Version 4.5.2
©2002 Navdeep Bains
Written by John Schilling & Navdeep Bains
All rights reserved, I guess

SnapperHead is a handy little app that sends screenshots to people who enter your IP address into a web browser. Simply launch SnapperHead™, then send a friend your IP address (it is shown on the SnapperHead™ window under "Snaps Served"). When they type that Internet address into the location field of a web browser (you know, where you usually type in "http://www.bainsware.com"), they will be sent, as an image in their browser, a picture of your screen. That's all there is to it!

SnapperHead can be reduced to a small, global floating window, too:

New Developer!

SnapperHead was originally developed by John Schilling of StimpSoft. Stimpsoft has now closed it's doors, and I, Navdeep Bains, have inherited two of John's most popular apps: SnapperHead and Son of Weather Grok. I have a lot of features planned, so stay tuned.

Is SnapperHead still free?

Yes, it's still free in the sense that you don't *have* to pay for it. However, I could *really* use the money, and a $10 donation would be sincerely appreciated. To donate, visit the following URL: http://www.bainsware.com/buy/

How to use it:

Its all very simple. Just launch it then let other people know your IP address. You can set the quality of the image to send to be high or low, but keep in mind two things:

A) High quality images look nice, but they take longer to send
B) High quality images can take more RAM to create

It is best to take a test shot (using the "Test" button) first to see if you need to boost the RAM requirements of SnapperHead™. A high quality image of a screen at 1024x768 pixels requires about 12mb of RAM. The RAM for SnapperHead can be adjusted in the Info window of the application. To do this, you must first quit SnapperHead™. Then highlight its icon, and hold down Command (the Apple button) then press the I key. In the window that pops up, pull the menu that says "General Information" down to "Memory". In the field that says Preferred Size, type in the amount of RAM you need in bytes. For 12mb of RAM, this would be 12000. For 9mb, 9000, and so forth. Then close the window, and relaunch. This is not necessary for user of Mac OS X, however (muwahahaha).

You can turn SnapperHead "off" in two different ways. The first way is to press the "Stop" button or choose "Stop" from the file menu. When the server is stopped, it will not accept any requests at all. To turn the server back on, simply press the "Stop" button again, or choose "Start" from the file menu.

Another way to stop the server is to choose "Turn Camera Off" from the File menu. This will not stop the server altogether, but the users connecting to your computer will not see a screenshot of your desktop. They will, however, still be able to see any HTML you have for your page.

You can also use a custom “Off” picture to show users when either the camera is off. Simply place a JPEG image (must be a jpeg) called “Off.jpg” in the same folder as SnapperHead. Then, in the Preferences panel, choose whether you want to show this image to users when the camera is off.

SnapperHead can also keep a log of everyone who has connected to your Mac. It keeps track of the time, the IP Address, the browser tag, and whether or not it sent a desktop snap. Choose “Keep log of connections” in the Preferences panel. This file is stored in your "Documents" folder by default, but you can specify where to save it in the Preferences panel (don't move or rename the folder you choose, or it will revert back to the "Documents" folder). It is tab delimited to make it easy to import into a spreadsheet application.

Note: Sometimes people may have problems connecting to SnapperHead. This is usually due to heavy CPU usage by another application running on your Mac. To help get around this, you can check the box "Activate/Deactivate during requests". When this box is checked, SnapperHead will come to the front whenever someone connects to your Mac, and then return to the back when the image is sent (bringing whatever app was running back to the front). It has been my experience that this is only needed when "heavy" apps such as Photoshop, Virtual PC, or Internet Explorer are running. If those apps aren't active, chances are SnapperHead will run just fine as is. I run it without this option when iTunes, Graphic Converter and Entourage are all running without problems.

Customizing SnapperHead:

SnapperHead allows you to customize how your desktop is displayed in the page. You can choose exactly which area of the screen will be displayed, display the amount of total hits and hits during the current launch, and display system information on the html page. All of this can be configured in the "Preferences" panel of the application.

Image Area and Quality:
To display only a certain area of the desktop, go to the "Image Area" section of the preferences. Select the radio button that says "Use Defined Area". Then click and drag on the picture of your desktop. Anything within the green box that is drawn on that picture is what will be displayed to people who view your desktop. You can toggle from using this defined area to using the full screen by Control + Clicking on the application window and choosing "Use Defined Area" or "Use Full Screen".

You can also decide exactly how many colors you want the image to be (from 256 to millions), how large you want it to be (scaled,from 10% to 100%), and the JPEG compression quality of the image. These settings are available in the "Image Display" part of the Preferences panel.

Customizing the web page:
The Page Display area of the Preferences panel allows you to choose the title of the web page, the background color, and also a smattering of information about your Mac, from the last time the computer was started to the current amount of free space on your startup disk. Just check the box next to the information you would like to display, and it will appear on the page the next time someone connects. Some of the information SnapperHead can display on a page is only available by making a custom HTML file, described below.

