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Free Screen Capture Programs, Stochastics Forecast Exposed, QnA Pricefinder examples, Notepad to Edit Template List |
December 13 , 2006
16:30 Ensign Howard: Welcome to today's training class with Ensign..... I think we will have a good class and many will appreciate learning what I have to teach today. Today's theme will be learning about screen captures and what software can be used to accomplish this.
16:31 Ensign Howard: Inside of Ensign Windows we have a screen capture of the chart window that is activated by pressing CTRL+J keys. The captured window can be saved as a PNG file to the hard disk or uploaded to a web site such as the www.dacharts.com site Many uploads are made each day to the Internet, and on the dacharts site, there are folders by date so you can browse the uploads and look at charts created by others.
16:33 Ensign Howard: In Ensign, the chart window can also be e-mailed as an image to someone or to a list of address. The keys to activate this feature is the CTRL+E keys. The same PNG file is created on the harddisk and then attached as a file to the e-mail that is prepared. Details of the e-mail form are configured on the Internet Services form, e-mail tab. On the e-mail for you can add additional commentary and then click the Send button to have the text and the image sent off. This is often used by users to share a picture of their chart with me and commentary about the issue they are bringing to my attention.
16:35 Ensign Howard: An external program that is very popular for doing these same activities is the $40 program called SnagIt. It offers additional tools to mark up the images with arrows, notes, call-outs, highlights, etc prior to saving to the hard disk, e-mailing, or uploading to the Internet. It is highly recommended that users who want to do nicer uploads of images, or prepare images for documentation get a program like SnagIt.
16:37 Ensign Howard: A similar program that is excellent and FREE is called FastStone Capture. The web site where you can download this free program is www.faststone.org
16:38 Ensign Howard: So go to faststone (dot) org and click on the Freeware program FastStone Capture 4.8. Go ahead and click on the Download button
16:40 Ensign Howard: Download the exe program and run it which walks you through the installation. The program is free and has lots of great features.
16:40 Ensign Howard: Some features are not as nice as SnagIt, such as the smoothness of lines drawn at a diagonal. And some features are better, such as options for centering the image on a printed page. One feature that I think is omitted is the ability to upload the image to the Internet.....bummer
16:41 Ensign Howard: FastStone as the ability to capture the image, save to the hard disk, to the clipboard, and send an e-mail. But I do not find the ability to upload the capture to the Internet, so Snagit is still the higher recommendation of the two, for this one reason.
16:43 Ensign Howard: When FastStone is running there is this little control bar that floats on top on the screen. Click one of the buttons to start a capture, such as to capture a window.
16:44 Ensign Howard: As soon as you click on the window it is captured and you are in the FastStone editor. This picture shows some of the editor tools, such as adding text to the image, adding lines with arrows, adding free hand lines, rectangles, circles, highlight areas, etc.
16:47 Ensign Howard: In this picture, I am using the feature to add a note, and I have shown the options on the bottom to control background being solid or hollow, The border thickness of the frame, and shadow around the frame.
16:48 Ensign Howard: An interesting effect is the Transparency property which you see I have in the middle which permits the image behind the note to show through dimly. So there is lots of flexibility.
16:50 Ensign Howard: Here is an example of the form for printing with the options to select margins, and position on the page. This is really easy to use for printing.
16:49 @Buffy2: Do you prefer over snagit?
16:50 Ensign Howard: I do prefer snagit because I am used to snagit already and because I want to upload snagit images to the internet. If I did not already own snagit, and did not need to upload to the Internet, then the FastStone would be a real good choice.
16:51 Ensign Howard: So, part of the purpose of this training segment is to document for new users that fact that FastStone exists and would be a good way to capture screen images for e-mail that are going to be sent to me. It does a beautiful job of that and is easy to install and use. And the user has not spent $40 to buy Snagit.
16:53 Ensign Howard: I use SnagIt heavily in preparing the images that I include in my web site and in documentation for e-mail, such as our Q&A Knowledgebase. I will continue to use SnagIt. But FastStone is an excellent piece of free software that may just suit the needs users might have who do not own SnagIt.
16:54 Ensign Howard: Any questions? Any comments about SnagIt or FastStone or some similar screen capture program?
16:55 MakesOwnWeather: I find Snagit complicated. I will try FreeStone. I also found that for viewing the png images I use Irfanview which is a free program and PERFECT for reviewing charts by pressing the space key going from chart to chart. Irfanview can also do basic writing on pictures and cropping. http://www.irfanview.com
16:58 Ensign Howard: FastStone site also had an Image Viewer, and MaxView program, neither of which I have tried, but both of which are free. They also have a Photo Resizer/Editor. So, check it all out..... thanks for the information makesownweather.
16:59 Ensign Howard: Hard to beat Free, and the impression I have of FastStone has been very favorable. So that is why I am passing on the information..... I appreciated it being brought to my attention, and I am sharing that information with you now.
17:00 Ensign Howard: OK, that is all I have on that topic......
