.KEYWORD screens
.FLYINGHEAD ESSENTIAL WINDOWS CE TECHNIQUES
.TITLE Capturing screen shots using Capture CE
.OTHER
.SUMMARY Have you ever needed to capture a Windows CE screen shot? If you’ve ever wanted to write about Windows CE or post screen shots on a Web page, you need to know how to grab an image. In this helpful article, Frank McPherson shows you how a free program called Capture CE can help you out.
.AUTHOR Frank McPherson
An unexpected benefit of being a Windows CE-based device user is the realization that there are many things about desktop Windows that I have learned to take for granted. This occurred to me recently when I was working with my NEC MobilePro 750C and I wanted to create a screen print for an article that I was writing. I instinctively looked for the Print Scrn key on the keyboard and, Lo and Behold, there is no Print Scrn key to be found.
So I set out to figure out how to get a screen capture of the MobilePro Settings Properties dialog box? Perhaps I could open the MobilePro completely and lay it on a flatbed scanner, but I doubt that would create a very good image of the screen. Or, I could try to take a picture of the screen using my digital camera. This may sound silly, but it really can produce a nice image of the screen as shown in Figure A. Unfortunately, using a digital camera to take a screen shot just seems to be cumbersome. Besides, what if you don’t have a camera?
.FIGPAIR A Here’s a picture of my MobilePro screen, taken with a digital camera.
What I needed was a program that can create an image file of what is displayed on the screen and store it on my device. Whenever I need a Windows CE program I fire up my Internet connection and head over to CEMonster.com at http://www.cemonster.com, as shown in Figure B. I have had the best luck finding exactly the program that I need from this site. Obviously, you can choose your own favorite download site, but this is one of my favorites.
.FIGPAIR B I love CEMonster.com!
The home page shows that the file library is organized by categories and sub-categories. With one click on the Screenshots link at http://www.cemonster.com/screen.htm I got a listing of four screenshot programs, Capture CE, HardCopy, PPCSnap and SnapIt. All of the programs run on Windows CE version 1.0 or greater. Two of the programs have versions for both the handheld and palm-sized PCs. HardCopy only works on handhelds and PPCSnap only works on palm-sized devices. Both are the oldest programs in the listing.
.H1 Installing Capture CE
Capture CE had the most recent revision date and is freeware while SnapIt is distributed as shareware and costs $12.00. You can download a copy of SnapIt, but until you register the program it will only create images of half the screen. Since I wanted to start using the program right away, and you can’t beat the price, I decided to try Capture CE.
If you look at the listing for Capture CE you will notice that there are links for versions of the program compiled for the SH3 and MIPS processors. This means that you will need to download and install the version of the program that is intended to work with the processor that is in your device. You can find out what processor your device has by running the System applet in control panel. When you start the applet you will get dialog box that looks like the one shown in Figure C.
.FIGPAIR C Use the System applet in the Control Panel to display this dialog box that shows you what processor is in your device.
As the dialog above shows, the MobilePro 750C uses a MIPS R4000 processor. I need to download the MIPS version of the program. The program is stored in a compressed file that I downloaded to my PC and uncompressed. The result is two files, CAPTCE.EXE and CAPTCE.TXT.
I was unable to read the contents of CAPTCE.TXT. Regardless of whether I used Notepad or Microsoft Word the file contained garbage. When I went to their web site at http://www.oohito.com, Internet Explorer 5 said that it needs to download the Japanese character set files to display the page. You can see enough to find the link to the English version of the page that is at http://www.oohito.com/index_e.htm. I had to hunt around the site to find any information about Capture CE and the documentation link produced the same file that I already downloaded.
At this point I decided to try and figure out how to use program on my own. First, I double-clicked on CAPTCE.EXE and that produced the dialog shown in Figure D. This is not a file that is intended to run on Windows 98. So, it appears that this file is the actual program that will run on my MobilePro. All I should have to do is download the file to the device and run the program.
.FIGPAIR D Here’s the error dialog I got when I double-clicked on CAPTCE.EXE.
