Easy workflow for setting up screenshots/GIF on Blog Posts

Easy workflow for setting up screenshots/GIF on Blog Posts

Writing development blogs doesn’t have to be time consuming and can serve as an permanent reference the history of your workflow. I wanted to provide from tips for other data science bloggers that might overall simplify your experience.

Note on the tools

I am going to layout a particular workflow with specific Mac OS and cloud tools. The tools we use fall into certain conceptual categories, so it should be easily adapted to your workflow.

Tools Needed

Screenshot utility that automatically saves to a folder

We are currently using CleanShot X, but most modern and opensource screen capture applications allow for automatic saving to a folder.

The screen capture program should share files to a cloud-based folder. The naming of the files should be unique, but do not need specific names.

Static-based web page generator

I do not think this last piece is a necessity, but creating webpages through Markdown text files compared to an HTML editor has been a gamechanger in terms of getting relevant posts out quickly.

Let’s see how this works in practice:

Screen capture utility

  1. Configure your screen shot utility to automatically save captures to a cloud directory.

  2. Create a subdirectory within the folder to images you will link to the web. This will allow you to periodically clean your screenshot folder without breaking any posted images.

  3. As you create captures, use the thumbnails/date to move images into the subfolder for staging.

Cloud folder

  1. When you want to use an image, generate a public link from your file and copy it to your clipboard.

  2. Different cloud providers may need modification of the link to work properly on a webpage. For example, Dropbox requires a change to the end of the link from “dl=1” to “raw=1”. This would be an easy Find and Replace All after completing you draft.

Website

  1. Save and update your webpage to your server. The captured image will be pulled from your cloud folder and displayed on the page.

Hopefully this workflow saves some hassle when trying to add graphics to your webpage. Adding screen and animation captures can greatly enhance the accessibility of your posts!

Ernest Pedapati, M.D., M.S.
Ernest Pedapati, M.D., M.S.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Physician and Neuroscientist interested in neurodevelopmental conditions.