ryanwold.net

A civic-minded citizen seeking the singularity

An entry

My Own Workflow (Automating Screenshots)

Date: 2010-03-11
Status: draft
Tags: screenshots workflow

As the content of a website, or any body of documentation grows, so does the need to provide order and context. I've wanted to automate screenshots of the whole site to streamline my development workflow.

I'vel tried working with PageGlimpse, and of course... there's a ruby wrapper for it. I signed up for a free developer's key, and went off to write something. Super simple to use, but I don't have much use for a thumbnail sized screenshot. I wanted full-size .pngs.

Picking up where I left off, but with fresh eyes. I found the PageSaver API, which is a $250 addition to the Firefox plugin. I'm sure its useful, but I can't drop $250 on this now.

I also found the FireShot Pro API, but haven't been able to get it to work for localhost development.

For now, I've created a bookmark folder in Firefox and bookmarked every page in the site. Then, I can open all pages at once (right-click the tab). Then, I can "Capture All Tabs" with Fireshot. A workaround - but certainly workable.

FireShot also has the ability to specify filenaming conventions and the directory to output to.

Possible next steps are to visualize the sitemap as well. (Heirarchy/Tree)