TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Show HN: urlbox.io - Add beautiful website screenshots to your site

50 pointsby agurhaabout 12 years ago

22 comments

bpatrianakosabout 12 years ago
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...<p>1. Don't know how to use the terminal<p>2. Can't install webkit2png themselves (there are <i>a lot</i> 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)<p>3. Even if they had webkit2png they wouldn't know how to write a wrapper that took a damn screen shot, <i>then</i> resized it as a thumbnail, <i>and</i> changes the screen size so you can see a preview for multiple devices.<p>4. Don't have a Linux (or even POSIX compliant) machine locally or hosted somewhere.<p>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.
评论 #5257571 未加载
评论 #5257757 未加载
评论 #5257825 未加载
评论 #5257711 未加载
micheljansenabout 12 years ago
For a single-purpose app like this, at least it could do a better job at rendering the screenshots, if you ask me. I tried it out on my site (no custom web-fonts, pretty standard stuff) and the font-rendering looks awful:<p><a href="http://cl.ly/image/3S2E3Z3i412n" rel="nofollow">http://cl.ly/image/3S2E3Z3i412n</a>
评论 #5257611 未加载
bluetideproabout 12 years ago
Is this product trying to compete with free plugin-in's like <i>Screen Capture (by Google)</i>, or is it trying to be more of a "live site" preview generator that you see on like inspiration-esq sites or theme seller sites? I don't think that is fully clear in the marketing site.
jrnkntlabout 12 years ago
So, this is a web based API wrapped around webkit2png starting from 9.99 a month?
评论 #5257840 未加载
评论 #5257553 未加载
ch0wnabout 12 years ago
I wanted to sign up, but the form had autocomplete disabled and you lost me there. What's the incentive for doing that? I never understood it.
porterabout 12 years ago
This looks great. I've been having one heck of a time trying to get good screenshots lately. It takes up a lot of my time. I'm really interested in your service, but for whatever reason when I punch in a url it won't render a screenshot. It just hangs on the ajax spinner.
评论 #5258667 未加载
评论 #5257869 未加载
nayefcabout 12 years ago
Anyone else doesn't get it?
onassarabout 12 years ago
While there appear to be a number of sites operating in this space (documented some here: <a href="http://web.onassar.com/blog/2012/11/19/web-based-screenshot-services-and-software/" rel="nofollow">http://web.onassar.com/blog/2012/11/19/web-based-screenshot-...</a>), this looks simple and straight-forward. While the cost is prohibitive for me since there are free alternatives (<a href="http://immediatenet.com/" rel="nofollow">http://immediatenet.com/</a>), it's great to see more competition in this space.<p>For what it's worth, I'm using it on my site <a href="http://imnosy.com" rel="nofollow">http://imnosy.com</a>
joshcrowderabout 12 years ago
This is a good idea, I actaully created something similar using PhantomJS the issue is web fonts there isn't a solution to rendering typekit webfonts using a headless webkit implementation see <a href="http://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/issues/detail?id=247" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/issues/detail?id=247</a> for more details.<p>As soon as webkit is updated to have better support for OTF fonts urlbox will become so much better
评论 #5257698 未加载
antyabout 12 years ago
I played around with the sign-up form because I'm designing something similar at the moment. Once I get a "username not valid" error, I can't re-enable the submit-button anymore. You might want to fix that. Also I don't think that the username was already in use, because I entered a random email. Probably a validation error.<p>To say something positive: I like that the headline changes the last word periodically. That caught my attention.
Argorakabout 12 years ago
Interesting question, especially as the Sony/KDE-Icon-thing is such a topic today:<p>Is this copyright infringement? They use apple.com as an example. The grabbing process clearly doesn't happen on the client side. Even if it did, what would be the implications of using Apples website, logos and trademarks embedded in your content without user interaction?
machbioabout 12 years ago
Thanks to URLBox, Implemented on my URL Shortner <a href="http://xgd.in/" rel="nofollow">http://xgd.in/</a><p>Checkout - <a href="http://xgd.in/viewdnsinfo+" rel="nofollow">http://xgd.in/viewdnsinfo+</a><p>Note: I am removing it, since it does not work when a person is not logged into the system - its a shame and a sham
highaceabout 12 years ago
What makes these screenshots "gorgeous" or "beautiful"? They look like pretty standard screenshots to me.
评论 #5258269 未加载
TobbenTMabout 12 years ago
Seems to not be working in Opera 12.14. Cant see any screenshots. Anyone else with same problem?
matthewrudyabout 12 years ago
You may need to install some unicode fonts.<p>Try a url like <a href="http://renren.com" rel="nofollow">http://renren.com</a> and it only has certain characters.
agurhaabout 12 years ago
Here is an example of multiple screenshots rendered on same page.<p><a href="https://urlbox.io/demo" rel="nofollow">https://urlbox.io/demo</a>
grakicabout 12 years ago
No flash plugin.<p>That was a hard to solve problem for me I would love to pay for. What they are offering does not look competitive.
评论 #5257600 未加载
评论 #5257665 未加载
rplntabout 12 years ago
The webpage does not work in Opera. The top image with search is missing and the bottom ones are just empty image tags.
评论 #5258006 未加载
handelaarabout 12 years ago
That thing where it says "web font support" apparently means the opposite, I'm afraid.
wesbosabout 12 years ago
Is this running on phantomJS? Looks like webfonts aren't supported.
评论 #5257623 未加载
flippyheadabout 12 years ago
This seems pretty handy
jchungabout 12 years ago
Why?