How to Contribute

Adding screenshots

Actions

A picture is worth a thousand words, and can go a long way in helping people understand what is being said in an article. A screenshot is an image (i.e. snapshot) of your computer screen or portion of the screen. On the Firefox Support Knowledge Base, we don't want people to be shy about adding screenshots.

Before you create a screenshot

Try to present Firefox in its most familiar form, which means using as many default settings as possible, including the default Firefox theme, and default operating system theme. If you plan to take a screenshot of the entire screen, try a lower screen resolution, so the image will fit in the article. If you plan to capture only a portion of the screen, make sure there's enough context to know what the image is of.

Creating the screenshot

Windows

On Windows, once you have got the screen presented the way you want for the screenshot, press the Print Screen or Prnt Scrn key on your keyboard. It is usually found in the upper right section of your keyboard. To capture only the active window, you can hold down the Alt key, while you press Print Screen or Prnt Scrn.

As a result, there will be an image of your screen in the Windows clipboard, which you can paste into any image editing program, by clicking on the Edit menu and selecting Paste.

Mac

On Mac, once you have got the screen presented the way you want for the screenshot, hold down the Cmd key, as well as the Shift key, as you press 3. To capture a specific section, hold down the Cmd key, as well as the Shift key, as you press 4; then select the area you want to copy. To capture a specific window, hold down the Cmd key, as well as the Shift key, as you press 4; then press the spacebar. You can then click on a window to capture it.

As a result, there will be a PNG file on your desktop, called Picture 1.

Linux

On Ubuntu Linux, once you have got the screen presented the way you want for the screenshot, click the Applications menu, go to the Accessories folder, and select Take Screenshot.
In other cases, using the Print Screen or Prnt Scrn key will also work.

Editing

  • When highlighting sections, draw red lines around the section
    • Good:
    • Bad:
  • Avoid oversized screenshots. If you find that your screenshot causes a horizontal scrollbar when adding it to an article at 1024x768, resize the image to make it fit.
  • Minimize file size
    • If screenshot is not resized (1:1 pixel ratio), save in PNG format. If possible without hurting quality too much, use a 256 color bitmap.
    • If the screenshot has been resized to become smaller, save in JPG format with quality around 80%.
  • Don't add borders or drop shadows to the screenshot

Tools

Adding screenshots to articles

For instructions on how to edit articles, including adding screenshots, see Editing articles.