Simple way to show a thumbnail of a webpage?

why u are sucking ur mind to...............just simple way install fresh copy of window XP ,,,,,,,,,,,,hows tht
Imran Hashmi

 

Sorry to dig up a rather old thread...I hacked together my minute PHP knowledge and got this to dynamically show alexa's thumbnail...just make sure $url is defined. Now...whether or not they mind us doing this is another question?

$url = "http://www.tubanews.com";

preg_match("/^(http:\/\/)?([^\/]+)/i",
   "$url", $matches);
$host = $matches[2];

// get last two segments of host name
preg_match("/[^\.\/]+\.[^\.\/]+$/", $host, $matches);
$shorturl = $matches[0];
explode ($shorturl);

echo "<img src=\"http://thumbnails.alexa.com/images/bigjpeg/$shorturl[0]/$shorturl[1]/$matches[0]_.big.jpeg\">";

PHP:

 

I might repeat myself... but, there is no way in the world to do this from within a webscript without using a desktop component. So, you shouldn't bother trying.

 

You need to use PHP scripts for this purpose.

 

I thought about this before, the easiest way is to do it a server in VB, a simple socket listen for the url, brower.navigate to the page with the explorer object in a picture box, save the picture box, return the image. A couple of hours of coding. Nothing like having a dedicated server running a visual basic!

 

The one way I would accomplish creating a thumbnail is to write some sort of X-Windows based program in linux to automate the browser loading a site and then screen capture programmatically.

On a windows system, I'd probably write a VB or MFC app to automate IE and then captue the screen into a device context, resize it and save to a file.

 

I hate to bump an extremely old thread but...yes it is possible...so yes...you are wrong.

 

Can you give us details?

 

http://64.39.14.230/dh-asp/view.asp

 

Very good ULR, does anyone know the code which makes this work? And is it only possible in ASP or can it be done in PHP?

 

This is the website responsible for the link i posted above - http://www.websupergoo.com/abcdrawhtml-1.htm

 

They don't capture CSS based background images.

 

Looks like a good site, thank you

 

I have tried developing a webpage taking service myself and I really don't recommend messing with that idea unless you are developing a serious business which is dependent upon those webpage thumbnails. Otherwise it is just a whole lot easier to use a third party service available. Here's why I believe developing a standalone web page thumbnail generator is a bad idea.

Developing the software itself is a pain. You cannot do that with some simple PHP GD library function - it is a whole lot more complex than that. First you need a dedicated server and that alone will cost you at least 150 USD a month. Then, it involves running an Xvfb package on the server that will accommodate the graphics output, since servers don't usually have video cards. Then you need to start a web browser on your server (say Mozilla) and develop an extension for that browser that will allow to save screenshots to files or use linux screen capture command.

Processing images is always a pain in my opinion. You will virtually need an admin responsible for the maintenance of your software and your server because it is likely to crash often, unless it was developed by an IT genius. Finally, I don't believe you can make a lot of money out of it anyway, as there are free services available out there and there doesn't seem to be a lot of demand.

To conclude the post, I dropped the idea halfway and resorted to a third party service developed by someone. The website I am using is fancythumbs.com. Don't treat this as an ad, just sharing my experience. Thank you.

 

I have tried developing a webpage taking service myself and I really don't recommend messing with that idea unless you are developing a serious business which is dependent upon those webpage thumbnails. Otherwise it is just a whole lot easier to use a third party service available. Here's why I believe developing a standalone web page thumbnail generator is a bad idea.

Developing the software itself is a pain. You cannot do that with some simple PHP GD library function - it is a whole lot more complex than that. First you need a dedicated server and that alone will cost you at least 150 USD a month. Then, it involves running an Xvfb package on the server that will accommodate the graphics output, since servers don't usually have video cards. Then you need to start a web browser on your server (say Mozilla) and develop an extension for that browser that will allow to save screenshots to files or use linux screen capture command.

Processing images is always a pain in my opinion. You will virtually need an admin responsible for the maintenance of your software and your server because it is likely to crash often, unless it was developed by an IT genius. Finally, I don't believe you can make a lot of money out of it anyway, as there are free services available out there and there doesn't seem to be a lot of demand.

To conclude the post, I dropped the idea halfway and resorted to a third party service developed by someone. The website I am using is fancythumbs.com. Don't treat this as an ad, just sharing my experience. Thank you.

 

avoid image processing using client side scripting for sure!