

Show HN: A simple full page website snapshot service - hashbo
http://snapito.com/?url=news.ycombinator.com&x=0&y=0

======
petercooper
OK, great effort getting this up and running but the font rendering is, well,
not good. For comparison: <http://no.gd/p/snapito-20120217-043956.jpg>

I set out to tackle this problem a few years ago and while it was easy to rig
up stuff to do this in Linux, getting anywhere _near_ the rendering quality
that I saw in OS X was impossible. It seems it may still be :-)

It was a couple of years ago now and I asked on Twitter if anyone would pay
for an OS X powered Web page screenshot service and had a lot of response
but.. busy with other things. Would love to see one though as it seems to be
the only OS to render pages with any finesse.

~~~
dmils4
Agreed on the rendering being off a bit.

That would be another cool feature for this - to pick your browser/OS to point
out browser specifics bugs. There's already <http://netrenderer.com/> for IE -
but it doesn't let you do anything with the image.

That's obviously a very limited focus for a great general use app, but an
idea.

------
JoshTriplett
In the hopes of finding out the rendering engine Snapito used, I tried
<http://snapito.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwhatsmyuseragent.com%2F> ; however, that
seems to hang forever. I would chalk that up to heavy load from HN, except
that other pages seem to work just fine.

~~~
sjs382
[http://snapito.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsupportdetails.com%2F&#...</a>

------
JoshTriplett
I typed in "example.org", and got back "Please enter a URL". For convenience,
consider automatically assuming "<http://> in the front if the user doesn't
specify a URL scheme. (Please do continue allowing URLs with <http://> or
<https://> explicitly specified, though.) You shouldn't make that assumption
if you provide an API in the future (API callers should specify full valid
URLs), but it would make the current web interface more friendly.

Whatever renderer you used to render the page has absolutely no antialiasing
in its font rendering, resulting in pixelated rendering.

~~~
hashbo
Josh that’s really interesting, what browser were you using, because the app
doesn’t say ‘Please enter a URL’ this must be a browser feature working
against input type=‘url’. I’d love to know the browser you were using. It
certainly shouldn’t require a <http://> at the front.

Yeah you’re 100% right about the fonts, I definitely plan to sort that out
ASAP.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Oh, interesting! I use Firefox 10, and I didn't realize that that validation
came from the browser rather than your page.

~~~
hashbo
Josh if you see it still let me know. I just hacked a quick JS fix and tested
in FF10 and all seems to be well. But as you know each version of each browser
has it’s own little features :-)

~~~
JoshTriplett
Seems to work now. Thanks!

------
thealoof
I like it. It's neat and fun to play with, but I'm not exactly sure what to do
with it. I think a little "What you can use Snapito for" or "10 ways to use
Snapito" link somewhere would be helpful. I can imagine it being useful for
web designers who want to show designs to people, but how else do you envision
people using it?

Also (this is just a minor nitpick), it'd be nice to not have to enter in
<http://>. I'm using Chrome.

------
dmils4
I like the concept. A lot.

It would be 100x more useful if you added a set of tools at the right that
emulate Skitch, so you could mark up a screenshot and then merge the edits
into a new image. I would probably stop using Skitch immediately.

Also - if you're going to use KISSinsights to ask your users questions, ask a
meaningful question. The current question is pretty obnoxious. Just my $.02

~~~
fourk
Interesting that you'd switch from Skitch if it had that feature set. I can't
imagine a scenario where I'd ever prefer to hit, from a page I'd like a
screenshot of:

    
    
        > cmd+l, cmd+c, cmd+t, sna, <down-arrow>, enter, tab, cmd+v, enter, right click generated image, copy link

As opposed to (skitch keybinds):

    
    
