page thumbnail creator required

T

Tim W

I am undertaking an analysis of an existing site of quite a few pages,
sub pages, pdfs and html files in frames in other pages in order to
propose a well structured and organised new site with easy and logical
navigation. I want a free program which will make thumbs of all the
existing pages either on the web or locally on my pc.

Is there one?

Tim W
 
D

dorayme

Tim W <[email protected]> said:
I am undertaking an analysis of an existing site of quite a few pages,
sub pages, pdfs and html files in frames in other pages in order to
propose a well structured and organised new site with easy and logical
navigation. I want a free program which will make thumbs of all the
existing pages either on the web or locally on my pc.

Is there one?

Yes, all Apple Mac computers come with built-in screenshot facilities
(e.g. Shift Command 4) and Preview (Tools/Edit/Adjust Size).

You can even do a batch of files in Preview, select all from right
panel of thumbs, adjust size, save.
 
B

Ben Bacarisse

dorayme said:
Yes, all Apple Mac computers come with built-in screenshot facilities
(e.g. Shift Command 4) and Preview (Tools/Edit/Adjust Size).

You can even do a batch of files in Preview, select all from right
panel of thumbs, adjust size, save.

I'd expect a tool for this job would be able to crawl the site and
generate the snapshots automatically. Unfortunately, I don't know of
any software like that. It would be a shame if clicking links and
manually taking snapshots is the only way to go.

The job can be scripted, of course, but such things are almost always
written as throwaways, so there may be no sufficiently polished version
out there for the OP to use.

Aside: I don't want to start an OS war, but it seems a bit of a stretch
to call iOS software "free".
 
D

dorayme

Ben Bacarisse said:
I'd expect a tool for this job would be able to crawl the site and
generate the snapshots automatically. Unfortunately, I don't know of
any software like that. It would be a shame if clicking links and
manually taking snapshots is the only way to go.

The job can be scripted, of course, but such things are almost always
written as throwaways, so there may be no sufficiently polished version
out there for the OP to use.

Aside: I don't want to start an OS war, but it seems a bit of a stretch
to call iOS software "free".

Of course, you are right, bit of a slog to do it all manually. But if
you are analysing as the OP is doing, you may be likely to look
through it all, takes no time to key command a snap while you are at
it and the rest is almost batch processing. Depends on the speed at
which OP can work.

(An anecdote about von Neumann, he was given a problem:

Two trains start twenty miles apart and head toward each other, each
going at a steady rate of 10 m.p.h. At the same time a fly that
travels at a steady 15 m.p.h. starts from the front of one train to
the front of the other, then turns and flies to the front of the first
again. The fly keeps doing this till it runs out of fly room.

What total distance did the fly cover?

The slow way is to calculate how far the fly covers on the first leg
of the trip, then on the second leg, then on the third, etc., etc.,
and, finally, to sum the infinite series so obtained. The quick way is
to observe that the trains meet exactly one hour after their start, so
that the fly had just an hour for his travels.

von Neumann solved it in an instant, the folks who gave him the
problem concluded aloud that he must have found the quick way of doing
it. But he didn't, he explained, he just summed the infinite series.

He was just quick about it.

iOS? Well, anyway, any Mac (desktop or not) with almost any OS these
days (and most days gone by) could handle. Yes, Macs are a bit
expensive upfront! <g>
 
T

Tim W

[...]

I'd expect a tool for this job would be able to crawl the site and
generate the snapshots automatically. Unfortunately, I don't know of
any software like that. It would be a shame if clicking links and
manually taking snapshots is the only way to go.
[...]

Yes that's what I was after. didn't find one althought there are a few
applets which will create one screenshot at a time. I am using:
'webshot', http://www.websitescreenshots.com/
Won't take as long as finding a program to do it automatically.

Tim W
 
T

Tim W

Yes, all Apple Mac computers come with built-in screenshot facilities
(e.g. Shift Command 4) and Preview (Tools/Edit/Adjust Size).

You can even do a batch of files in Preview, select all from right
panel of thumbs, adjust size, save.

