How can I take browser screenshots at a higher resolution than my browser supports?

Question

I need to take a screenshot of a website as it would appear on a very high resolution monitor... say 16000x12800 pixels. My laptop's screen has a native resolution of 1280x800. Basically, I need to simulate having a monitor resolution much higher than my monitor and video card actually supports. I want the screenshot of the site to look pretty much how it does when you hit CTRL MINUS (zoom out) in Firefox repeatedly, but without any loss of pixels due to scaling. How can I do this? Is there some way to use virtual machine software to simulate a super-high-res display? If not, is there some way to open a browser window bigger than the screen, and then capture its contents as a PNG somehow? Anything else that might work?

Here was an answer: How can I take browser screenshots at a higher resolution than my browser supports?

But it doesn't work. Firefox remains in the resolution of the physical screen. The window blinks and shrinks back to normal resolution.

Please Help!!

Answer 1

Use Xephyr to create a nested X session:

Xephyr :1 -screen 10000x10000
DISPLAY=:1 some-browser
DISPLAY=:1 screenshot-program

Most browsers tend to create new windows with an existing session even if you change the display, so you might have to close existing browser windows or use some notoriously underdocumented command-line option.

Answer 2

If your machine has a decent graphics card by ATI or Nvidia, it should support panning. Meaning to say, your desktop display remains at the same resolution but it creates a custom sized virtual desktop (larger than your resolution) that you can scroll around (sort of like using your monitor as a magnifying glass).

From there, just maximise your firefox browser and it will fill up the virtual desktop space, and then you can use screenshot functions that print anything within a window.

I've tried this on Ubuntu using a laptop with Nvidia GTS 360M and the scrot function and it works perfectly.

Alternatively, if you are trying to have enough desktop real estate to print something like Google Maps map tiles, you can always save the html and make adjustments to the tags and reload the html. That has worked for me too.

Answer 3

Try Browsershots, they support up to 1680px wide screenshots.

Answer 4

You have to create a fixed size web page; 16000x12800 pixels. Open Photoshop. and minimize it. And take your first screenshot. Paste into Photoshop. Go back to the browser. Hit the space. Take another shot.

This is what I do, when the page is taller then my monitor.

Answer 5

The SnagIt screen capture utility has an option to automatically scroll through a web page and capture one continuous image. No matter how big the page is the whole thing is captured. This is independent of the size of the browser window in pixels. It's the equivalent of capturing a window, scrolling, capturing another, etc. and then pasting them all together. In fact you can see it scrolling and pausing while it works!

I don't think this is exactly what you're asking for, but it's a big step in that direction.