Anybody know how to grab the thumbnail of an url, store it on your server, and display it on your webpage?

What is thumbnail of an url?

I have developped something like that, in the past, but there is no simple way of doing this.

Take a look there:
http://www.web-screenshot.com

I never finished the site, especially the subscription part, but the screenshoter itself is there.
Cannot be installed on any server though. Requires a specific linux ditro, with a lot of developement libs to run.

Basically, I use a python script, which instantiate a Gecko (firefox rendering library) browser, and grab a linux virtual screen copy. With that copy, I then convert it in either jpg or png, and serve it back to the browser which requested it.

Go on the "try me" section, you can preview how it works.

Thanks. I was hoping there was a way to do it in pure PHP. I guess there isn't.

Can you explain a bit more, what is thumbnail of an url?

For me, a thumbnail of an url is taking a screenshot of a web page, directly from a server.
Without using a specific exe on a workstation or so.

For exemple, the site I've talked abot up here, is used by www.freecodesource.com (an myspace layouts directory) to realise screenshot of css layouts submitted by his members.

Originally Posted by waresoft

Thanks. I was hoping there was a way to do it in pure PHP. I guess there isn't.

As far as I know, no, there is not.
I've saw there was browser widget available in ASP, with IE through the activeX interface (I believe, never done asp programming, please don't shoot me on the terms...), but nothing similar exists in php.