XnView Software

April wrote:I need to screenshot hundreds of websites, then reduce them to a thumbnail. XnView was recommended to me for doing this, and XnView is a wonderful start, but it still seems to take more human intervention than I was hoping for. I'm hoping I'm just missing the proper way to go about doing this, since I know so little about the software. Can someone who knows the software better point me in the right direction?

So far, it seems I need to open a web browser window with the website, then take a screen capture, then crop the image to remove the parts of the screenshot which are actually the browser (the back button, etc.). Then I need to resize, sharpen, resize, and save the image. I understand that I can automate the cropping, resizing, etc. but I don't see a way to automate the interaction with the web browser. It would also be really nice if my automation wouldn't break if I ever changed the dimensions of my browser window (ie by adding a new toolbar).

April wrote:... So far, it seems I need to open a web browser window with the website, then take a screen capture, then crop the image to remove the parts of the screenshot which are actually the browser (the back button, etc.). Then I need to resize, sharpen, resize, and save the image. I understand that I can automate the cropping, resizing, etc. but I don't see a way to automate the interaction with the web browser. It would also be really nice if my automation wouldn't break if I ever changed the dimensions of my browser window (ie by adding a new toolbar).

• Experts Exchange: Any Free Programs that Grab an Image of a Full Page
• WritersUA: Review of Screen Capture Tools
• Screen Captures with Paint Shop Pro (PDF, 600KB)
• SnapFiles
  • Screen Capture Tools (Shareware)
    • CaptureWizPro
    • HyperSnap-DX
    • SnagIt
  • Screen Capture Tools (Freeware)
    • GrabCaptureScreen
• BrowserCam
  Screen capture and Remote Access service for cross platform compatibility testing and HTML design quality assurance.

WhatsNew.txt wrote:XnView v1.80 (LIBFORMAT v4.47) 17/06/2005:
[...]
Added : Thumbnail for .htm/.html
[...]

ckit wrote:I can confirm this with XnView 1.80.1.
The XHTML.DLL is not present in the Plugins list in XnView, the DLL file is in "\XnView\Plugins" folder.

This plugin has no purpose anymore, XnView 1.80.1 can already display thumbnails for HTM and HTML files.

ckv wrote:Edit: MHT/MHTML?? Are these standard html file types?

Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror: [url=http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000249.html]Building Mht Files from URLs revisited[/url]) wrote:“I know people assume the worst of Microsoft, but the MHTML format is actually based on RFC standard 2557, compliant Multipart MIME Message (MHTML web archive). So it's an actual Internet standard! Web Archive, a.k.a. MHTML, is a remarkably simple plain text format which looks a lot like (and is in fact almost exactly identical to) an email.”

• Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
  • IETF Request For Comments (RFCs)
  • RFC 2557
  • MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML)
  • Using HTML in E-mail
• Microsoft
  • MSDN Library: MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate HTML Documents (MHTML)
  • Knowledge Base Article #221787: New Features in Internet Explorer 5 — Web Archive
  • Security Bulletin MS04-013: Cumulative Security Update for Outlook Express (837009)
• mozdev.org
  • Mozilla Archive Format

• GoUpSoft
  • EZ Save MHT ($19.99)
    “EZ Save MHT is an Internet Explorer add-on that allows you to save any web page as a standard .MHT web archive file with a single click. WebArchives are complete web pages with images and all, but saved as a single, standalone file (.mht).
    Similar functionality comes already built into IE (from the Save as... dialog) but EZ Save MHT offers support for complex pages with multiple frames, scripts, Flash, and dynamic content. [...]”
  • IEToolKit ($19.99)
    “IEToolkit is an add-on for Internet Explorer, that adds a new toolbar with several useful features. It allows you to capture a full size screenshot of an entire web page (no scrolling needed) in .BMP or JPG format; save the complete page to .MHT format (web archive) or to save any element, including Flash, by simply dragging a target over it. [...]”
• Spidersoft
  • WinMHT ($29.95)
    “WinMHT lets you save and conveniently organize Web pages onto your local hard disk. It lets you take a ‘snapshot’ of one or more Web pages and store them and all their associated resource files in a single, easy to use Web archive. (.mht file).
    WinMHT is the ideal tool for doing Web research. You can browse the Web and whenever you find an interesting page(s) that you would like to keep for future reference, simply save it to your computer in the topic folder of your choice.”

