Please Cc: me, as it's been quite some time since I posted 50 emails per day to this list... :-^ I'm interested in anybody's experience, good or bad, in what I am naively coining as a "Programmatic Browser Rendering Engine": In an ideal world, it would be a PHP function definition not unlike this: ------------------------ bool imagesurfto(resource image, string url, [int width, int height]); This function surfs to the given URL, as if a browser window the dimensions (imagesx, imagesy) of image were opened to that URL, and places in image a representation of what the user would see if they surfed to that site. If width and height are provided, the surfing is done as if the browser window were the provided width and height, and the result is then scaled to fit into image. Example: <?php $image = imagecreatetruecolor(800, 600); imagesurfto($image, 'http://php.net'); header("Content-type: image/jpeg"); imagejpeg($image); ?> This displays what a user would see surfing to the PHP home page, if their browser window was open to 800x600. <?php $image = imagecreatetruecolor(400, 300); imagesurfto($image, 'http://php.net'); header("Content-type: image/jpeg"); imagejpeg($image); ?> This displays the same image as the first example, only scaled down to half-size. ------------------------ In my case, I have a GUI to admin a web-site by adding links, and I want to give the user some Interface Feedback that the URL they have typed as a destination for their link looks like what they expect. If this is all known technology and everybody is already doing it, please tell me what everybody else has decided is the correct term for this, as I've got No Clue. :-) I'm also very very very open to other ideas how to achieve my goal: The user should see an image of what the link goes to, so they will notice if it's not the right URL, as they edit/review their link choices. This could be useful in sites that allow administrators maintain a "Links Page" semi-automatically. It could be particularly useful these days now that domain squatters and speculators are taking over every expired domain and throwing a bunch of advertisement/pay-per-click links on them. Just checking that a link is valid is no longer "Good Enough" to know that you are linking to what you want to link to. But that's only one portion of the problem I want to address, so keeping an eye on domain expiration records would solve this case, but not the more general issue. And, of course, if you somehow magically allowed another optional argument of which browser to use... Wow! I could visually compare side-by-side the images of what my layout looks like on all the browsers? Sign me up! Okay, so this is probably NOT do-able. But the rest doesn't seem like it should be that tricky... Hmmmmm. Does a frame allow a "scaling" factor? Might actually make me want to use frames [shudder] if they do. PS If somebody familiar with, say, Mozilla, were to create a PHP function such as I described above, you'd have instant fame and glory. Hint, hint. -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