My next step was to connect the MobilePro to my desktop computer. After ActiveSync completed synchronizing the data between the device and Outlook, I started up Windows Explorer. Everyone has his or her favorite way of working in Windows Explorer and you can use drag and drop to copy the CAPTCE.EXE file to a folder on your Windows CE-based device. I have found that it is easier for me to use copy and paste.
First, using Explorer, I browsed to the Storage Card folder that represents the compact flash card that I have in my MobilePro. I created My Documents and Program Files folders under Storage Card to store documents and program files. I created a CaptureCE folder to contain the CAPTCE.EXE and CAPTCE.TXT files. Then I browsed to the folder on my desktop where the files were stored, selected the files, clicked on copy, browsed back to the CaptureCE folder and then clicked on paste.
After you paste the files into the folder, you may get a dialog box warning you that the CAPTCE.EXE file cannot be converted. Click on OK to clear the dialog box. When this is done the CaptureCE program is on your device and ready to be used.
.H1 Running Capture CE
The next step is to run the program. When you run CaptureCE at first you may think that the program did not run. Take a closer look at the system tray that is located at the bottom right corner of your screen. You should see a small camera icon as shown in Figure E.
.FIGPAIR E As you can see, there’s a camera icon in the system tray.
Now what do you do? To run programs that have icons in the system tray all you need to do is double-tap on the icon. With CaptureCE you only need to tap once on the icon. If the volume is loud enough on your device you will hear what sounds like the shutter of a camera. So, it sounds like something has happened but you have no clue what.
If CaptureCE worked the way I expected it to, a file should have been stored somewhere on my device that contains an image of what was on the screen when I tapped on the icon. So, it’s time to do a little exploring on the device. Fortunately, you don’t have to go too far if you start by double-tapping on the My Handheld PC icon. CaptureCE creates a bitmap file when it takes the screenshot and stores it in the root folder of your device. Figure F shows a file listing of the bitmap files. You will see that the files are named sequentially and with an extension of .BMP.
.FIGPAIR F Here’s a listing of screenshot image files on my device.
You can display the image file by simply double-tapping the image file name. Pocket Internet Explorer will start and display the graphic file. To copy the file to your desktop computer you connect your device and use ActiveSync and Explorer to copy the file.
.H1 Rolling your own Print Scrn key
Now I have a program that runs on my MobilePro that can create screenshots. All I have to do is tap on the camera icon whenever I want to capture what is being displayed on the screen. But the icon isn’t exactly the same as the trusty Print Scrn key on your computer keyboard. Can we create a Print Scrn key?
Most handheld PCs come with programmable function keys. The MobilePro has 12 function keys along the top row of the keyboard. If you have a MobilePro you can use the MobilePro Settings applet in the Control Panel to program the function keys.
Figure G shows you the MobilePro Settings Properties dialog box. The QuickLaunch tab shows you the keys that you can program which can either be the function key itself or a combination of the control key and the function key. Since all of the function keys were already used I selected Ctrl+F10 to be my Print Scrn key.
.FIGPAIR G Here is the MobilePro Setting Properties dialog box that started me on my quest for a screen capture program.
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At the right of the dialog you see a Browse button that you can use to browse to the location where CAPTCE.EXE is located. Use it to select the file so that it’s populated in the Application Program field and then tap on OK. To test your Print Scrn key, hold down the Ctrl key and then press F10. You should hear the shutter sound just as if you tapped on the camera icon.
If you need to create screenshots of your device I think you will find that CaptureCE does the job very nicely. There is really no documentation available so it may be a little difficult to figure out how to use, although I hope this article will help remedy that. One thing’s for sure, it’s easier than lying your device face down on a flat bed scanner! That technique is best left for scanning images of your favorite body parts!
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For fun software for your Windows CE-baseddevice, visit http://www.cemonster.com.
Visit the Capture CE Home Page at http://www.oohito.com. Find the English version of this page at http://www.oohito.com/index_e.htm.
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.BIO Frank McPherson is an Advanced Systems Engineer at EDS. He is a Microsoft Windows CE Most Valuable Professional, and Assistant Forum Manager of MSN’s Computing Central Windows CE forum. He maintains the Windows CE Knowledge Center at http://start.at/know_ce, and he can be reached via e-mail at frank@fmcpherson.com.
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