Website Screenshot (HTML5 Canvas / Services)

Question

Alright all,

Been doing a bit of research and want to know if anyone else has tried this... and what approach would you take.

I'm planning on doing a website which will display a screenshot of a website (maybe based on the url in someones email address).

There's going to be alot of people getting this so, pre-production of the screenshots isn't a solution.

Soooooo... does anyone know of any solutions:

1. Thumbnail service that builds on demand (no queuing)?
2. HTML5/Canvas script that will let me do this. I've found one but it won't run cross site.
3. Any other solution?

It'll be built in PHP.

Thanks

PVS.

Answer 1

This site http://html2canvas.hertzen.com/ is the best you will get right now with regard to a client side script. It uses the calculated properties of elements to render a page, and I must say it looks good!

Update: A demo here: http://html2canvas.hertzen.com/tests/templates/projection/index.html . Click to toggle the 'real' view with the rendered image.