Install the add-on and you're given FireShot creates a tiny menu on your navigation toolbar that gives quick access to full-page and visible area capture functions. It does a great job at rendering pages, even those with Flash animations. Support for saving as PNG, JPEG, GIF, and BMP is built-in, as well as exporting to just about any editor.

What really sets FireShot apart, though, is the integrated upload feature. Select it, and you can resize your image on-the-fly and post it to FireShot's free image hosting repository with minimal effort. If there's one feature that helps sell a piece of software to us, it's how much time and effort we can save by using. FireShot makes putting browser screencap online so easy we almost feel lazy doing it. Almost.

Although there are a lot of different screencasting options out there for the Mac, in our opinion, none has had the power and features of Camtasia Studio (a Windows only app); until now.

ScreenFlow from Vara Software is, quite frankly, the best screencasting application for the Mac that we have seen to date -- and trust us, we've tried them all. Taking advantage of Core Animation (making this a Leopard only application), Quartz Composer and a custom 64-bit enabled compression system, ScreenFlow can capture DVD playback (see our screencast below for a demo), 3-D game playback and can also simultaneously capture from your screen and your iSight or DV camera -- meaning you can create a screencast that can show you as you speak.

ScreenFlow's recording algorithms are great, truly, but what really made us excited were all the built-in post capture editing tools. It is very, very easy to add animations to a screen capture, highlighting one window, zooming in on part of the screen, isolating the mouse pointer (and adjusting the opacity of the non-isolated area), and more. Editing is where Camtasia absolutely owns any other screencasting application (regardless of platform), and while ScreenFlow might not be as advanced as Camtasia at this point in time -- it's only at version 1, and it already does the really big stuff.

ScreenFlow is $99.99 and a full functioning demo is available here, you can use all the features, your videos will just have a watermark on the top.

[via TUAW]

Looking for a free Windows screen capture utility now that FastStone has gone from freeware to shareware? Well, for simple screenshots you can still just hit print screen and paste into your favorite image editor. Or you can use irfanview's screen capture utility to capture individual windows.

But if you're looking for something a bit more advanced, you might want to check out Window Clippings. The light-weight application comes in free and $10 varieties.

The free version lets you:

• Include multiple windows in your selection
• Launch option window or screen capture from command line
• Convert images to black and white

For $10 you get a few more options, like the ability to include the mouse cursor in your screenshot, freeze the window while capturing, and capture a file to the clipboard.

[via CyberNet]

I wasn't planning on doing a countdown to Windows Vista until yesterday, and though there are piles of articles out there I could link to about Vista's failings, it seems unfair to focus on that for the week leading up to its release. Maybe I'll alternate days. Today I bring some tips and info for those who are all jazzed for Redmond's new baby.

First a tip from the How-To Geek on the Built-in Quick Launch Hotkeys in Windows Vista. Here's how it works: When you have some programs in your Quick Launch menu, each one will automatically be assigned a number--1, 2, 3, etc. from the leftmost icon to the right--and pressing the Windows key and that number will launch that program. Head over to the How-To geek for a more thorough explanation. Handy!

Another handy feature is Vista's built-in Snipping Tool, about which Lifehacker gives us the low-down. It's a huge improvement on Windows 95 and XP's nearly nonexistent screenshot functionality, though not, as Lifehacker's Gina Trapani points out, as robust as some third-party tools like the venerable SnagIt or my lightweight and free favorite FastStone Capture. Still, for basic screen-capping needs, the Snipping Tool is an invaluable and obvious bundled app.

Finally, you may have heard some of the huffing and puffing over Vista's thoroughly integrated DRM technologies. I won't get deep into it now, but if you want an overview Wikipedia is, as ever, a great resource. If you're concerned about Vista's DRM, you may want to check out Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions (and Answers) at the official Windows Vista Blog. In it, Dave Marsh, Vista's Lead Program Manager in charge of video technologies, says "It's important to emphasize that while Windows Vista has the necessary infrastructure to support commercial content scenarios, this infrastructure is designed to minimize impact on other types of content and other activities on the same PC." It's a pretty one-sided article, as you might imagine, but I suggest you read it and judge for yourself.

And to think: just last week we were lamenting the absence of Snapz Pro--the granddaddy of Mac screen recording apps--in a MacBook-friendly format. Well, it seems the folks at Ambrosia were listening, to us and everyone else who's been carping about this for months, and today they finally released Snapz Pro X 2.0.3. The big news in the update is Intel Mac support, but users of single-processor PPC machines should see increased performance with the upgrade and everyone should see a couple of mouse display issues clear up. Upgrade is $20 for useres of v1.x, free for current Snapz Pro X 2 users.

[via TUAW]