SnipPage & WebViewPlugin

[SysATI]

I don't know if some of you ever heard of or used a wonderful application called SnipPage ?

It was based on Adobe Air and would let you create a desktop widget of any webpage "area".
i.e. you had to give the URL, the size of the widget and the location of the section of the page you wanted to use/display on your desktop.
Unfortunately, it is long gone and doesn't work anymore (but you can still download it from Softonic).



Anyway, I was wondering if it would be possible to use the WebViewPlugin to do the same kind of thing.
Displaying an URL on the desktop is already possible, but only a full page.
The rest is to create some kind of layer to display only a specific region of the webpage and hide the rest...

That is already kinda possible, but only using a local HTML file, iframes and a lot of CSS which is not exactly easy to do.

I don't know it that it possible, but it would be a great plugin idea don't you think ?

[Yincognito]

Displaying an URL on the desktop is already possible, but only a full page.
The rest is to create some kind of layer to display only a specific region of the webpage and hide the rest...

That is already kinda possible, but only using a local HTML file, iframes and a lot of CSS which is not exactly easy to do.

I don't know it that it possible, but it would be a great plugin idea don't you think ?

Yet again, everything is possible, if you really want it. No need for a plugin, but if khanhas made his WebView measure a meter instead, a lot of things would have been easier to do (like using a container meter to mask what you don't need from the webpage, for example). Since he didn't, a bit of creativity to snip the page ourselves via the skin and measure options gets us closer to the objective:

Code: Select all

[Rainmeter]
Update=-1
AccurateText=1
SkinWidth=960
SkinHeight=170
BackgroundMode=2
SolidColor=0,0,0,1

---Measures---

[WebView]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=WebView
X=-150
Y=-130
W=1280
H=720
URL=https://www.cnbc.com

---Meters---

[Dummy]
Meter=Image

SnipPage.jpg

This is where the fun part stops though, as there are several drawbacks to this method of having the entire page offset and cropped by the skin:
- you can't have a skin margin where you can do skin related stuff like dragging or context menu (a position synced skin behind it can alleviate that)
- some pages, e.g. google.com, will not scroll in this setup, not sure if it's about the W and H of the WebView measure or something else
- while the webpage is visually cropped by the measure offset and skin size, hovered links are shown as if the webpage was entirely visible
There might be other shortcomings I didn't discover yet, so while the method is trivial, some things still need adjustments or cannot be avoided.

[SysATI]

Yeap I really want it

And boy am I glad I asked this question here because your quick & dirty "creative" solution is just PERFECT !

Obviously now I have to change to my whole setup to integrate this new capability and it'll take days, but hey, it'll be well worthed



Thanks !

[Yincognito]

Yeap I really want it

And boy am I glad I asked this question here because your quick & dirty "creative" solution is just PERFECT !

Obviously now I have to change to my whole setup to integrate this new capability and it'll take days, but hey, it'll be well worthed



Thanks !

You're welcome, I'm glad you like it!

Just make sure you test this method extensively for whatever webpages you use, to avoid any unexpected surprises (like the google.com one I mentioned above). To access other skin settings like positioning or skin context menu stuff, you can use the Manage Rainmeter window anyway. Not as convenient as having them a drag or a right click away, but then, everything comes with both advantages and disadvantages.

[SysATI]

The only problem I have with the WebViewPlugin is that even if you set it to "dragable", you can't do it...

You need to "manage" the plugin with Rainmeter's main window and modify the location of the plugin on your desktop manually.

But that's is such a small issue for that great tool that it really doesn't matter at all....

Thanks again for your help !

[Yincognito]

The only problem I have with the WebViewPlugin is that even if you set it to "dragable", you can't do it...

You need to "manage" the plugin with Rainmeter's main window and modify the location of the plugin on your desktop manually.

That's because you don't set the plugin itself (which is just a .dll file) to be draggable, but the skin - and since in this particular case the webpage is technically covering the entire skin area, you don't have any skin place left where you can click / drag it. The location of the plugin doesn't change being a .dll file, only the location of either the skin or the webpage overlay embedded by the plugin over the skin area. Just to clarify any potential misconceptions.