Preview Site as Thumbnail

Question

Hello all,

I am trying to figure out how services like snap shot are so fast in showing a preview of a site as a small thumbnail when you hover over a link?

I mean I can generate a thumbnail of a site and show it but it will take me 10 seconds or more but for services I have seen that provide this, its almost a second or two. How are they doing this?

Thanks all

Answer 1

They are not doing real-time snapshots. They actually queue and generate the image. You can pay for services that are high in the priority queue but they will also take a few seconds to gen an updated thumbnail. So effectively you're not paying for real-time, but rather more immediate and/or frequent updates.