Main Screen is an application designed to make the boring and monotonous work of taking screenshots into an easy task.
Almost everyone as had that time where you needed to show what was going on in your screen, maybe you need to show that strange error message to a helping tech friend, or maybe you just want to show a funny/nasty bug, either ways Main Screen will help you do just that.
The setup is simple, just extract and run, some people might prefer this way but personally I’d like to see an installer, just too dam lazy to copy files around :), anyways I was told that an installer would appear in a future release.
Even before starting Main Screen a thing that might leave some users scratching their heads is the complete lack of any sort help, documentation or quick start guide, even a simple application like Main Screen should have some simple instructions on how to use it it’s a shame since little pearls like “Alt+Print Scrn” key that will take a screenshot of just the active window will go unnoticed.
Main Screen interface is mostly a well designed one, and everything works fine, still there were two big issues that I noticed:
- That it didn’t give valid default values for the directory and filename, if left unchanged it gives a “Can’t create Directory” error when taking a screenshot which may take some users a little time to figure out, giving the valid default values and adding “Please check that the Directory and filename are valid” to the error message would fix it.
- The “Start Service” Button name, the part of Main Screen that actually takes the screenshots runs in the background not requiring that you leave the interface open and that button will start it, still I think it’s poorly labeled and should be changed to something along the lines of “Enable Main Screen” with a dialog telling the user that Main Screen is running and that he can close the interface. That would make it less cryptic about what it does.
Besides the issues mentioned above everything in Main Screen worked fine, all I had to do was “Start Service” and click on the “Print Scrn” key and it would save a copy of the screen into the defined directory.
Main Screen isn’t perfect but does what it’s supposed to well, it has become a permanent part of my windows installation making the old Print Screen / Open Paint / Paste / Save As days a thing of the past, if like me you take lot’s of screenshots I sincerely recommend you give Main Screen a try, It may make your day :).