Automatik Screenshots of Websites

I would like to include to every Link a small picture of the website.
Like for example on http://gnuhaus.com/web.html
but mabe with smaller images.

Any idea how that could be done automatically ? Is there a tool for such
thing already ?

Matthias

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:59:07 +0100, Matthias Pospiech
<matthiasPUNKTpospiech (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote:

I would like to include to every Link a small picture of the website.
Like for example on http://gnuhaus.com/web.html
but mabe with smaller images.

Any idea how that could be done automatically ? Is there a tool for such
thing already ?

What you're looking for is called screen capturing software. The more
sophisticated proggies come with both options that you desire - capturing
the image of the active window only and resizing the image. The capability
of saving to a file is a given.

Google for freeware screen capture.

--
Mitja

Mitja wrote:

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:59:07 +0100, Matthias Pospiech
matthiasPUNKTpospiech (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote:

I would like to include to every Link a small picture of the website.
Like for example on http://gnuhaus.com/web.html
but mabe with smaller images.

Any idea how that could be done automatically ? Is there a tool for such
thing already ?

What you're looking for is called screen capturing software.
Really ?

What I a m looking for should run on a linux system and be called by a php
or perl script and run in the background. Moreover it must be installable
with normal user rights.

To be more precise, I do not look for software to capture the whole screen,
just for software that captures the webpage design. resizing should not be
the problem.

One exampel webpage that does this is (just found rigt now)
http://world.dir.nodeworks.com/Deuts...are/TeX/LaTeX/

Very interessting is however, that my webpage is the only one without a
screenshot...

There a tool that does this is called Thumbshots

Matthias

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 18:15:12 +0100 Matthias Pospiech wrote:

Mitja wrote:

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:59:07 +0100, Matthias Pospiech
matthiasPUNKTpospiech (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote:

I would like to include to every Link a small picture of the website.
Like for example on http://gnuhaus.com/web.html
but mabe with smaller images.

Any idea how that could be done automatically ? Is there a tool for
such
thing already ?

What you're looking for is called screen capturing software.
Really ?

What I a m looking for should run on a linux system and be called by a
php
or perl script and run in the background. Moreover it must be
installable
with normal user rights.

I don't think you want to do this on the server level.
Your host may not approve of such a program running in the background.

To be more precise, I do not look for software to capture the whole
screen,
just for software that captures the webpage design. resizing should not
be
the problem.

Copyright and intellectual property conflicts are possible here.

One exampel webpage that does this is (just found rigt now)
http://world.dir.nodeworks.com/Deuts...are/TeX/LaTeX/

Sprechen sie deutsch nein.

Very interessting is however, that my webpage is the only one without a
screenshot...

There a tool that does this is called Thumbshots

Matthias

Thumbshots captures the entire page and makes a thumbnail.
From what I've seen on their pages.
So what you're after then is a program will capture the template, not the
content.
I don't think any software around can do that.

Duende wrote:

While sitting in a puddle Richard scribbled in the mud:


Copyright and intellectual property conflicts are possible here.

Doesn't bother you though does it.

In which way would a thumbnail image of a website cause Copyright and
intellectual property conflicts ?

Matthias

Richard wrote:

What I a m looking for should run on a linux system and be called by a
php
or perl script and run in the background. Moreover it must be
installable
with normal user rights.

I don't think you want to do this on the server level.
Your host may not approve of such a program running in the background.

Why not on server level ? Because I would connect lets say 150 webpages
every 2 weeks or so ? Actually I have not thought about what the host might
say to it, but I could contact the host to ask.

Well, could also be on my machine (still Linux) and the images updated over
ftp. But with more than hundret linked pages this is still no job for
manual screenshots.

One exampel webpage that does this is (just found rigt now)
http://world.dir.nodeworks.com/Deuts...are/TeX/LaTeX/

Sprechen sie deutsch nein.
Well, the images are still international ...

So what you're after then is a program will capture the template, not the
content.
Hm, I am not interested in there HTML template, nor the content just the

picture.

I don't think any software around can do that.
Sad.

Matthias

Matthias Pospiech wrote:

I would like to include to every Link a small picture of the website.
Like for example on http://gnuhaus.com/web.html
but mabe with smaller images.

