14 DAY TRIAL // Taking the picture of an entire web page is not an easy job, mainly because they are often rather large, requiring several scrolls to view all the listed content. With Simple Webpage Capture, however, things will become rather cushy.
When you browse the Internet and come across something interesting on a website that you want to save and share or view later, there's no need to save the whole content of that page (HTML code, style sheets, dozens of graphical files in different formats) onto your computer. A screenshot or a couple more of them could be just enough. That will necessitate either a screen capture tool or another piece of kit that works in a very similar manner.
Enter Simple Webpage Capture, a software solution especially tailored for the task at hand. The name says pretty much all: it is a one-track minded tool that will grab a snapshot of any online page you want to keep in a graphical form. To make it even more enticing, you should know that you can get this utility for free, without having to pay a dime.
Easy to install and ready for use in an instant, this program is designed to be up and running with no complicated configurations. The GUI is pretty much clear and function oriented as it sports no bells and whistles, just the necessary knobs and switches. An interesting and useful aspect is that there are actually two windows that you will use, one where the settings are customized and another one that is the browser you will use to take the screenshots.
The first action you need to carry out when running the application for the first time is choose the destination for the captured images. This is a compulsory step or, otherwise, you won't be able to begin browsing and recording. As soon as the desired folder is selected, you can either start to take the screenshots or spend a few more moments choosing an output format and a specific watermark that will be embedded on every picture.
A great thing about Simple Webpage Capture is the support it offers for saving files in five graphical formats well-known and used by everyone: BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF and TIF. For the watermark, though, it will use only the first one mentioned above and this is definitely not too great at all if only for the single reason that bitmaps are way larger than the other types and this will negatively impact on the size of the final image.
If you do choose to personalize the output file, you have the possibility to view the chosen stamp using a dedicated function that opens the selected picture. Unfortunately, this is pretty much all you can do in this respect because the position, size or transparency level cannot be configured. The watermark will be placed in the upper part of every capture, until the feature is deactivated.
Working with the second section of the software, the browser, is as easy as you would expect: type in the address and you're good to go. The controls are limited to the basic Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh and Home. You won't be looking around a lot to find the all important screenshot button because it is too large to miss and conveniently situated in the upper right side of the main window.
When it comes to the capturing procedure, you don't need to worry about the height of the web page, there's an automatic scroll that takes over when the button is pressed. The width, though, is a different story. You will have to resize the browser to fit the whole content and if it still doesn't integrate all you want to record, there's no other way than making separate snapshots. To further assist you, there's a helpful function located in the settings area called ''Silent Mode'' that will discard any pop-ups, login boxes or script errors.
With the help of this tool the images are taken almost instantly with a crystal clear, high quality finish. All that it will ask from you is a bit of RAM and a pinch of CPU. The memory usage often exceeded 40-45 megabytes from the total of 2 GB, while the load on the 1.90 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processor reached very close to 50 percent at all times. Part of this is due to the web page loaded in the browser, but even after it was closed the stress on the system memory was only reduced by half.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
The Good
The Bad
The Truth
This article is also available in Spanish: Toma fácilmente capturas de tus páginas web
