SnapWeb
Don't Judge a Book (or Software) By The Critics' Comments
I was searching for a web page screen-shot utility today. Not just your run-of-the-mill screen-shot utility, but something that would give me an entire web page, even though the web page wouldn't fit on the screen. As a Mac user, I headed on over to MacUpdate to see what I could find and ran across several utilities.
SnapWeb (v4.0.1r1, $17.90) was one of those that I found, but from the comments by many of the "reviewers" it appeared that SnapWeb was overpriced: it wasn't free, like several other utilities or solutions. Had I simply left it at that—listening to the comments alone—I would have ended up with an inadequate solution. However, I actually used the software and compared it to the other suggestions that were made and determined that the other reviewers were completely out of their minds.
Here are my observations, as posted on the MacUpdate site:
Let me help out the author here, as from most of the other comments it appears he hasn't made his case for paying for this software when -- it is true -- there are other, free solutions for capturing a web page.Normally when I want to capture a web page, I simply print to PDF. As simple as that is, there are times when -- as neutralzone points out -- the PDF does not render properly or a stylesheet defines different styles for printed output. Also, Mac OS X's Save as PDF feature paginates the the output, something not generally suitable for web pages, unless you "first set up a sufficiently long custom paper size" (how long is that?).
(Thanks to nga for pointing out the Export PDF command in Saft, which gives you an unpaginated PDF. I keep forgetting all of the incredibly useful features in this Safari plug-in.)
Paparazzi is great for many people. Give it a URL, press Capture, and save the loaded web page as one of several image formats along with an optional thumbnail. What if you need to log into a web site to see a particular page, though? Here's where it gets a little tedious, because it is first necessary to browse to the page in Safari and authenticate, then load the page in Paparazi.
SnapWeb, however, "has a full-featured browser interface for easy navigation without typing URLs," meaning you can navigate a web site without using another browser.
Speaking of another browser, SnapWeb will capture the current Firefox page in addition to the current Safari page. Paparazzi will only capture from Safari. Also, SnapWeb supports opening of local HTML files through drag-and-drop, contextual "Open With", and a File > Open command.
Paparazzi's four image formats (JPEG, PDF, PNG, TIFF) may be sufficient for many, but some people will want the additional formats that SnapWeb provides -- GIF and PSD -- and may like to save as HTML or text or even to the the clipboard.
SnapWeb offers finer control over the image size. SnabWeb allows multiple windows. Images can be saved by SnapWeb in quick succession to a user-selected folder with incrementing filenames. And, with a professional license ($39.90), SnapWeb can be activated by AppleScript, a Services Menu item, or Unix shell scripts, for serious automation power.
The only complaint I have with SnapWeb is actually the developer's claim of "exactly [sic] timing of animation and movie snapshots (e.g. web pages with Flash, WMV, Real or Quicktime)." In my tests, I could not rely on SnapWeb to capture the video frame I was viewing when I clicked Save. However, this is still an improvement over Paparazzi, which captures the web page only as it is first loaded, not at some point later when animation or video has changed.
If you want a free alternative to saving web pages and don't need the features SnapWeb provides, then by all means use Paparazzi. Don't mistake SnapWeb as something that "does exactly the same," though: its additional features are well worth the price for someone that needs them.