Wikipedia talk:Screenshots of Wikipedia

Problems

First, thank you for setting out this note - perhaps it should go somewhere more "official" when it's completely debugged. It's potentially very helpful. But I couldn't get it to work for me. I'm using Vista, Firefox 22, and Vector (I think).

On how to get a screenshot: on some machines (well, on my machine: Hp laptop about 5 yrs old) you need to press a "Function" button bottom left to get the "prt scr" button to work. (It took me this 5 years to work this out!)

On uploading:

• Yes, I get a browse button (but after scrolling past a large block of stuff first, might be worth mentioning to reassure the first-time-user of your notes)
• But I don't get a "Summary box". There's a large outline labelled "File descrition" in which the first box is "Destination filename", the next "Original source" etc. Further down is "Permission" and "Licensing", but I tried putting variations of {{Wikipedia- screenshot|1=en|logo=no}} into both of them and got nowhere.

Any advice on how to get your helpful notes to work for me? PamD 07:49, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

A thought: would it be useful to have a link to these notes from the top of WP:VEF? PamD 08:11, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Good point about laptop keyboards and the scrolling down, I'll add those notes. It sounds like you are arriving at the right page, but not seeing quite what I'm seeing. I'll add some screenshots!

Good thinking also about the link from the top of VE/F and the move to somewhere more official when debugged (Wikipedia or Help namespace do you think?). Thryduulf (talk) 10:15, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

The screenshots make it clear that we see different things! I don't know which of us has the non-standard settings, ie which version the average editor would see. I'd upload a screenshot... if I could. The contents of the box labelled "File description" are totally different: my version has a series of small boxes, instead of your "Summary" box.

WP:SCREENSHOT leads to Wikipedia:Software screenshots which is about using Screenshots to illustrate articles, but doesn't go into the practicalities. These notes would be useful either as a section of that, or linked from it in a hatnote. PamD 11:25, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

A bit of testing and it appears that unsurprisingly it's me with the non-default settings! You can get what I see by going to https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&uploadformstyle=basic and there is a setting you can choose to always see that version. I'll adjust the link to go directly to the basic form.

I'll take a look at that link, but I suspect that this will be better as a separate page (don't want to conflate content with project stuff). Thanks. Thryduulf (talk) 11:50, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Success! Uploaded the, by now quite unnecessary, screenshot to WP:VEF just to show off. Help:Screenshot seems currently unused - perhaps that's the place for this, though I don't know the protocol for adding stuff to the Help system. Hatnotes to link to and from the WP:Screenshot article would be useful. Thanks, anyway - it's now quite clear why I was getting confused earlier! PamD 16:35, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Excellent! It sounds odd to say, but I'm glad it was you who got confused as your problem report was clear and enabled me to fix it! Thryduulf (talk) 17:26, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Prepare your screenshot

Under User:Thryduulf/How to upload screenshots of Wikipedia#Prepare your screenshot I think that it ought to include steps like

• open a drawing program (such as MS Paint) and paste in the contents of the clipboard
• if there are particular features that you need to draw attention to, draw a ring around these in a contrasting colour
• save the image as a PNG file

--Redrose64 (talk) 06:38, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, good ideas - I've included them. Do feel free to be bold if you have more good ideas :) Thryduulf (talk) 08:09, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

?

On my old Samsung desktop with an HP keyboard, I tried Alt+ Print Scrn/sysRq, but when I tried pasting it in a word proecessor (I didn't want to fool around inWikipedia and mess something up), I just got a content-free rectangle. 211.225.33.104 (talk) 23:32, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

The techniques using Print Screen (which copies the whole screen) and Alt+Print Screen (which copies the current window) aren't guaranteed to copy the whole of the visible content. They can only copy content that Windows knows about: some applications, such as movie players, use the standard Windows calls to create a window in which to display the movie; that window includes the frame and some control buttons - but then the application bypasses Windows and sends the movie picture information directly to the video hardware. As far as the Print Screen key is concerned, the window created by the movie player is transparent (or empty), so it copies a transparent (or empty) rectangle. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:13, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Transcluded information templates

I've removed the transcluded {{information}} templates from the preparation sections. Firstly, the Commons templates are not identical to the en.wp ones (they are presently similar but this could change at any time) and they have a big "This template should only be used on image pages" at the bottom that they obviously will not have on the target image pages. Secondly the output of the templates isn't relevant at this point anyway - people only see the Wikitext until after they have filled in all the fields and uploaded the images. Finally, the large templates make it very easy to miss the single line "Now go to the next step, uploading." instruction at the end of the section. Thryduulf (talk) 10:08, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Screenshot instructions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot features more information per system (and I consider it slightly more readable). Maybe this could be transcluded? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AKlapper (WMF) (talk • contribs) 13:23, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

It's a bit overwhelming to transclude I think, especially for people who know how to take a screenshot already, but I have linked to it - it might be a bit too much like a how-to guide for a Wikipedia article though. Do feel free to improve the wording though :) Thryduulf (talk) 14:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Question

The section "Plan the screenshot" says "Zoom in to improve resolution for people viewing it." Can someone please explain how to do that? (Or does it just mean increasing the font size with Control+scroll wheel?). Thanks in advance, Softlavender (talk) 22:55, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Control + scroll wheel; or if you prefer, Ctrl++. On the browsers that I've tried (Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari) it doesn't just increase the font size but also enlarges images, thickens borders and other straight lines, and so on. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:08, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Upload venue

The advice given here is to upload screenshots to Commons. That's fine if they have long-standing use, but we shouldn't be cluttering Commons with screenshots showing transient issues, such as an RSS bug or proposed change. These should probably be uploaded locally (i.e. to this Wikipedia). They should also be tagged for speedy deletion if and when they are no longer needed. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:42, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I upload screenshots locally, but I don't speedy them because the talk page threads that they relate to still exist (usually in archives) and might occasionally be referred to in the context of later discussions. I only uploaded four screenshots to Commons: File:Metropolitan Railway, Praed Street Junction alt text.PNG, File:Wmf error.PNG, File:Vpt redrose64 ills.PNG (all three because they could have widespread relevance) and File:T13 redrose64 nierror.PNG (don't remember why that didn't go to en.wp). --Redrose64 (talk) 16:06, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

To show a transient issue like a bug (in combination with reporting the bug), there is also Wikimedia's bug tracker (Phabricator) which allows attaching screenshots. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:09, 24 August 2015 (UTC)