Have you ever wanted to record an application that would not maximize, or an application that would look strange maximized? Or perhaps your Windows Desktop has become cluttered with icons and you don't want to capture the clutter in your recordings. Here's a tip that will help: create a background for your recording.

1. Create a blank HTML file with a black background in your favorite HTML editor. Or download this sample file: UPK_Recording_Background.html (right click to save). If you would prefer a different color background in the sample file, open it in Notepad and change “#000” to a different HTML color.
2. Open UPK_Recording_Background.html in its own web browser window.
   
3. Press F11 to make the web browser window full screen. This should give you a completely black screen. (This works great in modern versions of the most popular browsers. I successfully used Firefox 15, Chrome 22, and IE 9.
4. Open or switch to the desired application so that it sits on top of the full screen browser window. If the application you are recording is also in a browser, it is important that it be in a separate browser window from the UPK_Recording_Background.html.
5. Record your topic normally.

The above steps create a recording background using an HTML file and a web browser. This is just one method, for instance you could do the same thing with an image editor and an image viewer with a full screen view. Now you can record a non-maximized application without a distracting background.

I hope you find this to be a helpful tip. Let us know what you think in the comments.