Capturing browser specific rendering of a webpage?

Question

Is there any way to capture (image, pdf etc) how a webpage will look like in lets say chrome or I.E? I am guessing there will be different ways to do this for different browsers but is there any API, library or addon that does this?

Answer 1

Use selenium webdriver (has a python api) to remote control a browser and take a screenshot. Supports all major browsers as far as I'm aware.

Answer 2

Yes there are few wonderful websites providing this service and also some kinds of primitive to some advanced API services for capturing browser screenshots.

Browsershots.org Its quite slow most of the times, may be due to the heavy traffic it has to withstand. However its one of the best screenshots provider. [LINK]http://browsershots.org/xmlrpc/ Check this url to understand how to use the XMLRPC based API for browsershots.

And if you want some primitive and straight forward type thumbnailing services, may be the following sites work good for you. http://www.thumbalizr.com/ http://api1.thumbalizr.com/?url=http://acpmasquerade.com&width=some_width

I checked another website webshotspro.com and when I queued one for a snapshot, it said my queue was behind 7053 other requests. the loading icon keeps rotating :P

Give a try with the XMLRPC call from Browsershots.org