IESnapshot: The Right Tool for Web Page Capturing

I was lucky as to be approached by TechGeek, the author & administrator of Computelogy who suggested three software tools on which I could write for his & my blog. I remember taking fair interest in the first two software links he sent me but was immediately attracted by the link to the third tool, IESnapshot which is developed by Accalio s.r.o., a company based near Vienna, Austria. I accepted his offer without a second thought and dived straight into learning IESnapshot.

IESnapshot is in a simple explanation, a webpage-capturing tool capable of grabbing an entire chunk of image-based detail from a webpage and transform it into a PDF or graphical image file. It can be described as a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tool, meaning to say that it can actually duplicate what is exactly the same thing it captured, providing realism to the users. Therefore, it is not to be confused with screen-capturing tools such as TechSmith’s SnagIT or the built-in ‘Print Screen’ function of Windows, which only captures a portion of the screen & not the web page in its entirety.

Although not stated in the company's website, IESnapshot runs fine on my 32-bit Windows 7 & on the latest Internet Explorer 8. The company also cited some of the unique features of IESnapshot which are the ability to store all background images, even images inside the style sheets or dynamic content such as Flash and Java.

Other main IESnapshot features include:

• Save almost any webpage - for archiving or multimedia presentations
• Create multiple page PDF or singlepage GIF, JPG or BMP files
• Unique file naming ability - automatic or manual
• Compression ratio settings (quality vs. size)
• Capture any portion of the viewed webpage - automatic or manual
• Captures full pages, capture longer pages than screen resolution (whole page / scrolling) in to one picture or PDF page.
• Ability to capture the web page at specific moments - capturing pictures from live action animations
• Capture pages from URL lists
• Application is fully compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer(r)

On first impression, IESnapshot works like a simple web browser, with the back and forward button plus the home page and refresh button. However, the additional switch and sidebar-like, scrollable preview screen makes it a powerful 'browser'. Users can grab an entire webpage during any phase of its loading and save it as a PDF file by default. IESnapshot also provided a column beneath the window for IT professionals to debug a faulty script in a web page before they capture it in its entirety. If users does not want to save a web page as a PDF file, they can save it in other graphical image format such as a JPG format. They are also given the power of choosing the default file saving location, selecting the quality of the snapshot and adding custom headers with customizable font size, types and colors.


There are also some notable weaknesses. IESnapshot will not debug nor skip a faulty script automatically. It will be up to those skilled in debugging web pages to debug the web page so as to allow IESnapshot to load the page completely. Besides, IESnapshot also inherited the weakness of IE-based browsers in terms of memory consumption, which can impact performances of computers with low amount of RAM onboard.

A script error dialog box by IESnapshot whenever it comes across a web page with script errors

Obviously there are some issues with the script of my background image,because it seems to take forever for IESnapshot to load the background image...

Regardless, IESnapshot at its minimum function level is going to be extremely useful for people who does not have enough online time but wanted to read a lot of stuffs on different web pages. They can simply download the snapshots & read the contents offline without having to browse the web. Incidentally, this software is also going to prove useful as a training ground for IT professionals in debugging a web page!

To learn more about IESnapshot, visit their official website here.

To download IESnapshot now, click on this download link.