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Show HN: urlbox.io - Add beautiful website screenshots to your site

urlbox.io

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Re: Show HN: urlbox.io - Add beautiful website screenshots to your site

#43

Post by mnutt »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #24
mnutt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably related to linux font rendering.

Not necessarily. I'm going out on a limb and guessing at what they're using under the hood and if I'm right then font rendering wouldn't be the issue. I assume it's some sort of app that uses webkit to render pages then x-server to create the png. So in my experience, what's usually the problem for me is my own markup. If you're not meticulous about cross-browser consistency then this sort of stuff happens. It's not…

I can't guess at exactly what they're doing, but when I built something very similar we noticed bad font rendering across the board until we tweaked the font rendering. It's often as simple as choosing a better font to use as the default when one is not specified.

Re: Show HN: urlbox.io - Add beautiful website screenshots to your site

#44

Post by mnutt »

adrr wrote: post #33
bpatrianakos wrote: post #12

This is a great idea. I was actually working on something similar yesterday! The beauty of this is that it has so many uses! I think all the haters need to chill and think about this for a minute. Yeah, it's probably a wrapper around webkit2png but outside of HN people... 1. Don't know how to use the terminal 2. Can't install webkit2png themselves (there are a lot of things that can go wrong - just ask me because the…

Issue is that it isn't unique, there's other players like http://blitline.com/docs/blitshot . They are also a lot more expensive.

http://url2png.com is also pretty good.

Re: Show HN: urlbox.io - Add beautiful website screenshots to your site

#45

Post by bpatrianakos »

adrr wrote: post #33
bpatrianakos wrote: post #12

This is a great idea. I was actually working on something similar yesterday! The beauty of this is that it has so many uses! I think all the haters need to chill and think about this for a minute. Yeah, it's probably a wrapper around webkit2png but outside of HN people... 1. Don't know how to use the terminal 2. Can't install webkit2png themselves (there are a lot of things that can go wrong - just ask me because the…

Issue is that it isn't unique, there's other players like http://blitline.com/docs/blitshot . They are also a lot more expensive.

I don't think that's an issue at all. I get what you're saying though. I know many times I've built something that already exists and whenever it happens my version falls into one of 3 categories:

1. Something that someone else is doing better. Fail.

2. Something someone else is doing exactly the same. DRY/don't reinvent the wheel fail.

3. Something that does something seemingly the same as others but because it adds something others don't.

I think urlbox falls into category 3. There are lots of ways that a new entrant can be successful. Just tailoring it to a specific use-case honestly goes a long way towards success in my book. For example, Blitshot seems to be all about image processing of screenshots in general (and if it's not let's say it is for the sake of example) - you get an API for screenshots and image manipulation and it's up to you to find a use for it. But if someone else enters the fold, like urlbox perhaps, and says "our API is for purpose X and you can only use it in these ways" they could actually be very successful despite not offering what someone else is. There are a lot of people who'd rather use a product with less features in general but whose features are tailored to their use case than another product which offers the same and more but with no specific focus. Look at Pinboard. It's basically Delicious for a specific user group. All it lacks is the social aspect of it which you're not forced to use with Delicious anyway plus Pinboard is far more expensive (anything is "far more" expensive than free). I think Pinboard is a great example even if it doesn't fit exactly.

Re: Show HN: urlbox.io - Add beautiful website screenshots to your site

#46

Post by agurha »

porter wrote: post #32

This looks great. I've been having one heck of a time trying to get good screenshots lately. It takes up a lot of my time. I'm really interested in your service, but for whatever reason when I punch in a url it won't render a screenshot. It just hangs on the ajax spinner.

Hi porter, Our servers were overwhelmed by the number of requests coming through. You should try again maybe?.

Re: Show HN: urlbox.io - Add beautiful website screenshots to your site

#48

Post by machbio »

agurha wrote: post #28
bpatrianakos wrote: post #12

This is a great idea. I was actually working on something similar yesterday! The beauty of this is that it has so many uses! I think all the haters need to chill and think about this for a minute. Yeah, it's probably a wrapper around webkit2png but outside of HN people... 1. Don't know how to use the terminal 2. Can't install webkit2png themselves (there are a lot of things that can go wrong - just ask me because the…

urlbox creator here. Thanks for the comment. You're absolutely right - There are companies / developers out there that just want to add this feature to their site without spending a lot of time and resources on it. urlbox takes care of capturing, storage, caching, thumbnailing and also optionally wrapping in mobile devices

Documentation Mistake - https://api.urlbox.io/v1/$URLBOX_APIKEY/$TOKEN/png/?$query_s...

https://api.urlbox.io/v1/$URLBOX_APIKEY/$TOKEN/png?$query_st...

Options Not working -

$options['width'] = "1024"; $options['height'] = "768"; $options['full_page'] = 'true'; $options['force'] = 'true';

Wierd - The Screenshot only works when I am logged into the Site.. Its a shame that it is this way

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