17:00 @Buffy2: Very good Howard thanks
17:00 MakesOwnWeather: Yes. Thank you Howard.
Stochastics Forecast Available Now
17:01 Ensign Howard: I put a small feature in the program this week for Buffy (and others) to expose the forecast price where %K would cross %D for stochastics
17:01 Ensign Howard: Here is a picture of the chart with a blue line, and the line is a plot of the price where the stochastic lines will cross. This value can be read using a DYO and plotted, and the DYO creating the plot is shown below the chart.
17:01 @Buffy2: I would appreciate the best way to round those numbers to nearest tick.
17:02 Ensign Howard: Buffy, use the Nearest function -- 1 moment.
17:04 Ensign Howard: see line B
17:05 @Buffy2: Thank you Howard
FXCM Update
17:08 Ensign Howard: The version you can download show the fxcm feed choice, but it should remain unchecked as we are not yet ready for a release of the FXCM feed. Mike is still working on more features for the servers, and I have more work to do on the refresh of the bars. I need Mike to finish his work before I can develop and test my changes.
17:11 Ensign Howard: ok, lets open the class for questions and answers for the balance of my time.
Pricefinder Examples
17:11 Teeho: Would it be possible to have this feature on the Ergodic as well?
17:12 Ensign Howard: teeho, use PriceFinder if you want price that causes some flag state to change. Let me show you examples of Pricefinder
17:13 Ensign Howard: http://www.ensignsoftware.com/tips/tradingtips63.htm#Bollinger
http://www.ensignsupport.com/email/1429.mhtml
17:14 Ensign Howard: This last link is an article reply written for Feb issue of Stocks and Commodities magazine
17:21 Shar: Buffy, do you think a similar dyo would work for two MAs crossing? For example, in using Howard's 5MA, if I also used the 9MA? Suppose it would predict when the two would cross?
17:22 Ensign Howard: shar, as in the article, the prices are so far away that it becomes unusable in my opinion for moving averages. When they cross, the cross over price zooms quickly through the view of the chart, as shown in the 2nd example chart.
17:23 Shar: ok, thanks Howard.
17:24 Ensign Howard: possibly the reason for the fast zoom rate is because the authors article has big moving averages of 20 and 30 and it takes a big price change to cause a 20 average to move to catch up and over take a 30 average.
Fitting Chart to Viewer
17:43 Ensign Howard: makes, your ?
17:43 MakesOwnWeather: Ensign Howard, here are two questions which DYoung asked in the B-Line room today:
In the chat program, it would be nice if there was a feature that would fit the whole chart in the window space. I am forever using the scroll bars to see the indicators at the bottom of the posted charts.
17:45 Quiet: (I for one would rather scroll to see the bottom of charts, DYoung, than to get those squished images IE gives you and be forced to click something to look at the image in its native size)
17:45 Ensign Howard: We used to have a sizing slider bar to resize the chart, but to make a big chart smaller, the slider was dropping pixel rows and columns. That introduced changes to the view, which some really disliked. For example, a pixel row containing a grid line could get deleted in the downsizing. So after complaints, the slider to resize was removed in the chat room redesign. If you all want to post big charts then you will just have to use slider bars to view them by scrolling left/right and up/down.
17:47 Ensign Howard: For example, the Kubes image just posted exceeds the size of my viewer and thus I have to use both a horizontal and vertical slide bars to view other parts of the chart.
17:48 MakesOwnWeather: Thank you Ensign Howard. I will pass this on to DYoung.
17:54 Ensign Howard: shar your turn
17:54 Shar: Buffy and Sniffy helped me with this dyo. I was playing with it after I asked about the "predictive" possibility of 2 MAs. So I tried to fix my dyo where the label of the 9MA would show as a label also. But it's taking the place of the 5MA label on my chart. Is there a way I can show both please? It's ok if it's not possible. Wanting the world here. :-)
Click on the following link for further information on this question.
DYO on How to Fix Labels on Top Of Each Other
Editing Template List in Notepad
18:00 Ensign Howard: MakesOwnWeather, your ?
18:00 MakesOwnWeather: Ensign Howard, I had a question about the use of the arrows to move things up and down in the WORKSPACE and TEMPLATES lists. When there are many, it takes a long time. Also, if I sort them by name, I can never get them back to date-changed order.
18:01 Ensign Howard: Makes, outside of Ensign you can use Notepad to edit the ASCII files that are the lists.
18:02 Ensign Howard: Perhaps that would be faster to organize your lengthy list than to use up and down arrows.
18:02 MakesOwnWeather: Yes, Ensign Howard, but once sorted by name, I can not get them back in date order within Ensign.
18:08 Ensign Howard: Ok, thanks for attending class today, and you all have a great holiday season
18:08 CIA: Thanks Howard for your time today - very helpful --- especially the BuffyDblue KD DYO material - have a good week :)
18:09 MakesOwnWeather: Thanks Ensign Howard :>
18:09 Ensign Howard: bye
17:54 @Buffy2: Thank you Howard for everything