Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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Some of my screenshots show a browser with a blank page, all white. How come?

Our Linux browsers have 50 seconds to load and display a page. Safari on Mac gets 30 seconds because it doesn't run in parallel. MSIE on Windows 98 even gets 140 seconds because it runs in an emulator (QEMU). If this isn't enough time to display your page, your web server is probably too slow or overloaded.

May I use the screenshots of my own webpage for any purpose, such as inclusion in closed, for-cost works?

Yes, please. You can also mention that you used browsershots.org for the screenshots, but you don't have to.

What's the purpose of the input fields to "Select pages for scrolling?"

Currently (since version 0.2.0) the screenshot factories produce a number of PNG files per job. Each PNG file is one screenshot with screen resolution, e.g. 1024x768 pixels. Between these screenshots, the factory sends PageDown keys to the browser. On the server, the pages are then combined into one long screenshot that covers multiple screen pages of the web document.

The factories will take screenshots of the top and bottom page for each job, but you can request more pages if you want, for example a total of 3 pages going down from the top, and 2 pages going up from the bottom. If your page is very long, you can request a maximum of 6 screens for each of your jobs.

For release 0.3.0 the multi-page processing will be done on the factories, not on the server. So perhaps those input fields will disappear completely, and the factories will use heuristics and image recognition techniques to decide how long the screenshot should be, again limiting long pages to 6 or 10 screens. But the top and bottom will always be included, and some of the middle may be skipped if the page is too long.

I don't have Python on my computer. Can I still run a ShotFactory?

The ShotFactory runs only on Linux and Mac OS X, and on most recent Linux distros you should already have Python installed or it should be trivial to install. Alternatively, you could write your own screenshot factory in your favorite programming language, according to the FactoryInterface specification.

Where can I get a username/password for running a ShotFactory?

Thank you for wanting to help. The bottleneck is currently in the server-side multi-page merging - it generates too much load on the ShotServer. Browsershots version 0.3.0 will change this by doing the merging on the screenshot factories. Please be patient while we are working on it. We will post a notice on the front page when we are looking for Beta testers for distributed factories. This will probably be in 2006.

How can I resubmit a page that has already recently had screenshots created for it?

Just enter the address on the [link:/ start page] or [link:/submit/ options page] and click on the Submit button. The new screenshots will replace the older ones in the website overview.

Why isn't Internet Explorer showing up in the queue? That's really the only browser I need to see screenshots for.

This is because Internet Explorer isn't a very good browser. It was offline when you looked because the Windows machine crashed, but now it's working again.

How long do shots stay on the server?

Screenshots are deleted when they haven't been accessed for a while. The timeout is two weeks for small (240 pixel) previews, one week for medium (640 pixel) previews and full-size images. The corresponding job entries are removed from the database after all images have been deleted. This means that if you post on your blog about your screenshots, and people look at them again and again, the shots will stay around forever.