Recently I’ve been working on getting WebShot to produce high quality GIF images. GDI+ 1.0 uses a halftone palette. I’ve implemented color quantization which produces a better palette. You can compare the difference in the two images below. If you click on the images you can see the whole website in each of the palettes. I’ve also noticed a 20% reduction in the GIF file size, which most likely has to do with the way GDI+ saves images when converting from 24bbp to 8bpp versus native 8bpp.

GDI+ 1.0 (Halftone)

Custom (Color Quantization with Octree)

I tried today to get WebShot working with the Mozilla ActiveX control. Unfortunately the ActiveX control is not a viable option for taking screenshots of web pages.

• Querying IHTMLBodyElement for IHTMLElementRender does not work
• Calling OleDraw does not work because the supported interface IViewObject is not implemented
• Copying the Window’s device context does not work properly and sometimes it copies portions of the desktop

The Mozilla ActiveX control would be great if it were actively maintained and updated.

There is an excellent review of WebShot by Michael Bergman on his site AI3. He takes a look at alternative services and helps you understand why WebShot stands out from the rest. You can check it out here.

Today, one of my programs called WebShot was listed on Download.com. I was suprised at the turn around time for Download.com to list the program. I guess if you list Freeware on Download.com it takes less time for them to put it on the site than if you were to list Shareware and not buy one of their listing packages. So my listing took about 14 days where as Shareware would take 45-60 days.

WebShot is a program that allows you to take screenshots and thumbnails of web pages or whole websites. It comes with a command line interface for advanced users. The following image formats are supported JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP.

One of the main features of WebShot is the ability to automate the webpage screenshot capturing process through its command line interface. WebShot can be used to setup a harvesting server to capture tons of webpage screenshots.

For more information please goto the offical website at
http://www.websitescreenshots.com/

I wrote a program that takes full-sized website screenshots. It’s pretty awesome. It is all done programmically through the IWebBrowser2 interface. The program is a command line utility and it was used to create the following image. Enjoy.