Confused about spectacles UI

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1

Apart from the current Memory issues, Spectacle would be a great Wayland Screen recorder. But I find the UI completely confusing and dont understand why it is like that.

When launching spectacle via searching it, it shows the small screen that only allows to take screenshots. But when launching via Meta+Print it takes a screenshot (can be disabled afaik) and has all the options for editing, as well as the Screen recording feature.

This doesnt make sense? Why can you only record on the edit screen?

I am pretty confused, because afaik the interface switched 3 times in the last months, first the good old reliable one, then this “edit features dynamically below/above the selection” and now this?

btw taking screenshots of spectacle is not really possible, because its the only screenshot tool for Wayland on Flathub?

2

You can launch a second instance of spectacle from the terminal spectacle --new-instance to screenshot the first.

You can change it in the options so that when you open spectacle it automatically takes a screenshot (default for me). Then you see the full interface.

But yeah, opening Spectacle without making a screenshot opens up a different UI without the ability to screen capture. I wonder if this is already tracked in the bug tracker.
There is a bug report for this 468778 – Add screen recording options to "no screenshot taken on launch" window

Screenshot_20240101_171928

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3

The real big question is how can we start video recording without taking a screenshot ?

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4

Currently not possible. See my comment above and the linked bug report.

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5

thanks! This issue is correct.

it is pretty confusing to have 3 different UIs though, and their styles are not coherent.

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6

I am just counting 2 different UIs. With and without screenshot.

But anyway, yes that should be fixed! Doesn’t look trivial to me, hopefully it gets fixed soon.

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no there is

  1. the small chooser

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  1. the “edit taken screenshot” window

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  1. the “edit rectangle selection” toolbar, glued to the selection like in Flameshot

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I think this is total overkill. I dont know what should go, but there are

  • 3 buttons to take a screenshot
  • 2 ways to have annotations (there is an annotation button in screenshot 2 also, which then is like it was some time ago, but with an extra click)
  • 3 ways to show help

etc. It reminds be a bit of how bloated Firefox is, where there are often 3 ways to make a bookmark etc. (Example: toolbar, right-click-menu, right click on tab) The menus are bloated just to please everyones workflow.

Not to say having an extensible Browser is bad. But compare that with Safari (which I totally hate for its lack of anything) but it has one way, and it works.

there is simply visual design lacking, would you agree?

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8

Maybe you could make a mockup of something that looks better without losing any features?

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9

Hmm…

I think my preferred solution would be improving the minimal first window to include all “create” options.

Not sure if the second one is needed really, seems like missing or duplicated features? But then the rectangle-selection features, which are very nice UX-wise, do they also work for app screenshots and fullscreen? I will test and maybe come with a mockup!