Create Thumbnails of HTML Pages???

[Pedja]

Do you think that a product that can take a listing of URL's and pump out thumbnail sized images has a market? If anything more, this is an interesting idea for a product.... Hmmm......

Actualy I think on line service that will provide snapshot of an provided URL would be interesting. I am pretty sure I saw at least one but cannot remember none.

[Duane]

Anyone have an easier way of creating thumbnails of HTML pages? I have Paint Shop Pro, but it will take a while to slog through the 400 or so I have to display, capture, and then resize.

The only package I've found is HTML2JPG at www.html2jpg.com, but it runs 185 Euro (which is what, about $220US?)

Have you checked out IRFANVIEW?

http://www.irfanview.com/

I am not sure I understand your needs - but it has a batch feature.
If you already have the webpages captured and just need a resize done to all 400 then IrfanView should work. If you still need to capture the web pages then I am not sure you can use IrfanView to get all the page (I think it will only capture the screen image).

Try this one too for a good capture program -

http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/

[Frank Hagan]

I think there is a market for the product ... reasonably priced, that is! And it should be able to recursively search a disk directory for .HTML or .HTM pages, creating a thumbnail of the page and depositing it in the directory the .HTML file is found in with a unique name (or perhaps something prepended on it like "webthum_").

The thread has the commercial products listed, and they are too steep for my blood!

[rcohen]

Coming Soon

I have no idea how long this will take, but the product IS under development currently

I am working with another developer on this one, but we have raised the stakes too. We are also going to be adding the option of BUILDing HTML pages of thumbnails from the resulting collection of thumbs, each with a live link TO the page it represents... The images will be named domain.jpg

OF course, the speed of the process would be mostly bottlenecked by the speed of the users connection and how fast the pages load...

Stay tuned... and thanks for the great concept!

I'm usually pretty quick to come up for a name for products, but this one has got me stumped. Anyone got a "catchy" name for such a beast?

rcohen

[Frank Hagan]

I have no idea how long this will take, but the product IS under development currently

I am working with another developer on this one, but we have raised the stakes too. We are also going to be adding the option of BUILDing HTML pages of thumbnails from the resulting collection of thumbs, each with a live link TO the page it represents... The images will be named domain.jpg

OF course, the speed of the process would be mostly bottlenecked by the speed of the users connection and how fast the pages load...

Stay tuned... and thanks for the great concept!

I'm usually pretty quick to come up for a name for products, but this one has got me stumped. Anyone got a "catchy" name for such a beast?

rcohen

Sounds like a good project, but not necessarily the one I was looking for. I was trying to get a program to recursively search a directory on disk (not a URL) and create thumbnails of any "index.html" page and store them in that same directory. This is to create the thumbnails for several hundred templates I'll provide to my customers (they get to choose one for their site design).

I'm not sure of the market for thumbnails of an existing site. I know that whois.sc is now showing thumbnails of their home page with their whois information. I suppose your new program could be used as a "visual indexer" of a site. Maybe a name like "WebVU", "VisualIndex" or something like that.

[Pedja]

There i sno difference in openning remote or local site so I am sure their application would be able to do both.

Name proposal: ThumbSite

[Frank Hagan]

I suspect there is a difference between recursively searching a Windows XP directory and a URL. They will have to build this in.

I have a directory structure something like this:

C:\TEMPLATES
C:\TEMPLATES\0001\INDEX.HTML
C:\TEMPLATES\0002\INDEX.HTML
---
C:\TEMPLATES\1042\INDEX.HTML

There are no links in any of these directories to lead you to another page, and from his post, I suspect Robert is thinking of a site indexer type of application. If it will handle DOS type backslashes, as opposed to HTML forward slashes, then it might work.

[rcohen]

Added feature request...

Once the thumbs generator engine is coded, it matters little where we point it. I will add exactly this feature to the software if I can Frank. Good idea, thank you!!

Pedja.... thanks for name suggestion... I have added it to the list of those I'll be considering...

rcohen

[Klaassh]

I actually think this would be a great little tool just for creating a different links page. I think if your going to so much trouble on the page creation you may as well add a categories section in there as well.

And I think you named it yourself Thummer

[Frank Hagan]

Once the thumbs generator engine is coded, it matters little where we point it. I will add exactly this feature to the software if I can Frank. Good idea, thank you!!

rcohen

Recursively searching a directory and its subdirectories can be difficult to do, but nearly every language has a routine available to do it without being trapped in an endless loop. I remember it was a test in my C programming class (oh, so many years ago!)

[rcohen]

recursive search

Hi Frank...

Actually, this will be the easy mission... The hard part of this project is going to be devising a logical (and predictable) method for always recognizing a 404, and NOT including it in the set. And even this won't be too terribly involved.

We have one larger project to get out of the way before this project can be completed, but over all, this shouldn't take that long...

Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions... very cool!!

rcohen

[Pedja]

I suspect there is a difference between recursively searching a Windows XP directory and a URL. They will have to build this in.

If they solve the main problem this would be peace of cake. As it's said, it is usual task for programming newbies in schools.

I am sure app will also provide a way for user to specify list of direct URLS he wants to be thumbed...

[rcohen]

Just an update

I hate it when someone promises something and then vanishes ;-) And so I am not accused of such a thing....

This project has not been forgotten. Rather, I have hired someone to create a custom component for me that does a few things that I can not do currently... This will set me back a few weeks, but will be well worth the wait.

Stay tuned ;-0

[rcohen]

Update, Part II

Just for those who care... Web Thummer will be headed into Beta in a week or two and will be released (hopefully) in short order after that. Other projects had us bogged down for a while, but we're back on the Thummer project full swing....

I'll shout when it's available...

Thanks!!

r

[rcohen]

Going into beta

Just to inform those who might be watching this thread... we are going into beta 2morrow (Monday, 11-08-04) and expect to be up and flying with the product by the first of Decemeber.

Cheers

rcohen