh, this is going to need 2 [or 3 or 4, if you were verbose, as usual] screen shots.”
“Oh well.” And you scroll the browser window to reveal the cut-off parts, and cut/paste again. And again. Then you try to think up a non-embarassing way to present this hacked and monstrous multi-clip when you’re pitching your stuff on your web site.
“Maybe I could Frankenstein this mess in Photoshop. . .”
Face it, there’s no good way. So this is where the second “Arrrgh” happens. Or maybe it’s an “Ah, s__t.”
Enter your chance to show that cocky graphic designer you work with a thing or two. For a mere 40 bucks you can download a trick little chunk of code that is my candidate for this month’s Knacky Writing Tool Hall of Fame. I don’t fall in love easily. But with this, I’m smitten. Call it “Snagit,” from TechSmith --www.techsmith.com -- the cure for hacked-up, monstrous web clips.
When you download your free 30 day trial, you’ll discover how it captures your intact clip from top to bottom in a scrolling window that you can print to .pdf, and use as and email attachment, or put in your web site samples. Or, insert it into the body of the email. The end result is about the same as if you went to the web site that published it and opened the page where the article resides. But then it wouldn’t be a clip, would it?
When you Snagit, you don’t have to send readers away from your site, chasing a link. They might not come back. What if your little gem is removed, and instead of your sample, they get the dreaded ‘error 404?.’ Or some other writer’s copy. Maybe mine. . .
Don’t do that to prospects. Or that fickle graphic designer you work with may find another writer. She’ll at least give you another bad time. The coup de grace is that Snagit magic works for graphics as well as text.
Ah ha! You can use this as a bargaining chip! Show her how Snagit can fix her web clip angst. Then you can both turn “Arrrgh” into “Ahhhh,” and save the angst for ‘the relationship.’
Stay tuned. Next time we look at an even more diabolically simple, useful, and even cheaper Knacky Writing Tool Hall of Fame candidate. If you don’t vote for this next one, you’re dead, or even cheaper than the classic frugal writer.
Hey, is free cheap enough? As we say in the OC, “Whatever. . .”
© Joseph Riden, 2006 www.jriden.com 714-402-3217