generating a screenshot of a website using jquery

Question

I would like to generate a screenshot thumbnail of any given url using strictly javascript. If this can't be done can anyone point me in the right direction to do this with my own api?

edit I just decided to cheat and use frames because it was for something I was doing for fun anyway, but thanks for all the great answers khtmltox is probably the best choice if you want to do something like this... they also have php bindings aswell.

Answer 1

If you look at wkhtmltox, there's native lib/app for converting a webpage to an image.

<?php // file: img.php
    $img=render_image($_GET['url']);
?>


<!-- Your Website -->

<img alt='ldr'/>

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function(){
        var url='http://google.com/';
        $('#img').attr('src','img.php?url='+encodeURIComponent(url));
    });
</script>

In case the comment wasn't clear enough, you need PHP somewhere which could run a native program.

Answer 2

There is absolutely zero chance to do that with Javascript.

Actually, there isn't a chance at all to accomplish that with any "web"'ish technique. There might be a funky flash-app, I don't know (if that exists, one more reason to hate flash :p).