Anyone know of a preferably open source tool, similar to ScreenMarker that allows you to draw/annotate on your Windows desktop?
I know PicPick has one but I probably don't need all the other functionality that comes with it, so it's little excessive for my requirements (and PicPick isn't open source). Plus, as I understand it, it's unlikely to become a PortableApps candidate since development of PicPickPortable is being dropped.
I don't need anything particularly fancy, in fact I might just go with ScreenMarker if nobody else can come up with anything. It seems to be portable, it's extremely small and does pretty much what I want. The only thing that is missing that would be nice is if it could do arrows (can only draw lines) and also add text. In addition, there doesn't seem to built-in capability to save the screen, although I could use an additional screen capture tool for that.
On the downside, it appears to be closed source, freeware, with a trademarked app name, so not an ideal PA.c candidate.
Update: Zoomit from SysInternals looks interesting! Although, it's a little confusing to work with at first since there's no toolbar, it's all done with hotkeys (which isn't a bad thing necessarily). Not sure of it's portability either but imagine it is minimally invasive.
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I'll look at both.
ScreenMarker looks especially appealing.
Plus, I downloaded a ton of apps from osalt.com. So you might see another flood coming in a few weeks...
I made portable versions of both Screen Marker and ZoomIt. I was trying to upload them yesterday, but I kinda ran outa time, but I know I can release them shortly.
BTW: Screen Marker is already portable as a standalone app, but ZoomIt does save its settings in the registry.
Also, although Systernals is owned by Microsoft, I think it won't be a problem using an online installer for it.
DemoHelper can draw arrows...
1. http://code.google.com/p/demohelper/
2. http://lifehacker.com/5139976/demohelper-draws-on-your-screen
Looking at ScreenMarker, it should be easy enough to code one in Lazarus, based on a couple of simple principles:
Transparency - It's pretty easy to make transparent sections of a form. The PortableApps platform does that to a small extent - it's how they round the corners at the top. This transparency is complete, it acts like it doesn't exist to the mouse.
Full Screen, stay on top - Also easy to make a full screen app that stays on top of all the other windows.
There's a Delphi tutorial on making your own simple Paint program.
If I create the paint program with full screen, and transparency, it should work like ScreenMarker, and I might be able to put in some more features like text and shapes.
It'll probably take a while...
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
One of the reasons this has become a useful application to have is that I discovered that Skype has screen sharing, so a tool like this is helpful when collaborating over Skype. However, as far as I can tell Skype just shares your screen and that's about it, nothing really fancy. Perhaps that will change.