Auto-collecting screens of an application

[eman6]

The problem:
Writing a user manual requires (at least in my case) capturing screens of the application. Each update of the application requires recapruting. Then when the application is multilingual, the task becomes harder.

The hope:
There must be a way to automatically collect the 'screens' from the software application programmatically and store them as jpg images in a subfolder where these screen bitmaps are linked into the document. See what I mean?

This way, every time the software application is updated, the routine updates the screen images and I only need to provide the description text.
Any idea how this can be done? (if it can be done at all)

______________________________________
Eman6
Technical User

 

[ZmrAbdulla]

You can utilize the System.Drawing.Bitmap class

        Dim bmp As Bitmap
        bmp = New System.Drawing.Bitmap(Me.Width, Me.Height)
        Me.DrawToBitmap(bmp, Me.ClientRectangle)
        bmp.Save("C:\NewImage.bmp")

Zameer Abdulla

 

[stravis]

I've never seen anything was automated, but it is certainly doable. Use the method described by Zameer to capture each screenshot to a unique for each language/screen. I would create a new configuration so that you could encapsulate the code in a

#IF SAVESCREENSHOTS
'Do Something
#END IF

code structure.

You could also automate the launching of all your program screens using this method or use on of the testing suites or macro building applications to go through each of the screens in your application.