
Show HN: Record all your web browsing with fully searchable screenshots - idibidiart
https://github.com/idibidiart/AllSeeingEye
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javajosh
This is neat, but I think it just nuked my browser history. That's bad.

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javajosh
BTW disabling or uninstalling the plugin restores access to the "normal"
history. And I infer that it didn't stop recording history while active, so
that's good.

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7952
Slightly different, but I use a program called timesnapper [1] that takes a
screen grab every second. It is so useful for figuring out exactly what I did
a couple of weeks ago. The contents of your screen is a very useful data
source.

[1] [http://www.timesnapper.com/](http://www.timesnapper.com/)

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jyvbn
Great idea. I tried this addon now. One limitation I see is that it's only
saving single screenshot for each URL, not full page. So on a long (vertically
scrolling) page only a small part is saved.

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joshmlewis
That's an interesting problem I think will all the screenshotting tools out
there. If you want the full page the extension has to scroll down the page and
stitch the individual pictures together. You'd think there would be a way to
capture the whole page easily but it's quite the tricky problem.

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alooPotato
I'm pretty sure that a chrome extension can take a screenshot of the full page
not just whats visible

EDIT: here it is:
[https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/desktopCapture#metho...](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/desktopCapture#method-
chooseDesktopMedia)

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idibidiart
Interesting. Will experiment with it and will push changes if successful. I
guess the API is relatively new (Chrome 34) and I hadn't come across it, till
now. Thanks!

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Already__Taken
That or just record what I've actually scrolled. Why would I archive content
I've never seen?

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idibidiart
Well, it's interesting. My main concern with capturing the entire tab as image
is that the site being captured maybe one of those infinitely scrollable pages
(i.e. same as the history.html page) in which case, depending on
implementation, the tab may be very very long (tens of thousands of pixels in
height) and 99% blank (if employing an infinite scroll mechanism that puts
only the currently viewed items in the DOM)

Edit: so capturing on each scroll step (over say 3 seconds) >
$('body').height()/3 and grouping the multiple screenshots under the given
item is one possible way. Thanks for your thought.

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zrail
This is pretty cool. I've had the urge to build something similar ever since
reading Gwern's article about archiving[1]. My approach was going to either be
an extension that ships URLs or just ship the history db wholesale to a webapp
which does the archiving, which would allow for multiple machines.

[1]:
[http://www.gwern.net/Archiving%20URLs](http://www.gwern.net/Archiving%20URLs)

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ramoq
Great job. I love useful chrome extensions. I wonder where all the extension
security haters on HN went today :p

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joshdance
I use to use greplin for something similar. Where did I hear about this band?
Search for it, see it was a tweet from my friend a year ago. Cool project.

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ibrad
I was working on the exact same tool. My links used to be spread all over the
place and it was not searchable. Good work, this seems very useful.

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qwerta
Nice.

There was similar extension with Firefox which integrated with Beagle desktop
search on Linux. I would love to see something like this for Rekonq.

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web007
Since this is HN,
[https://github.com/idibidiart/AllSeeingEye](https://github.com/idibidiart/AllSeeingEye)
might be a better link.

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dang
Thanks. We changed to that from [1] because it is more informative and
includes a link to [1] anyway.

1\. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/all-seeing-
eye/kio...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/all-seeing-
eye/kiopjipnmfcpdambegpfmggaffjmhnkd)

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andrewgjohnson
I'll take things I may consider putting on my girlfriend's computer for $400
Alex.

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Mandatum
I can't imagine a large amount of people would be interested in this addon.
People who use addons are usually power users, who I don't imagine would have
the need for something like this. Plus a lot of people would be sceptical of
an addon which visually saves their browsing history. What about private
records (ie viewing a PDF, bank balance, e-mail)?

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Renaud
I'd like something like this add-on to work flawlessly, maybe giving me the
option to selectively save the page rather than doing it systematically.

I may not be useful when you are checking your email, and you may not want it
when doing some type of transactions online, but it would be great when you
are doing research on a subject: storing and organising images is simple,
viewing them is simple, sharing them is simple, you get to keep the full look
of the original page with all its content and being searchable, you can easily
find what you are looking for.

It's a poor man's web archive but somehow, it's easier than saving pages
through the Save As browser menu.

It's better than bookmarks since you can do visual and textual searches and
you don't have to rely on the original content still being online.

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idibidiart
I agree. I was planning on letting the user add a "Do Not Capture" list of
URLs in the Options page, but didn't have time to do it on initial release.
Sorry.

