Web Page Screenshot

[Toby A Inkster]

Re: Web Page Screenshot

Krustov wrote:

In your opinion - what are the problems ?

There aren't any problems per se -- it's just far too big a problem for
one programmer to complete in two hours. It's a task that's measured in
"man-years" rather than "man-hours".

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
Geek of ~ HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python*/Apache/Linux

* = I'm getting there!

[Jerry Stuckle]

Re: Web Page Screenshot

Krustov wrote:

<comp.lang.ph p>
<Toby A Inkster>
<Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:05:42 +0100>
<meccf4-4kp.ln1@ophelia .g5n.co.uk>
>

>>(8) shrink 800x600 image to thumbnail size

>And what difference do you think that makes? My point is that no-one can
>write a decent HTML+CSS rendering engine in two months, let alone two
>hours.
>>

>
In your opinion - what are the problems ? .
>

You've GOT to be kidding!

--
=============== ===
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attgl obal.net
=============== ===

[Krustov]

Re: Web Page Screenshot

<comp.lang.ph p>
<Toby A Inkster>
<Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:31:26 +0100>
<egocf4-4kp.ln1@ophelia .g5n.co.uk>

In your opinion - what are the problems ?

>
There aren't any problems per se -- it's just far too big a problem for
one programmer to complete in two hours. It's a task that's measured in
"man-years" rather than "man-hours".
>

Even if the end result is only to produce a small thumbnail ? .

[Chris Hope]

Re: Web Page Screenshot

Krustov wrote:

<comp.lang.ph p>
<Toby A Inkster>
<Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:31:26 +0100>
<egocf4-4kp.ln1@ophelia .g5n.co.uk>
>

In your opinion - what are the problems ?

>>
>There aren't any problems per se -- it's just far too big a problem
>for one programmer to complete in two hours. It's a task that's
>measured in "man-years" rather than "man-hours".
>>

>
Even if the end result is only to produce a small thumbnail ? .

Of course. Whether it's a thumbnail or not, you're going to need to
render it somewhat like the page actually is, which means you need to
be able to parse table layouts, CSS positioning, etc etc. It takes a
lot of time to get this working.

I think it might have been Toby who posted here in the past a method of
capturing screenshots of websites using a browser and scripting. I have
utilised this method myself and it works really well. An example of
this is below.

This is on a Linux system. You may or may not be able to do it on other
systems, but it works nicely for me. I run Opera fullscreen on a
1024x768 screen:

system("opera -remote 'openURL($url)' ");
sleep(30);
system("import -display :0 -window root temp/$filename.jpg") ;

The 30 second sleep gives it time to have all the images etc downloaded.
I probably don't need to make it wait that long - just being safe.

--
Chris Hope | www.electrictoolbox.com | www.linuxcdmall.com

[Chris Hope]

Re: Web Page Screenshot

Chris Hope wrote:

Krustov wrote:
>

><comp.lang.php >
><Toby A Inkster>
><Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:31:26 +0100>
><egocf4-4kp.ln1@ophelia .g5n.co.uk>
>>

>In your opinion - what are the problems ?
>>>
>>There aren't any problems per se -- it's just far too big a problem
>>for one programmer to complete in two hours. It's a task that's
>>measured in "man-years" rather than "man-hours".
>>>

>>
>Even if the end result is only to produce a small thumbnail ? .

>
Of course. Whether it's a thumbnail or not, you're going to need to
render it somewhat like the page actually is, which means you need to
be able to parse table layouts, CSS positioning, etc etc. It takes a
lot of time to get this working.
>
I think it might have been Toby who posted here in the past a method
of capturing screenshots of websites using a browser and scripting. I
have utilised this method myself and it works really well. An example
of this is below.
>
This is on a Linux system. You may or may not be able to do it on
other systems, but it works nicely for me. I run Opera fullscreen on a
1024x768 screen:
>
system("opera -remote 'openURL($url)' ");
sleep(30);
system("import -display :0 -window root temp/$filename.jpg") ;
>
The 30 second sleep gives it time to have all the images etc
downloaded. I probably don't need to make it wait that long - just
being safe.

And of course you then need to resize it down etc using gd or
imagemagick or other such tools.

--
Chris Hope | www.electrictoolbox.com | www.linuxcdmall.com