Take Screenshots of web pages in Firefox using ScreenGrab

As a blogger I sometimes need to take screenshots of websites and for that purpose I use a Firefox extension called ScreenGrab, using it you can take screenshots from within Firefox, that way it is more convenient than loading a special software just for taking a screenshot. ScreenGrab has a very fast engine unlike other screenshot extension’s for Firefox  and doesn’t uses much resources.

ScreenGrab can take screenshots of entire web pages unlike special screen grabbing softwares which can only take screenshots of the visible area,  the options available to you are save or copy the complete page, save or copy visible portion of the webpage only, save or copy a selected area in the webpage, you can choose between JPG and png as the format of screenshots and you can also choose between gecko or java as the engine.

Get ScreenGrab from official Firefox add-ons site

How To: Take Screencasts Of Your Linux Desktop

Now many people want to take screen casts a.k.a video captures of their Linux desktop to maybe show someone how to do a specific task or something like that. Video Screencasts are much better than the ordinary still screen shots.Taking screen casts is really easy, I am going to show you how to do so using two programs the first is called Xvid cap which you can download from the repositories of your Linux distribution.

When you first start Xvid cap you get a red square like the one in the image below:

This red square is your recording area means that anything inside this square will be part of your video and anything outside it will not. You can resize the square to fit your needs. To start recording simply click on the red button like the one in the image below:

Now your recording has started, if you would like to pause your recording for a while just click on the pause button, and to stop it completely click on the stop button. When you click on the stop button you will get an option to save the video, and your done you have just made a screen cast in Linux. Xvid cap by default encodes in real time using Xvid(obviously) as a video codec and mp3 for audio

The second tool is called Istanbul, and it is very simple. Like Xvid Cap you can get Istanbul from the repositories of your Linux distribution. The first time you start Istanbul you get nothing but a small red button in your task bar or panel like below:

To start a recording simply click on the red button like the one pictured above, the red button will turn into a gray stop sign and clicking on the stop sign will stop your recording and and a dialogue box will prompt you as to where to save the recording, and your done, its that simple. Istanbul unlike Xvidcap saves in the open source codec Theora for video and Vorbis for audio.