XnTriq wrote:What about the fact that XnView displays thumbs for .mht/.mhtml/.eml but refuses to export them as a gallery?
IMHO these are two seperate issues, don't you think?

ckv wrote:And since XnView probably uses some component from windows to create thumbnails for HTML files, it won't show them either.

Microsoft Windows XP Registry Guide — Chapter 5: Mapping Tweak UI — [url=http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/6232.asp#118]Thumbnails[/url] wrote:The Thumbnails category controls the quality of thumbnails in Windows Explorer. Table 5-10 describes the values for Image Quality and Size. Create values that you don't see in the registry. The default value for ThumbnailQuality is 0x5A. The default value for ThumbnailSize is 0x60. Keep in mind that higher quality and larger thumbnails require more disk space, which is not usually a problem, but they also take longer to display. Changing the quality does not affect thumbnails that already exist on the file system.

Code: Select all

+---------------+------------------+-----------+-------------+
| Setting       | Name             | Type      | Data        |
+---------------+------------------+-----------+-------------+
| HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer    |
+---------------+------------------+-----------+-------------+
| Image Quality | ThumbnailQuality | REG_DWORD | 0x32 - 0x64 |
| Size (pixels) | ThumbnailSize    | REG_DWORD | 0x20 - 0xFF |
+---------------+------------------+-----------+-------------+

vbAccelerator — [url=http://www.vbaccelerator.com/home/NET/Code/Libraries/Shell_Projects/Thumbnail_Extraction/article.asp]Thumbnail Extraction Using the Shell[/url] wrote:The Shell provides an IExtractImage interface which allows you to obtain thumbnail images for any file which has a Shell extension that supports the interface. By default there are Shell extensions for images, most Office documents and folders; and other programs can install their own Shell extensions for other file types. This sample provides .NET code you can use to easily get hold of thumbnails using this technique.

• Nathan Moinvaziri
  • Projects
    • Full Website Screenshot Capturing Utility
• WebShot — A Website and Webpage Screenshot Thumbnailing Utility (Freeware)
  WebShot is a program that allows you to take screenshots and thumbnails of webpages or whole websites. It comes with a command line interface for advanced users. The following image formats are supported: JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP.
  • webshot.jpg
  • webshot.exe (~500K)

Argument | Description                             | Default Value
---------+-----------------------------------------+-------------------------
/url     | Website url                             | Required
/in      | Text file with urls on each line        |
/out     | Output image file                       | webshot.jpg
/width   | Image width                             | Browser width
/height  | Image height                            | Browser height
/bwidth  | Browser width                           | Automatically determined
/bheight | Browser height                          | Automatically determined
/quality | Quality of output image (0-100)         | 100
/encoder | Image encoder (ie. png, gif, jpg, bmp)  | jpg
/wait    | Time to wait in ms after page is loaded | 0
-verbose | Displays browser status information     |

• Microsoft.com
  • Security Bulletin MS04-028
    Buffer Overrun in JPEG Processing (GDI+) Could Allow Code Execution (833987)
  • How to update your computer with the JPEG processing (GDI+) security update
    This security update addresses newly discovered issues in technology that processes the JPEG image format, including some versions of Windows, Office, imaging software, and developer tools. The ActiveX control on this page (the GDI+ Detection Tool) scans your computer for affected imaging software.
  • Description of the Microsoft GDI+ Detection Tool
    • gdidettool.exe (214K)
  • Platform SDK Redistributable: GDI+ (v5.1.3102.1360)
    • gdiplus_dnld.exe (1017K)