Show HN: Automated, scheduled, website screenshots to your inbox | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Automated, scheduled, website screenshots to your inbox

blit.xyz

81 pointsblitapp46 comments

Cool. I think there is a missed opportunity with onboarding. Seems like it would be worth testing out a landing page where instead of "Signup" is the CTA, the act of creating a schedule is the CTA. Maybe something like, "What link would you like to follow?" then prompting a "What frequency?" then "What's your email?"

So you know where I'm coming from - I wanted to see it in action, hit signup, saw I needed to do the whole user registration email/password dance as step #1 and bounced out. Too much friction for me, as I was a casual visitor with an unknown use case at the moment. Maybe once I see it in action I would discover use cases.

You could do pretty much the same thing by running something like wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltoimage from cron.

Like blit, this will "even take screenshots behind login forms" if you login with Firefox, export cookies, and provide the --cookie-jar argument, but without charging $5/mo.

[1]: http://wkhtmltopdf.org/

I actually can't tell if this comment is serious, or sarcastically referencing the dropbox comment from a few years ago.

Either way, it's a great way to show how developers see new services. There are a lot of things easy for developers that aren't easy for everybody else, but everybody else would pay for an easy way to do it.

I had the same thought, it recalls too much the dropbox comment. Must be sarcastic.

Haha, I thought the same thing!

Who could? A programmer with time to figure out how to do it.

Who couldn't? Everyone else.

Even for a programmer I'd argue that $5/mo is less than potentially having to fuss around supporting your own junk.

However, if it breaks ...

So what? It's not like it's an essential service. If it were, it wouldn't be $5/mo.

How would this approach deal with popups such as "This site uses cookies", or "please subscribe"? Can these popups somehow be prevented from ruining the final image?

If the server isn't in Europe, you'd solve the cookie thing on most websites.

Subscribe modals are often triggered by mouse movement, so they might be avoided, too?

Another option for automated screenshots is using the Kantu Browser, https://kantu.io/ . This gives you the advantage that you can do some complex navigation before taking the screenshot, and at the same time it is significantly easier to use than PhantomJS and friends.

But the beauty and selling point of blit.xyz is simplicity. If all you need are periodical screenshots, it can not get easier than that.

I'm the founder of https://linkpeek.com and "email web page screenshots" was on my "idea" Trello board for over 3 years.

I'm actually happy somebody else created it. : ) Good luck with your launch!

is linkpeek a profitable business? what's the use cases for screenshot services?

Yes LinkPeek makes me profits. The use case appears to vary a _lot_ between customers. Either this is an indicator that I have not targeted or found my market or I have not marketed to my target properly.

It would be super cool to add multiple browser engines and specify a site map/bulk list of subpages

Also a post to slack option

How about only sending a screenshot on page changes?

That sounds very much like https://visualping.io/

Or https://percy.io/

https://backtrac.io/ is another one.

Seems nice, simple, and cheap enough. I did something similar with phantomjs (no email). I agree with other comments that change detection and a slack integration would be nice.

Screenshots behind login forms = non-secure transfer of usernames/passwords?

You'd have to part with some sort of security token to make this possible so I'd say you need to trust the site or set up a limited access account.

What’s the expected use case for this?

I've signed up. I help run a news-based site which changes on a daily basis; a complete history of screenshots to show both evolution of the site and the news that we covered will be most welcome. I know I could have set this up myself, but this service makes it very easy.

Would care to share what website is it?

Also, do you think this service would be of value to you? https://www.bugmuncher.com/

I am helping the founder with some marketing research. Thanks!

I just tried this, but the screenshots that get submitted don't look anything like what they did when I took them.

Edit: The email confirmation link also doesn't work.

Edit edit: The issue was that I was testing localhost and it needs access to the css. It's working now, pretty cool!

That's a pretty shameless plug, but I might have use for this service, so thanks for sharing I guess. I especially like the 'freeloader' pricing plan xD

Since I doing it for someone else, it is easier to be shameless :)

And thanks for trying!

It's interesting that even in 2017 there are still people on HN willing to tolerate signup forms served without TLS.

Regression (or other production malfunction) reporting for example.

but then, you need image recognition do you? how do you know there is a regression? by manually looking at the image?

For some reason this website is blocked on my company's network.

"The site you are trying to access may pose a security threat..."

Maybe (hopefully not) they blanket block certain TLD's. Anyone else experiencing this?

All .xyz (and most of the new gTLDs) are blocked by Forcepoint Security on our corporate network as "Elevated Exposure - Sites that camouflage their true nature or identity, or that include elements suggesting latent malign intent"

Blocked here via Cisco WSA as well.

I am very happy you have a free version!

I am currently adding screen size responsiveness to my website, working from my phone (don't have access to proper computer right now) so this is exactly what I need!

I'm getting HTTPS errors on visit. Your connection is not private

Attackers might be trying to steal your information from blit.xyz (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

Your landing page is lacking metadata, probably worth adding to attract clicks when sharing on slack/friends.

Interested 3rd party... What metadata would you say is essential?

Good ones to start with:

og:image

og:title

og:description

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/open-graph-meta-tags/

What browser engine does it use? Couldn't find that from the site.

Probably PhantomJS, so Chromium? Just a guess.

Interesting! Typo: Recepients => Recipients

can't logout.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com