Oh No! I had an old netbook and last month I made it into a hackintosh
one rainy afternoon. Couldn't think of anything to do with it so now it
is running joli os instead.

Now you tell me it might have been useful?

Tim W
 
B

Ben Bacarisse

Of course, you are right, bit of a slog to do it all manually. But if
you are analysing as the OP is doing, you may be likely to look
through it all, takes no time to key command a snap while you are at
it and the rest is almost batch processing. Depends on the speed at
which OP can work.

True, it may well not take too long. Depends on the size of the site,
of course. I think my reply was influenced by a recent experience where
an organisation I've done some work for sank hours of volunteer time
going through nearly 1000 pages on their website copying and pasting the
text of each page into a word document. I ended up scripting the task
but they were nearly done by the time I found out.

Taking a screen shot is much less fiddly than text selecting, though.

<snip story about over-engineering>

It's true that over-thinking or over-engineering can be a great sink of
time, but if I have to do a task once, it's worth speculating if I'll
ever have to do it again. I probably end up scripting things on a hair
trigger, just because I prefer that kind of work to repetitive tasks
like the one above, but there have also been numerous occasion where the
extra work has paid off because of repeated use.
 
B

Ben C

On 2013-10-15 said:
It's true that over-thinking or over-engineering can be a great sink of
time, but if I have to do a task once, it's worth speculating if I'll
ever have to do it again. I probably end up scripting things on a hair
trigger, just because I prefer that kind of work to repetitive tasks
like the one above, but there have also been numerous occasion where the
extra work has paid off because of repeated use.

Also the more you do it the faster you get at writing little scripts
like that so you're saving time the next time you have to do something
even similar.
 
D

dorayme

Tim W <[email protected]> said:
I am using:
'webshot', http://www.websitescreenshots.com/
Won't take as long as finding a program to do it automatically.

Exactly. Often the case that manual is quicker than tooling up for the
odd auto job.

Surely, even in Windows or other than Mac operating systems there are
built in screenshot facilities? On Macs there has been, as far as I
can remember, Shift Command 4 to produce a cursor with which you then
crop the area you want on the screen and let go of the mouse button
and you hear a camera click. The snap, like a polaroid but quicker,
appears on the desktop. I use this extensively and it is set up to
produce pngs.
 
D

dorayme

Tim W <[email protected]> said:
Oh No! I had an old netbook and last month I made it into a hackintosh
one rainy afternoon. Couldn't think of anything to do with it so now it
is running joli os instead.

Now you tell me it might have been useful?

You might be able to do it again and then run other operating systems
through Virtual Box (I run Windows via Virtual Box, a free program, on
my Mac).
 
D

dorayme

Ben Bacarisse said:
It's true that over-thinking or over-engineering can be a great sink of
time, but if I have to do a task once, it's worth speculating if I'll
ever have to do it again. I probably end up scripting things on a hair
trigger, just because I prefer that kind of work to repetitive tasks
like the one above, but there have also been numerous occasion where the
extra work has paid off because of repeated use.

Yes, indeed and it's also very satisfying to find an auto way to do
things, more elegant.

Sometimes just for the heck of it, I work out a GREP pattern to do
some universal changes over a set of HTML docs - when I could have
done the job in a tenth of the time by simpler means, either by
repeated use of less abstract and universal F&R rules or very simple
donkey cut and paste on each file!
 
T

Tim W

Exactly. Often the case that manual is quicker than tooling up for the
odd auto job.

Surely, even in Windows or other than Mac operating systems there are
built in screenshot facilities? On Macs there has been, as far as I
can remember, Shift Command 4 to produce a cursor with which you then
crop the area you want on the screen and let go of the mouse button
and you hear a camera click. The snap, like a polaroid but quicker,
appears on the desktop. I use this extensively and it is set up to
produce pngs.

The Print Screen key has put an image of the whole screen on the
clipboard since the beginning of time, but it isn't particularly handy.
My free program will take just the page, reduce it to size and write it
as a file.

Tim w
 
J

Jonathan N. Little

dorayme said:
Surely, even in Windows or other than Mac operating systems there are
built in screenshot facilities?

