Urgent: Generate image from html source

Why not just use snagit... The latest version is just so nice, it saves your html page as an image but at the same time all the links in it are clickable.. that is really nice & amazing at the same time.

http://techsmith.com/download/snagittrial.asp

But it is not free - you have free trial fo 30 days. You can buy it also - it is worth it.

Anoop

Should've read the question.

Snagit is an application, (windows even, while I'm on a mac), which allows you to manually capture your screen.

I'm looking for a php script, which will do this automatically, not a windows application.

Well i think the bigest problem is "rendering" stuff like borders, and putting multiple pointer canvases into one single new canvas. If it is even doable, this will be one slow slow slow, memory intensive script...

With the skill i have im looking at an impossible question, i dont know how the other experts think about it. I would be able to do the multiple images after allot allot of effort, maybe add some of the text. But i see multiple big problems, and ill try to explain.

1. Getting the "total size" of the window you are looking at.
2. Find all the "exact" coordinates of the objects in that window.
3. Determining "where" the borders are, and find a way to "duplicate" (css styling etc) them in code.
4. Finding a way to handle repeated backgrounds for layout of the site
5. finding an efficient way to convert all types of images (wich require different devels) to one format and past all these canvas pointers back into one canvas on the right spot.
6. Factoring it all down (texts etc) to keep the layout in order

All in all i think this is impossible with the kind of information i can fetch from a site and the rendering caps of php.

but then again, this is my limited knowledge of php, dont know what others think...

Regards,

whn i think of it, youll be rebuilding an internet explorer in php that can interpet and translate the html / css / java to a visible whole and rendering that into an image...

I dont think its possible lol :)

Do you mind Perl? http://marginalhacks.com/Hacks/html2jpg/

you might be able to call the perl script in PHP and generate the file

slyong.

still requires you to have mozilla installed.  Which may or may not be OK.

It's definitely possible, and not slow at all.

Example:

http://www.browsrcamp.com/

This is what I'm looking for
The only problem is: I have no idea how they do it ....

I think I may have found a solution ...

The website of browsrcamp actually gives a source of what they used (not the code, but names of the tools used)

webkit2png:
http://www.paulhammond.org/webkit2png/

Now I just have to figure out how it works ...

Anyone know how to make this work trough php? (like browsrcamp does)

Found another way:

http://webdesignbook.net/snapper.php?url=http://www.psyki.be&full

You can change the url in the querystring to whatever you want.

It's a little slow, and I have to depend on another website, but it works, and with a short deadline, this saves me a lot of work...

I'll leave this open, in case anyone finds any faster/easier way...
Closing in a few days.

That snapper tool is pretty cool.  Wonder if the source is available.

Well, if you can find it, tell me.
I'd rather have this service on my own webserver, otherwise, I have to depend on some other guy's website....
Besides, processing my snapshots 'local' would propable improve the speed, less load, less traffic.

Shoo, go find the source, 2000 points award :p

Here's what the author of snapper.php says:

I am writing this post, once and for all, and then ill stop replying on mails regarding these things.

   1. The design I am currently using is not released as a public WordPress theme - I might release it some day, but no, you can’t have it.
   2. The snapshot service is not a PHP script, it is only a PHP front end. So no, I can’t tell you which PHP functions is used, and no you can’t get a copy to run it on your own server. If you are interested in paying, I can expand server capacity etc, and we can work out a service agreement.
   3. The functionality developed for my website projects, such as the theme viewer and webdesignbook.net, is not available for download. If you are interested in hiring me for such a project, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Yeah, pretty much what I expected.

Looked into all this stuff a little.

PHP on itself can't do this.
You need a variety of scripts and toolkits in various languages to get this to work.
Installing all those toolkits and languages might take a while too, considering I'm on rented webhosting, on which I don't have full root rights.

Oh well, it works for now, and I'm surprised it even existed (in a free service, there's also some API out there: http://webshotspro.com/ which only produces thumbnails, and asks money for it.)
So, I'm happy.
It's for a portfolio, if I actually use this in a serious (paid) project, I might pay the guy, get a 'service agreement'. i have no problems with paying for decent stuff like this.

Btw, that snapper thing has a cache.
I'll only rebuild the snapshot every 24 hours if the page isn't changed.
Speeds up the service A LOT.