There's another service which you may find simpler to use - mShots from WordPress.

Here's how it works:

1. Take any website link:
   • https://twitter.com/JennyVass/status/1067855777040338944
2. URL Encode it:
   • https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FJennyVass%2Fstatus%2F1067855777040338944
3. Add it to the end of this URL: https://s0.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/
4. Add ?w=800 to the end:
   • https://s0.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FJennyVass%2Fstatus%2F1067855777040338944?w=800

There are a few things to note. The first time you send a URL to the service it will reply with HTTP 307 (temporary redirect) and you'll get this image:

Wait a few seconds and request the URL again, you should now have the image.

You can change the height of the image with h=500. For example: https://s0.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whatsmyua.info?w=800&h=500

The user-agent can't be changed from Headless Chrome.

You can request different widths by changing the ?w=800 to something else. The maximum image size is 1280x960. Changing the width doesn't affect the viewport, just the size of the returned image. Although, at some widths, you'll get a centre crop.

There are no other options. You can't change the image quality, image format, the IP address, geolocation, or anything else. Images will be cached for an unspecified period, so you'll need to mangle the link if you want to regenerate it.

mShots looks like it is abandonware - no new updates to it in the last 2 years. That's a shame, but you get what you pay for.

So, what do we do when faced with a knotty programming problem? Hack it!

Google has a "Pagespeed" service, it allows any webmaster to get a comprehensive report on how Google assess their page. It also includes a screenshot of how Google sees the webpage. Here's how my blog looks according to the service:

How It Works

The API requires no authentication - and you don't need to own the page in order to take screenshots of it.

The URL for accessing the API is simple:

https://www.googleapis.com/pagespeedonline/v1/runPagespeed?screenshot=true&strategy=mobile&url=

Simply add a percent encoded URl after &url=

You can remove &strategy=mobile if you want a "desktop" view.

This gets you back loads of JSON data about your page. Right at the end, you'll see something like this:

 "screenshot": {
  "data": "_9j_4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD_2wBDAAYEBQYFBAYGBQYHBwYIChAKCgkJChQODwwQFxQYGBcUFhYaHSUfGhsjHBYWICwgIyYnKSopGR8tMC0oMCUoKSj_2wBDAQcHBwoIChMKChMoG
...
QrdBQpESIyiOyhSiopQhISkZPJ4A5NSqX4NIffUC5xkilin8qbw-agWOKWOfGkOgpfemgQoY7TBjQV8_k_T_wA6aKU0L9pv3AXv-T_tpoP_2Q==",
  "height": 569,
  "mime_type": "image/jpeg",
  "width": 320
 }
}

"Aha!" You may be thinking, "This is a Base64 encoding of the image!" And you would be mostly right.

For reasons best known to Google, / is replaced with _, and + is replaced with -. You'll need to reverse those changes before going any further.

Limitations

This API isn't perfect.

• Image width is 320px - not great for high-resolution snapshots.
• Web fonts can prove tricky. Google seems to render most of them.
• There's no way to pass authentication or cookie data - so you just get the "public" view of the page.
• Similarly, no POST data - although GET is fine.
• Plugins like Flash & Java may not work.
• Complex JavaScript pages won't necessarily work.
• It's a bit slow to generate the report.
• Only one rendering - so you can't use it to see how Firefox compares to Chrome.

Overall, not a perfect solution - but for quickly generating a screenshot without needing to install anything, it's pretty good.

A Little Light Code Music

I've hastily cobbled together some code to automate the grabbing and decoding the screenshot data. If you want to improve it, fork the code on GitHub.

import urllib2
import json
import base64
import sys

#   The website's URL
site = "https://twitter.com/edent"

#   The Google API.  Remove "&strategy=mobile" for a desktop screenshot
api = "https://www.googleapis.com/pagespeedonline/v1/runPagespeed?screenshot=true&strategy=mobile&url=" + urllib2.quote(site)

#   Get the results from Google
try:
    site_data = json.load(urllib2.urlopen(api))
except urllib2.URLError:
    print "Unable to retreive data"
    sys.exit()

try:
    screenshot_encoded =  site_data['screenshot']['data']
except ValueError:
    print "Invalid JSON encountered."
    sys.exit()

#   Google has a weird way of encoding the Base64 data
screenshot_encoded = screenshot_encoded.replace("_", "/")
screenshot_encoded = screenshot_encoded.replace("-", "+")

#   Decode the Base64 data
screenshot_decoded = base64.b64decode(screenshot_encoded)

#   Save the file
with open('screenshot.jpg', 'w') as file_:
    file_.write(screenshot_decoded)

If you know of any other easy to use and free screenshot services - please let people know in the comments.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Well, that didn't take long! To crash BlackBerry AppWorld, select an app, while it's loading, hit the BB key then "Read Review" Crash occurs

---

While a loading screen is running, hit the BB button, then select "Read Reviews".
The crash is nothing too serious, but it does point to a little lack of testing.

Very impressive RIM, let's see how it evolves.