flameshot-org / flameshot

Powerful yet simple to use screenshot software :desktop_computer: :camera_flash:
https://flameshot.org
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Draggable file handle for floating "Pin to desktop" screen captures? #3560

Open haakonstorm opened 2 months ago

haakonstorm commented 2 months ago

Feature Description

Possibly related to #954 - improvements to the pin tool. I'm adding this separately as to not confuse.

Thank you for the excellent Fireshot. I'm recently back on Windows 11 after many years on macOS . I replaced popular macOS utility "Screenfloat" with Fireshot.

Screenfloat has a nifty feature that I believe would benefit Fireshot.

The primary way Screenfloat works is defaulting to the Fireshot "pin to desktop" functionality. On Fireshot on Windows, it looks like this on my setup with two "pins" hovering:

Screenshot 2024-04-07 011715

With Screenfloat, you capture one or multiple shots and they simultaneously "float" (as "pins") just like this. After capture, there is no automatic display of editing UI elements. The screen capture is automatically saved to disk to a temp folder and a "pin to desktop" spawned.

The interesting feature is that on mouse hover over a floating shot- a draggable file handle icon appears:

See it in the first 5 seconds on this youtube review: https://youtu.be/fUkTb98n604?t=36

By dragging the file handle from the floating "pin", you are effectively dragging the saved file itself to wherever you need it.

Usually clipped bitmap can be pasted from the clipboard after capturing with Fireshot, or a shell script can return the path to the last saved capture. -- But in the situations where you can't paste the image on the clipboard itself, with Fireshot, you need to first save the capture, then drag the file from where it was saved, to where you need it. This adds up very fast when you work with a lot of screen captures. Also, you need to clean up the saved file if it was temporary, and this way of working requres you to work sequentially.

When having multiple "pin to desktop" floating screen captures, there is currently no way to resize the floating screen captures. On macOS, people work perhaps more visually (or "stupidly"): You capture a bunch of assets you need in various programs and contexts, and keep them floating (resized) on one of your monitors for a while. Either like references for what you are working on. Or as actual assets you need to plug in, like bump, normal maps or texture maps or similar, into modal dialogs that expect you to drag an actual file on top of it. A file handle on the floating "pin to desktop" captures like on macOS Screenfloat would be super useful. A resize would also be very useful.

I am aware of similar tools on Windows, like PureRef, which are great but is geared around reference use primarily.

I am thinking, if a user only rarely manipulates the screen captures (e.g. annotates on them) but very frequently works the way I describe (multiple screen captures, with a queue of captures, the need to be used in a different order than captured), perhaps the way screen captures can be reversed, like with Screenfloat? -> Invoking Fireshot invokes a capture rectangle, that immediately puts the capture as a pin to desktop and "quits" focus back to the user (to the system). Right clicking on the floating "pin to desktop" in Fireshot could have "Edit..." in the menu? What do you guys think? Fireshot is 99% there already as I see it?