[bpatrianakos]

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 they all went wrong for me yesterday. Everything from QT4 libs missing to $DISPLAY not being set, to the PIP package not installing correctly, to X-server connection problems)

3. Even if they had webkit2png they wouldn't know how to write a wrapper that took a damn screen shot, then resized it as a thumbnail, and changes the screen size so you can see a preview for multiple devices.

4. Don't have a Linux (or even POSIX compliant) machine locally or hosted somewhere.

This may seem simple here (well, to me it's more intermediate) but outside HN people will probably go nuts over this. Shameless sorta plug: I just started a project yesterday that does a very similar thing except it's meant for designers to take and store screenshots for inspiration and then plop them into a pretty UI/gallery. I'm going to open source it and host it though.

[blowski]

By the time you've paid for the server, the time to write the wrapper, and the cost of maintaining it, $10 per month is actually pretty good if screengrabs are an inconsequential part of your UI.

[bpatrianakos]

Exactly! That's why this is totally worth it. Not only do most people not have the skills but it's also not so important to their core product that they need to spend all that time and effort on rolling their own. You have (or maybe you do have) no idea how many things can go wrong with these sorts of things. Both wkhtmltopdf and webkit2png are two pieces of software that have given me more trouble overall than all the time I've ever spent maintaining production and dev environments for any other purpose. This site is totally worth the $10 bucks like you say.

[plittlewood]

Agree! This is really good, especially if somebody writes plugins for things like wordpress to screenshot straight into your blog

[adrr]

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

[bpatrianakos]

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.

[mnutt]

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

[agurha]

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

[machbio]

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