Another way to display a custom page is to write your own HTML file. This file must be called "snapper.html" and placed in the same folder as SnapperHead. The tags listed below can be used in this file to display live data about your system. Use the <snapperIMG> tag (defined below) to determine where to place the desktop snapshot. You can use almost any standard HTML code that any other web server will serve, as the browser will be doing most of the work anyway. Javascript should work too. You can include other graphics on this page, but don't expect SnapperHead to serve them. SnapperHead will only serve the "snapper.html" file and the snapshot. Point any other graphics you want to another web server.

SnapperTags:
There are many custom, dynamic tags SnapperHead has available for your custom "snapper.html" page. These tags, when used in the "snapper.html" file, will be replaced by realtime data about your Macintosh when the page is viewed.

To see the list of available SnapperTags, please click here.

Changes:

Version 4.5.2:
• Increased stability.
• You can now control the snapshot displayed by turning off remote snaps and updating manually via the "Update Shot" menuitem under "Edit." You can now also tell SnapperHead to cache remote snaps for X number of seconds; look under the "Snapshot Quality" tab in the Preferences window.
• You can now see the most recently taken snapshot in SnapperHead, via the "View Current Shot" menuitem under "Edit."
• You can now tell SnapperHead to send the snapshot only, instead of the preliminary HTML page, saving time and increasing speed.
• Fixed a few bugs.
• Anything John had changed before he sent me the source.

Version 4.5:
• A bazillion new SnapperTags added for your smoking pleasure. Smooth, rich, mild.
• The preferences panel no longer accepts custom HTML, but rather has a list of info tags to use on the page. This is to make it easier for new users to quickly set up a page without any knowledge of HTML. For those who want a more custom look, include an HTML file called "snapper.html" in the SnapperHead folder, along with any SnapperTags you want.
• AppleScript is now a requirement, not an option. Comes on every OS anyway, so no biggie. No specific version needed.
• iTunes real time playlist SnapperTags added. Requires iTunes 2.x
• Camera can be turned off and on to display only the HTML. Good for showing people just data, not pictures. Include a file called "Off.jpg" in the SnapperHead folder if you want to display a custom image in "Camera Off" mode or when the server is stopped
• The image can now be placed anywhere on the page by using the <snapperIMG> tag. If this tag is not included, the image will be placed at the end of the page
• The log file now keeps track of the Browser tag, and is tab delimited. It can be saved anywhere you wish now, with your "Documents" folder being the default location.

Version 4.2:
• Faster connections
• Application can be brought to front the sent to back during requests, greatly increasing upload time
• Many new tags added for dynamic info in HTML display
• Seems to work just fine for me now on VPC (Yes, I tweaked it again. And yes, I bought a copy of VPC). Last time I said that a bunch of idiots jumped down my throat, though

Version 4.1:
• Can handle multiple Requests! (confirmed)
• Added ability to automatically set the background color for the page displayed.
• "Test" button will now save a test shot to the desktop with the name "SnapperHead Test Shot.jpg".

Note: The screenshot is no longer stored in the Data folder. Rather, a screenshot with a unique, semi random name is generated for each request and stored in the Temporary Items folder until served. This makes serving multiple pages possible, but it also means you wont have a local copy of the snapshot to play with. This is why I had to change the way the Test Shot is saved.

Also, there is a new field under Server Settings in the prefs panel, called "Outside IP or DNS name". This MAY help some of you who are behind routers or firewalls. At the very least, it makes it possible to show your correct address in the main window and copy it to the clipboard. Just enter in your outside IP address if you are behind a router or firewall, or your DNS name if you have one registered.

Version 4.0:
• Added ability to capture specific areas of the screen
• Fixed issues with menu oddness under Mac OS X 10.1
• Application Dock icon now shows server status (idle, stopped, taking Snap, uploading, current hits, full screen/area mode)
• Added the ability to turn the window into a small, global floating window
• Added contextual menu support
• Total Hits and Current Hits can now both be displayed by using <totalhits> and <currenthits> tags
• Major code optimization for increased speed and stability

Important Note: SnapperHead has changed the way it saves the screenshot and log file. All SnapperHead items are now stored in a folder called "SnapperHead Data" inside your Preferences folder, including the screenshot, logfile, and preferences file. This is much better for OS X, where multiple users can keep their own log files and screenshots.

Version 3.1: Bug fix: Dragging a file over SnapperHead under Mac OS X no longer causes the application to crash.

Version 3.0: Full carbonized for OS X. Please note, don't use port 80 for OS X. Anything under port 1000 is unavailable under OS X.

Version 2.5.3 Makes minor bug fixes here and there. Kaleidoscope friendly. Added the missing BODY tag to the html.