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Simple way to show a thumbnail of a webpage?

Discussion in 'Programming' started by lorien1973, Oct 22, 2004.

  1. #1
    Is there a simple way to show a thumbnail (maybe 80x80 or 100x100) of a webpage? thru javascript or php or something?
     
    lorien1973, Oct 22, 2004 IP
    redhits and Will.Spencer like this.
  2. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #2
    No, there is nothing simple about rendering a webpage with a script. The "easy" way to do it would be to utilize thumbshots.org.
     
    digitalpoint, Oct 22, 2004 IP
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  3. debunked

    debunked Prominent Member

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    #3
    I don't know about using java or php, but go to analogx.com and download the screen capture program, all his programs are very small but work well.

    You will probably still have to resize the pictures or there may be a way to change it in the settings.
     
    debunked, Oct 22, 2004 IP
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  4. lorien1973

    lorien1973 Notable Member

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    #4
    thumbshots doesn't seem to have a lot of thumbs available - none of my sites had 1 available it only seemed to pull thumbs for dmoz listings (im at 2 years pending for dmoz LOL). I tried it out for a while. I'm looking for something for my directory - automated hopefully that would let "premium urls" show a thumbnail of the site next to their listing. If it was a cron process that'd work for me too.

    Probably would have to get a custom programming job on this I guess (sql select to get the urls to thumbnail, take it, size it, etc) ?
     
    lorien1973, Oct 22, 2004 IP
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  5. jameshsi

    jameshsi Peon

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    #5
    Hi!
    I trying to find a php script that you just feed it some URLs and it can create the URLs you gave it to some JPGs files on the server side, do anyone know this kind of scripts ?
     
    jameshsi, Aug 26, 2005 IP
  6. Connect

    Connect Guest

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    #6
    Connect, Aug 26, 2005 IP
  7. jameshsi

    jameshsi Peon

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    #7
    Yes, I am looking for a script to automatically create a thumbnail/screehshot of the webpage given the url, but after viewing the thread, no, it is not I expecting, What I want is :
    Use a php script and maybe MySQL to do all that automatically,the script read URL from database and go to the URL grab the page and save it as a thumbnail jpg/png file so I can check the file later.

    Is it possibile ?
     
    jameshsi, Aug 28, 2005 IP
  8. Connect

    Connect Guest

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    #8
    I think that is possible, but just have no idea how it is done. Some websites, such as alexa.com has thumbnails of websites, how do they create the thumbnails?
     
    Connect, Aug 28, 2005 IP
  9. misohoni

    misohoni Notable Member

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    #9
    Try Alexa, work out the code something like thumbs.alexa.com/img?=http://webnam.com
     
    misohoni, Aug 29, 2005 IP
  10. Connect

    Connect Guest

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    #10
    Yes, impossible to tell how alexa capture the screenshot of a website by looking at the img src tag.
     
    Connect, Aug 31, 2005 IP
  11. misohoni

    misohoni Notable Member

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    #11
    misohoni, Aug 31, 2005 IP
  12. Amos

    Amos Peon

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    #12
    You would have to use a browser. I looked into this as well and realized that Alexa was the best choice to go with as well.
     
    Amos, Aug 31, 2005 IP
  13. Connect

    Connect Guest

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    #13
    What do you mean?

    Alexa obviously has an engine to capture screenshots of websites and store them on their server. But we don't know how to do this on our own. Of course, we can borrow the screenshots from alexa by using the url (http://thumbnails.alexa.com/image_server.cgi?size=large&url=fengshuichinese.com/), but this is not a good solution because we still do not know how to do the capture ourselves using our own script on our own server.

    Also, notice that the alexa url will only return screenshots for websites already captured by alexa. If you enter a website which never cpatured by alexa, you don't get a screen capture.
     
    Connect, Sep 1, 2005 IP
  14. misohoni

    misohoni Notable Member

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    #14
    I think Alexa is your best bet...if Alexa hasn't captured a site, you can always use Alexa to find the url you are looking for and then "Update the Thumbnail".

    Thumbshots is pretty good though....

    Otherwise you need to create your thumbnails by hand and upload to each relevant site.
     
    misohoni, Sep 1, 2005 IP
  15. Connect

    Connect Guest

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    #15
    Create your thumbnails by hand and upload to each relevant site is tedious if you have a lot of websites to capture. That's why I have been asking how to automate the capture by using scripts or any other addon...
     
    Connect, Sep 1, 2005 IP
  16. links_mngr

    links_mngr Peon

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    #16
    I have a component which you can install on your server. You then need to call the component with a simple line of code. This component can return both the image of a webpage and also its thumbnail. You can set the size of the image and the jpg compression level. The component works with PHP, ASP, Perl, JAVA, Python. If anyone is interested it costs $100.
     
    links_mngr, Sep 6, 2005 IP
  17. Connect

    Connect Guest

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    #17
    What soft of component is that? Is it a java class, or a DLL?
     
    Connect, Sep 11, 2005 IP
  18. ferret77

    ferret77 Heretic

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    #18
    ferret77, Sep 15, 2005 IP
  19. stuw

    stuw Peon

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    #19
    I looked at doing something similar sometime ago. It involved having a linux box, mozilla browser and gimp imaging software.

    Basically you need a browser to get the url and render how the page would look, then imaging software to take that output and save it as an image. PHP can then resize that image to your hearts content. I'm not too techie, so I gave up. It can be done. If you can find a good 3rd party solution that you can just install, then that would be my choice.

    Just found the URL for the one I looked at : http://www.boutell.com/webthumb/
     
    stuw, Sep 15, 2005 IP
  20. ITExchange

    ITExchange Peon

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    #20
    What alexa and similar websites do, is that there are a few servers running, which extract the links from a db, open the web site in a web browser, and generate screen shots. The application that does that is not a web script, but a desktop application. Then the pictures are uploaded into the db.

    What can be easyer than that? ;)
     
    ITExchange, Oct 1, 2005 IP