Ask YC: Is there a utility that takes thumbnail style 'screenshots' of webpages?

5 points by fendale 17y ago ↗ HN

I have noticed more and more different websites displaying little thumbnail screenshot images of entire webpages, for instance (picking something a total random:

http://dzone.com/links/gumbo_inline_twoway_data_binding.html

Notice the snapshot image of the website it links to in the center of the page. How do you do that? Its appearing in so many places, I am guessing there must be a library for it somewhere, but I have no idea what!

5 comments

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tuukkah 17y ago ↗

Some discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=196148

adrianwaj 17y ago ↗

www.mr-thumb.de

there are heaps of others but this site doesn't place a logo on the image.

fendale 17y ago ↗

I would prefer something I can install on my own server as opposed to a service. That site is all in German, but it looks like its webservice that captures the images for you - am I correct?

adrianwaj 17y ago ↗

It's never failed me. Check out the source for how I use it: http://bit.ly/4g6ihb

fendale 17y ago ↗

Sounds like webkit2png is the best bet, but its OS X only which is no good if you want to run it on a webserver.

The alternative is khtml2png, which will run on a linux webserver, but it looks like its going require a lot of messing about with virtual X-Servers to get it going http://khtml2png.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=faq

Now the question is whether I can get my creaky old Fedora 4 box to get this all working without rebuilding the whole thing!

Edit: looks like a good tutorial at http://corpocrat.com/2008/08/26/capturing-a-screenshot-of-a-...