This is incredibly cool

[chrispadfield]

http://www.searchshots.com/

how cool is that?

anyone have a clue how to take automatic screenshots of a website? any idea of a linux script/program etc that could go to a site and make a screenshot of the index page?

i just love this idea, so clever!

[shri]

Run huge NT boxes, use COM to invoke IE objects and fake print screens?

:)

[Stallion]

Netscape on Linux is scriptable, so you could theoretically script it to go to a page and take a screen grab. On Windows, you could make a quick VB app with the Microsoft Internet control and take a screen dump of the component's area. Easy to pull off, but it could be hard to make it scriptable for batch routines.

[chrispadfield]

just emailed the guy and he replied, wastn't expecting that.

Basically, as you say he uses a program that just batch screenshots, i think in windows as he said using a "popular browser" but not 100% sure.

So i guess what he does is has a database of sites on the computer that does this with just

ID | URL

and then dumps a list of the lot and puts this into a program to go and get all the screenshots.

Wow that would be a useful program.

[Fquist]

Yep.. I have found that site a while ago.. I believe it uses the DMOZ db.

[tubedogg]

One teeny-tiny caveat. Take a look at this page (http://www.searchshots.com/n.php3?nm=Top%2FComputers%2FInternet%2FWWW%2FBest_ of_the_Web%2FTop100) and look at the screenshot for NaviPage.com. :eek: :D

[chrispadfield]

yup they turned of all page direction, sensible really or the pop-ups would probably much up the system. Where my site is listed as www.ascifi.com the screenshot is a one line re-direction thing as well. not much you can do about that.

[chrispadfield]

what i wonder is if they are getting the data for the dmoz directory dynamically or have used a RDF file of it in their own database. If they are doing it dynamically i wonder how they are storing the images, because they appear to do it as an ID number. I think they must have used the RDF file and then assigned each link an id and don't it that way.

[JamesUS]

There was a thread about SearchShots at my forums a couple of months back - the owner posted with a few details if anyone is interested.

[JohnM]

James - it's referrerid not referrid ;)

That that thread is at http://www.edevboards.com/showthread.php?threadid=772

[eva2000]

LOL my own web site design was captured - http://www.searchshots.com/n.php3?nm=Top%2FArts%2FAnimation%2FAnime%2FTitles% 2FN%2FNeon_Genesis_Evangelion%2FFan_Pages&cls=

[WebStyles]

Nice, mine's in there too! http://www.searchshots.com/n.php3?nm=Top%2FComputers%2FMultimedia%2FFlash_and _Shockwave%2FResources&mc=1&sc=1&pn=3

I would love to find the batch processing program for the screenshots, that would save me so much time! :)

[Wayne Luke]

What I like the most about this page is the advertising Integration.

The first screenshot on the page is always an ad, it is formatted just like everything else.

The only two things that give it away are:

1) It is usually unrelated to the search.
2) It has a slightly different background color.

Very well done.

[chrispadfield]

yup, and also a lot of the ads are in flash.

personally i think it is a bit misleading, i do think ads should be marked as ads however they are put into content. In newspapers/magazines if an ad looks too much like content it is marked as one i think that really should be the case here as well... but it is a minor gripe and with the probably pretty high bandwidth costs they have it is fair enough :)