Snip Tip: Using PageSnip at MSDN
Gathering information on SHGetKnownFolderPath
There is no doubt that MSDN is one of the best resources on the Internet for Windows software developers. The MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) website is located at msdn.microsoft.com.
PageSnip makes it easy for you to manage this valuable and extensive library of information.
This Snip Tip will show you how to snip a page from MSDN without any of the banners or site navigation. Then you can use PageSnip to print it, create a PDF of it or file it in your own personal knowledge base for easy access.
NOTE: Even though it may take you a few minutes to go through this short tutorial, the actual process of snipping content from any page on MSDN should take you less than 30 seconds.
Getting Started
Using the MSDN Live Search feature (shown above) you can quickly search one or all areas of the Microsoft website for any programming topic.
In this Snip Tip, the search is for SHGetKnownFolderPath, a common shell function used to return the full path of a known folder on a Windows based computer.
After entering your search term and selecting the correct page from the search results, MSDN displays exactly what you are looking for.
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This web page contains everything you need to know about SHGetKnownFolderPath including links to other relevant pages on MSDN. However you do not want to snip the entire page because it contains the banner and sidebar navigation.
For this reason, the “PageSnip - Add Page” option would not be your first choice on how to snip this information.
There are two other ways that you can use PageSnip to gather only the portion of the web page that you are interested in.
You could click into the body of the information that you want (at the bottom of the page) and drag your mouse to the left and upward until the all the HTML in that inner section was selected. Then you would right-click over the selected area and use the “PageSnip - Add Selection” option from the browser context menu. This would work quite well and on short MSDN pages sometimes it is the fastest way to snip the page content.
An easier way (especially for long pages with lots of images) is to use the Printer Friendly page as the source of our snip.
Using the “Printer Friendly Version” page with PageSnip
Note: Not all websites offer a printer friendly version of a web page (one that has the banners and navigation removed), but the MSDN website does.
To switch to this version of the SHGetKnownFolderPath information page, click the link for it on the toolbar.
There is one small problem in using this method on this particular website. MSDN displays the printer friendly page as expected, but it also automatically issues a “print” command to your web browser. As a result the next thing you see is the print dialog screen.
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Since you do not want to print this page, click the cancel button and the print dialog window closes. The web page formatted for the printer remains open.
Note: If this web page did not have an embedded print command in it, you could simply right-click and use the “PageSnip - Add Page” feature to snip the entire page . However it does, so a couple of extra steps are required in order to get your snip.
Snipping the page without the embedded print command
If you were to snip this page without removing the embedded print command, every time you display the snip the printer dialog would open. You could cancel it each time, but that would be very annoying.
PageSnip makes it easy for you to snip the page without the embedded print command. To do this, use the ”Edge Finder” feature.
To activate the Edge Finder, just right-click anywhere on the page (after canceling the print dialog) and select the “PageSnip - Toggle Edge Finder” option from the browser context menu.
Activating the Edge Finder causes PageSnip to add a heavy dashed border around all the DIV and TABLE elements on the web page. As a result, the page seems to “explode” as shown here:
The DIV elements have a blue dashed border around them and TABLE elements have a red dashed border around them.
Since PageSnip is “context sensitive” (meaning that it works within the context of what you have selected), the Edge Finder makes it easy for you to select entire areas of the web page by simply positioning your mouse over the dashed line that surrounds it.
In case you’re concerned, don’t worry about what just happened to the web page! The effect exists only in your browser and it can be toggled On/Off with the context menu. You can also press F5 or click the browser refresh button to repaint the page.
Note: Edge Finder lines do not display in the snipped content or in a PDF created with PageSnip.
Now that PageSnip has given you a exploded view of the page, all you need to do is use the Edge Finder again to make your snip selection.
To snip the information about ShGetKnownFolderPath without the embedded print command, position your mouse pointer over the heavy dashed line that surrounds the content you want to keep.
Note: Pointing the mouse at the white space between the dashes is an easy way to make sure that you are selecting the area of content that you want.
After the mouse pointer is in position, just right-click (without moving the pointer), then select the “PageSnip - Add Selection” option from the context menu after it opens.
PageSnip will gather the page content inside the dashed border you selected (including all images) and retain all the HTML formatting. A thin green border will then appear around your selection to indicate what was snipped.
Note: If you make a mistake, just delete the snip in the PageSnip Assistant, press F5 to refresh the web page and start over.
After the snip has been gathered, the PageSnip Assistant opens automatically and your snip is displayed.
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Note: When the snip in this example was gathered the topic displayed in the content was in a normal font. If you want to change this (as we did here), click the Edit button on the PageSnip Assistant toolbar. Then you can change the font size and color as needed with the PageSnip HTML editor.
Filing your snip in the PageSnip Manager
After snipping the information on ShGetFolderPath from MSDN, you can file it in the PageSnip Manager (Professional Edition). Filing the snip allows you to create your own personal knowledge base for easy reference.
PageSnip automatically gathers information about where and when the snip was taken. This makes it easy for you to return to the web page where it came from at any time.
Another powerful feature is the ability to associate a snip with one or more groups of related snips using what is known as “SnipLists”. This lets you quickly find snips by using their SnipList association.
You can create as many different SnipLists as you need. A single snip can then be associated with any number of SnipLists selections. The actual snip content is not duplicated.
During the process of filing a snip, PageSnip extracts all of the text from the snip HTML content. It indexes that text along with the meta data (page title, description and tags/keywords) that you have entered. This makes your knowledge base fully searchable.
You can see an example of the information that gets filed with your snip in the screenshot below.
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Where do you go from here?
This Snip Tip does not cover all the details of filing and retrieving the snip in the PageSnip Manager. It doesn’t show all the other things you can do in PageSnip such as create a PDF or add SnipNotes. For detailed information about these things, see our tutorials (such as this one on Building your own WordPress knowledge base), or view the PageSnip Online help.
You can view the complete PageSnip documentation online at: http://www.pagesnip.com/onlinehelp/index.html
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Tags: API, MSDN, PageSnip, ShGetKnownFolderPath, Windows Shell