21 Sep 2015
Snip and Share for Chrome makes it simple to post GIFs, videos, an entire Web page and more
Snip and Share for Chrome makes it simple to post GIFs, videos, an entire Web page and more
weeting an article or posting it to Facebook isn’t the most challenging thing – and there are plenty of ways you can achieve the same goal.
However, there aren’t too many tools that let you share an entire page, a cropped section or a manually selected piece of content – like a GIF, still image, video or words – all in one. The Crop and Share Chrome extension exists for just that reason.
It’s free to install and use, and about as simple as it gets.
Once you’re set-up and have an account – or log in via Facebook or Twitter – you just need to click the little icon (it appears to be a blank-faced man wearing glasses and a bow-tie) any time you want to share some content.
From there, you get just three options: Take a snapshot, select a specific element, or share the whole page.
The individual element option works well, and consistently selects the correct item you’re trying to share. However, how that content will appear depends on where you share it.
For example, the image below shared into email via Imgur displayed at full size, rather than being optimized or resized in any way.
Depending on what you’re sharing, there’s also a pre-filled snippet of text, but you can delete this and/or enter your own if you’d prefer.
Selecting snippets of text to quote from a webpage is easy too.
In some cases, maybe you want to share a non-selectable element, like in the ad image background below perhaps. For these, you can just select ‘take a snapshot’ and then select the area you want to share.
Then, finally (I did mention it was simple), you have the option to share the whole page. The tweet below is how a full-page share of the TNW homepage looks on Twitter.
The next tweet is a GIF shared directly from Imgur.
Whichever method you choose allows you to share via email, Twitter or Facebook, or via a combination of the three simultaneously. That’s pretty handy if you frequently want to post something to Twitter and Facebook while you’re trawling the Web.
One thing that would be nice is if there was some URL auto-shortening to make the shared links look a bit neater, and perhaps options for sharing to more networks.
Snip and Share’s creator Peter Huang says that sharing directly to Slack is due to arrive imminently, which is something I expect to find particularly useful. Huang also says he’s working on a native mobile app too, though I’m less convinced by how much use I’d get out of that.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a time-saver, so for now I’m sticking with Snip and Share. It being free also helps with that decision.
malikmuddser