Some customers want to add text to the image generated by htmlsnapshot.

We will consider this feature in future version of htmlsnapshot.

But meanwhile, it is easy to get an imaging component to add text to an image.

Here is a one I would recommend Active Image Processing.

Load and save multiple image format like jpg, jpeg, png, gif, bmp, wmf, emf, pcx, tga and tiff
Convert between formats like convert jpeg to tiff, convert tiff to jpg etc
Support image resizing
Support image processing method like brightness/contrast/hue/saturation/sharpness/smoothness adjustment
Support drawing text, line and shape
Support combing image together with alpha blending or transparent effect
Support loading and saving multi-page tiff
Support meta tags like Exif or IPTC
Demos in VBScript, ASP, ASP.Net, C#, VB.Net, Php, VB6, Delphi, Coldfusion and BCB are avaiable
.Net ready component

Now this blog is using the MW theme

http://www.monetizingtheweb.com/wordpress-theme-mw/

Looks better

We released a new version of ActiveTTS which fixes a leak problem in the component.

Now the component can run more smoothly in high performance server enviroment.

You can get it from the homepage of Active TTS

We just released an experimental build of htmlsnapshot for X64. If you are interested, fill free to download and try on your X64 servers.

Test again

Our component like htmlsnapshot and activetts are based on COM. Traditionally you need to register the COM control on client machines to make the COM object usable in your application. But since Windows XP or Windows 2003, a new Reg-free COM activiation model is introduced which is to store the COM dll in the current folder of application and use a application specific manifest file to tell how to create the COM object. For details, pelase read the MSDN article. To give an example on how to use Reg-free method for our html snapshot component, you can try this:

1. Install our html to image component

2. The htmlsnap2.dll is automatically registered when installing. Run GetPageVB6.exe, it should work

3. Now, to do the experiment, unregister the htmlsnap2.dll, run  the command line:

regsvr32 /u htmlsnap2.dll

Now the GetPageVB6.exe cannot work since the ActiveX is not registered in registery.  A runtime error

 ”————————— Project1 ————————— Run-time error ’429′: ActiveX component can’t create object ————————— OK  ————————— will appears.

 4. Now, create a manifest named GetPageVB6.exe.manifest 

Run the program again, you will see it runs correctly again. That is so called Reg-free COM.

5. This method applies to .Net application as well. So this means you no longer need to register COM in registry before use.

We have now updated the html2image tool for linux to support Enterprise linux versions such as Redhat enterprise linux 3 and 4.

The newversion also updates the document on how to use html2image with Xvfb, an in-memory X server.

With Xvfb, it is possible to run html2image on a headless server without display.

Feel free to get it from html2image homepage. 

We have updated the TTS Service tool shipped with ActiveTTS componet.

The service is a mini-http server that can handle the custom http request for TTS function under IIS.

The new features include:

List the installed voices

Convert text to audio file with given voice index

 

If you are interested in the source code of TTS Service, please email us.

You may want to convert html to image. And you want to specify the size of the output image.

Here is the way when you use our awarding winning component htmlsnapshot. The demo is coded with VBscript.

‘demo how to convert html to image

Dim snap

‘Create the Html Snapshot Object
Set snap = CreateObject(“HTMLSNAP2.HtmlSnap.1″)

‘Set the time to wait for web page loading
snap.SetTimeOut CLng(200000)

‘You can control JPEG compression quality here
snap.SetJPEGQuality 100

‘Get the cookie
‘MsgBox snap.GetCookie2(“http://www.google.com/“)

‘Set the browser window size
snap.SetSnapDimension 500, 500

‘Set this if you want the image size exactly to be 1000,1000
snap.EnableSnapDimensionAsImageSize 1

‘Begin to capture the web page
snap.SnapUrl “http://www.google.com/“, “google.jpg”
‘Free object
Set snap = Nothing
The key methods are SetSnapDimension and EnableSnapDimensionAsImageSize