Resize the Keyboard Maestro Editor for Sharing to the Forum

Macro Library
#1

Hey Folks,

Most of you know that Keyboard Maestro has the ability to resize windows.

But some of you may be unaware that the width of the Keyboard Maestro Editor affects the screenshots it takes when sharing to the forum or using the Edit > Copy as Image menu item.

If you have a large screen and keep the editor quite wide when sharing, you often end up with giant images that have an egregious amount of wasted (empty) space in them.

These are an eyesore and waste space on the forum server (it really adds up over time).

The solution is to set the width of the KM Editor as narrow as is reasonable before sharing or taking your screenshot.

Appended are a couple of macros to make that easier.

My preferred working size maxes the editor window out to full-screen for use on my 13" MacBook Air.

The share macro is a compromise size that usually works as is, although I sometimes have to tweak the editor width by hand to accommodate a given macro.

Another thing you might not know is that Actions such as Comments don't refresh themselves automatically – you need to select the containing macro-group and then the macro again to cause a refresh to happen.

This is super easy to do with a couple of keystrokes, because the editor has built-in commands to do it.

image

-Chris

KM Editor ⇢ Resize for Sharing to the Forum v1.00.kmmacros (6.1 KB)
Keyboard Maestro Export

KM Editor ⇢ Resize to Preferred Working Size v1.00.kmmacros (6.0 KB)
Keyboard Maestro Export

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#2

Guilty as charged. I use a 27” iMac and have the resolution set to 3008x1692 resolution, though I generally use KM Editor on just one half of the screen. I generally try to take manual screenshots and select only the area that the actions are actually visible in, but I’ve noticed you resizing several of my posts to adjust the images.

What’s the preferred resolution for posting images to the forum? Because I have actually been thinking about this recently and wondering how much space our macros and screenshots take up on the server over time…

#3

Hey Chris,

I'm not 100% sure what's going to look acceptable on any given Mac pre and post retina.

When I share graphics from my non-retina (1440x900) 2012 MacBook Air the images are 72dpi.

You're generally better off sharing with Keyboard Maestro share to forum mechanism.

And/or using KM-MenuBar ⇢ Edit ⇢ Copy to Image and then pasting into the forum editor.

These methods produce smoother, more professional looking images.

You can select a macro, an action, or a group of actions and get an appropriate image.

When I resize images on the forum I almost always just adjust the visible size via a percentage – I don't actually resize the image itself (expect in rare cases).

You'll note that when you paste an image into the forum editor (or upload one) the right-side wysiwyg display has a 100% – 75% – 50% selector at the bottom of the image.

It that's not good enough you can adjust the percentile in the code section of the editor.

Downsized images are normally light-boxed – i.e. clickable for displaying at full-size.

I haven't reviewed this for a while, but I think it's the most comprehensive discussion on the forum:

Macros for Retina Screenshots on the Forum

-ccs

#4

I must admit I don’t really understand how to use that very well so I generally avoid it. However, I should probably invest some time in trying to figure out how it works better.

Didn’t even know this was a thing, thanks for the tip!

Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out!