White, Black or Half Loaded Screenshots :(

clixcity

clixcity

Member
License Active
I was wondering if there is a way to slow down the screen shots. It seems some users screen shots are either white or black. I think this is because the screen shot script isn't waiting for the site to load before taking the screenshot. Some users sites load slower than others. Sometimes the screen shot looks like it was taken halfway through the page loading. Is there a way to make the script wait until the page has loaded before taking the screenshot? It would look much nicer and much more complete.

Thanks...
 
Mark

Mark

Administrator
Staff member
It already waits 4 full seconds for the page to load, that should be more than enough time for a website to load. if not, that webmaster might consider optimizing pagespeed.

if others are experiencing this (I almost never see this when viewing the rendered shots) I’d be willing to increase the sleep time.
 
clixcity

clixcity

Member
License Active
Well, considering your script (my site) just took 0.03356 seconds to load, yea, I guess 4 seconds is a lifetime. ;)
 
Basti

Basti

Administrator
Staff member
I dont think so, if i remember correctly, the limit is on the screenshot server itself.
You might want to PM Mark directly a few sample urls so he can validate it is in fact the urls fault and not server.

A possible solution to this black, white images might also be, that we pass back a default screenshot ( like none.png inside screenshots folder )
At least it isnt black or white then.
Dunno if the server is able to do that since i not have access to it, but a solution could be to wait for document loaded event, if not received within xx seconds, pass back default screenshot.
 
Mark

Mark

Administrator
Staff member
That site in question has quite the delay before loading up, looks like about 10 seconds. I don’t think we should be slowing down our screenshot server this much, since nearly all sites renewer in time may be best to offer some tips to increase the page speed.

check this for details:

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com developers.google.com
 
Mark

Mark

Administrator
Staff member
try again, if it still renders like this I will add an extra option for websites that load this slow. Honestly its Probably 1/1000 websites that will be this slow and have this problem, it doesn’t make much sense to slow everyone else’s screenshot requests down, that sites speed really should be fixed. 10 seconds for css to load is not normal.
 
Mark

Mark

Administrator
Staff member
I will roll a new function into the screenshots script for extra slow sites.
 
Basti

Basti

Administrator
Staff member
There are quite a few online tools you could use. They work by appending the site url to their own url and they will serve the image. Just look up in google "website screenshot api" or something similar.

Issue with the tools is, most are not free, or offer only a limited amount of screenshots you can render per month. Screenshots is quite a heavy operation to take, thus rarely is some provided for free.
And pretty sure most, if not all have similar or even smaller limits in place to ensure website loading is not affected.

A self hosted script, im not aware off, but google is your friend ;).
 
Mark

Mark

Administrator
Staff member
So I set the screenshot delay all the way up to 30 seconds but still your screenshots render the same, so I ran a cross browser test and found that many browsers just render your website that way no matter how long it waits.

So maybe we helped you spot a cross browser compatibility problem with your CSS code :)

check the link below for some browser examples with the same result:

www.browserstack.com

Browser Screenshots For Quick Testing On 3000+ Real Browsers | BrowserStack

Generate Screenshots of your Website on Chrome, IE, Firefox and Safari to test for Cross Browser compatibility on desktop browsers and real mobile devices.
www.browserstack.com www.browserstack.com
 
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