Yes, Mac does not have a monopoly on innovation, Windows *and* Linux
have screenshot. It's PrnScrn key Alt+PrnScrn just gets you the active
window and hot the whole screen.
 
T

Tim W

Tim W <[email protected]> said:
On 15/10/2013 00:42, dorayme wrote: [...]
Yes, all Apple Mac computers come with built-in screenshot facilities
(e.g. Shift Command 4) and Preview (Tools/Edit/Adjust Size).

You can even do a batch of files in Preview, select all from right
panel of thumbs, adjust size, save.

Oh No! I had an old netbook and last month I made it into a hackintosh
one rainy afternoon. Couldn't think of anything to do with it so now it
is running joli os instead.

Now you tell me it might have been useful?

You might be able to do it again and then run other operating systems
through Virtual Box (I run Windows via Virtual Box, a free program, on
my Mac).

Surely. But being able to run other OSs over the top is not a good
enough reason to have the apple OS in the first place.

Tm W
 
B

Ben Bacarisse

Jonathan N. Little said:
Yes, Mac does not have a monopoly on innovation, Windows *and* Linux
have screenshot. It's PrnScrn key Alt+PrnScrn just gets you the active
window and hot the whole screen.

Linux (in my case, Gnome) has a screenshot command, so scripting a
series of screenshots would not need any X-Windows trickery (there are
commands to simulate key presses, mouse clicks and so on, but that would
not be needed here). Given that I already have a website crawler (well
worth scripting -- I've used it many times) I don't think it would
take more than a few of minutes to get a read-url, load-url,
screenshot loop written. Timing would be the main problem. I'd try a
to guess a reasonable delay to give the page time to load, and hope.

Do you know of a way to load a page "synchronously" -- with the command
exiting only when the page is rendered -- or of some way to find out
that it has?
 
J

Jonathan N. Little

Ben said:
Linux (in my case, Gnome) has a screenshot command, so scripting a
series of screenshots would not need any X-Windows trickery (there are
commands to simulate key presses, mouse clicks and so on, but that would
not be needed here). Given that I already have a website crawler (well
worth scripting -- I've used it many times) I don't think it would
take more than a few of minutes to get a read-url, load-url,
screenshot loop written. Timing would be the main problem. I'd try a
to guess a reasonable delay to give the page time to load, and hope.

Do you know of a way to load a page "synchronously" -- with the command
exiting only when the page is rendered -- or of some way to find out
that it has?

A script with ImageMagick comes to maybe?
 
B

Ben Bacarisse

Jonathan N. Little said:
Ben Bacarisse wrote:

A script with ImageMagick comes to maybe?

Do you mean repeatedly importing the window content to see when it's not
changed for some period of time? Or maybe checking the progress bar
that my browser of choice happens to show along the top edge of the
window? Interesting possibilities, thanks, though I think I'd prefer
something more direct.
 
N

Neil Gould

Ben said:
Do you mean repeatedly importing the window content to see when it's
not changed for some period of time? Or maybe checking the progress
bar that my browser of choice happens to show along the top edge of
the window? Interesting possibilities, thanks, though I think I'd
prefer something more direct.
If your script is reading the web page in text format, you have it execute
the screenshot when it reads </html>.
 
B

Ben Bacarisse

Neil Gould said:
If your script is reading the web page in text format, you have it execute
the screenshot when it reads </html>.

I don't follow. Why would the script be reading the page? What does it
do with that page source that can ensure that the page is rendered by
the time the input is exhausted? (I'm generalising, because there may
be no </html>).
 
D

Denis McMahon

I am undertaking an analysis of an existing site of quite a few pages,
sub pages, pdfs and html files in frames in other pages in order to
propose a well structured and organised new site with easy and logical
navigation. I want a free program which will make thumbs of all the
existing pages either on the web or locally on my pc.

Duplicating the existing site on your PC is fairly easy, you can use wget
for that (other tools are also available).

Converting an html page to a rendered image of that page, not so sure
about that - I imagine there are tools available but I have no idea what
they're called. You may need some google-fu for that.

Ditto PDFs.

Dare I ask that you take a step back and explain what you expect to do
with these thumbnails?
 

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