Any idea how that could be done automatically ? Is there a tool for such
thing already ?

What I a m looking for should run on a linux system and be called by a php
or perl script and run in the background. Moreover it must be installable
with normal user rights.
.............
To be more precise, I do not look for software to capture the whole
screen, just for software that captures the webpage design. resizing
should not be the problem.
....................
One exampel webpage that does this is (just found rigt now)
http://world.dir.nodeworks.com/Deuts...are/TeX/LaTeX/

If I were making a site like either of the ones you posted links to, I would
want to visit them personally to decide which page on the site to make a
thumbnail of. I don't see how your decisions could be automated except with
a thoroughly trained AI. You could use ksnapshot. Gnome has a similar
grabber.

Once you have all your images and text notes gathered together, you should
be able to write a preprocessor in Perl to make the pages for you, ready
for upload to your server.

Or, you could upload everything and display them through a CGI program that
combines them into a webpage when called.

One completely scriptable Linux command is 'import'. It can be used to
capture a screenshot of any window you know the name of. Check out it's
man page.

A much more complete set of scriptable image manipulation tools is
ImageMagick,which Perl and several other languages have hooks into.
--
mbstevens
http://www.mbstevens.com/preprocessor/
http://www.mbstevens.com/howtothumb/

mbstevens wrote:

Matthias Pospiech wrote:
.............
To be more precise, I do not look for software to capture the whole
screen, just for software that captures the webpage design. resizing
should not be the problem.
....................
One exampel webpage that does this is (just found rigt now)
http://world.dir.nodeworks.com/Deuts...are/TeX/LaTeX/

If I were making a site like either of the ones you posted links to, I
would want to visit them personally to decide which page on the site to
make a thumbnail of. I don't see how your decisions could be automated
except with a thoroughly trained AI.

Well, I have all the links already, I have them online already. But I think
that the links pages might be much better with such images.

You could use ksnapshot. Gnome has a similar grabber.
I know, but that leaves me still with loading the page, doing a screenshot

and cutting the image aferwards.

Once you have all your images and text notes gathered together, you should
be able to write a preprocessor in Perl to make the pages for you, ready
for upload to your server.
Sure, But its only a bunch of pages.

One completely scriptable Linux command is 'import'. It can be used to
capture a screenshot of any window you know the name of. Check out it's
man page.
Import sound like the right tool to capture images by a script.

A much more complete set of scriptable image manipulation tools is
ImageMagick,which Perl and several other languages have hooks into.
You mean convert ? I know, but I never understood the manpage though.

The real reason why I would like to have it completely automatical is that
if my webpage could be edited online, and links could be edited online (by
others) than this webpage-images should be created automatically too.

Matthias

Matthias Pospiech wrote:

A much more complete set of scriptable image manipulation tools is
ImageMagick,which Perl and several other languages have hooks into.
You mean convert ? I know, but I never understood the manpage though.

http://www.imagemagick.org
Also search sites on your favorite scripting language for the hooks into
the programs.

The real reason why I would like to have it completely automatical is that
if my webpage could be edited online, and links could be edited online (by
others) than this webpage-images should be created automatically too.

You might be able to adapt a script from CGI resource index:
http://www.cgi-resources.com/
or
http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/
or
use or modify some classes or scripts you find by digging around in
http://www.cpan.org/

On 7 Jan 2005 22:52:21 GMT Duende wrote:

While sitting in a puddle Matthias Pospiech scribbled in the mud:

Duende wrote:

While sitting in a puddle Richard scribbled in the mud:

Copyright and intellectual property conflicts are possible here.

Doesn't bother you though does it.

In which way would a thumbnail image of a website cause Copyright and
intellectual property conflicts ?

Richard has been known to steal entire sites, not just a thumbnail
image of a
website.

Bullshit. There was nothing on your little excercise page that was
copyrightable by you.
The "lorem ipsum" stuff was originally written in 45bc by a greek person,
which is readily available all over the net. The "eye" image is public
domain. As a matter of fact, that very same eye is an icon of a program I
have. What is left, is your experimental menu item stuff, which is a list,
and a list is not copyrightable.
Oh and the design of your page? You did not create it, which is also public
domain.