        > cmd+shift+5, click once in my browser window, click once on share link
    

Out of curiosity, what is it that makes the web-based workflow more appealing
to you as a user?

~~~
dmils4
It's more the annotation/cropping feature set that would make it valuable.
Currently to mark up a site, I need to go to that site, open skitch, take the
snapshot, then edit it in skitch, then save. Then attach it to a gmail message
and send (or upload to dropbox and send the link).

If there was a cloud solution that could do all of this, and provide a link
that I could just send someone - it's just so much easier.

------
sycr
Not bad - definitely a solid start. This happens to be on my own idea list:

 _11\. Full-page screenshot service that doesn't suck_

I'm happy to be able to tick it off as completed by someone else. :)

Edit: I tried sending it a url with Typekit fonts on the page. No dice. I'm
assuming that Javascript is turned off?

~~~
hashbo
Javascript is on but this is running on headless Linux without TTF so there’s
the rub, clearly the fonts are a big issue so I’m thinking about the whole
elegant rendering aspect actually. I think the comments about rendering on OS
X actually have some merit if the cost can be kept down.

------
andygcook
I'd probably pay you a small monthly fee to automatically take screen shots of
a few web pages so I could have an historical record.

I'm sure quite a few web developers, especially startup founders, wish they
did a better job keeping track of iterations and design changes.

~~~
hashbo
What a fabulous little idea Andy! Duly noted.

------
tumblestrap
This is a cool hack! I think the next step is to think about what kind of
problem this technology could solve. For example, I would use this tool if I
could input a width and height to dynamically generate snapshots of websites
at different screen resolutions.

~~~
hashbo
Why thank you kind sir/lady.

So this came about because people keep asking me for what tool to use to full
page snapshots. And while there are tools that do it on your local machine,
most web tools are just focussed on integrating with other sites not the user
experience. So I thought I’d give it a quick go - I’ll probably add the
scaling stuff at some point, just want to keep it nice and easy for users at
the mo.

Thanks for the feedback!

------
wilzy
I think it's struggling to process my request... i entered in
"[http://snapito.com/?url=news.ycombinator.com&x=0&y=0](http://snapito.com/?url=news.ycombinator.com&x=0&y=0)
into the URL. Looping perhaps?

~~~
hashbo
Yeah snapshotting itself is a big no-no :-) nice try ;-) LOL

------
trun
One minor critique... the example placeholders are of the form "example.com"
but it seems to reject domains that are not fully qualified (e.g.
"<http://example.com>)

Neat idea though.

~~~
hashbo
Thx. Really, without the <http://> \- darn - do you have an example, that
would be awesome if you did. I just tried a few and they seem to work. But
clearly there’s a bug somewhere so I’d love to squash it!

~~~
amvp
I think it's because you've specified the type attribute of the input box as
URL. Certain newer browsers will force validation on that (latest chrome and
ff both do).

------
abcd_f
Is this a toy project or are you guys planning to develop it further? There is
a couple of really neat opportunities to turn this sort of service into a good
business.

~~~
hashbo
It’s a test of the water in regards to a more user focussed website
snapshotting service. Rather than the usual aimed at integrating into third
parties. In reality it was put together in a couple of hours as a POC -
underneath the covers it uses the code from main project <http://boardcast.it>
which is still pretty experimental.

Love to hear of any ideas/suggestions you have, feel free to drop me a line
neil AT snapito.com if you like too. I’m all ears.

------
edwardy20
After the image is generated, I think you should put a download button as well
as Facebook and Twitter buttons for sharing.

~~~
hashbo
Good idea! Will do.

------
hv23
I would definitely pay for a reliable snapshot service with an API. 100%.
Build this, take my money, please!

~~~
jusob
Like Browshot (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3144066>) ? :-)

------
url2png
Welcome to the neighborhood! See also url2png.com

------
aith
I tried <http://kittiesntitties.tumblr.com> and my patience timed out. Maybe
60 seconds and still no image...

~~~
hashbo
It knows your naughty thoughts and is busy thinking nice thoughts.

Or in fact the website has some missing artefacts which confuse Snapito!
Consider that bug firmly raised.

