Capturing Animations
Some parts of your website move — hero sections fade in, elements slide into view as you scroll, carousels rotate. Sitepager freezes these in place before taking a screenshot so your comparisons stay consistent every time you run.
Understanding what Sitepager captures helps you know what to expect in your screenshots and what to do if something looks off.
What Sitepager does before taking a screenshot
Section titled “What Sitepager does before taking a screenshot”Before capturing your page, Sitepager scrolls through it from top to bottom to make sure everything has loaded — images, fonts, content that only appears as you scroll. Then it scrolls back to the top, freezes any moving elements, and takes the screenshot.
The result is a stable snapshot of your page, not a moving frame caught mid-animation.
What gets frozen
Section titled “What gets frozen”Animations are frozen in place at the moment of capture. Anything that was mid-motion stops. Anything still loading at capture time is frozen at whatever point it reached.
Videos are paused before the screenshot is taken.
What this means for common animation types
Section titled “What this means for common animation types”Scroll-triggered animations (fade-in, slide-in) These fire when Sitepager scrolls down the page. By the time the screenshot is taken, triggered animations have reached their end state. Elements that animate in on scroll will appear in the screenshot.
Elements that animate out on scroll (like a header that fades away as you scroll past it) may not appear. Sitepager scrolls back to the top before capturing, so those elements may already be hidden.
Hover and click interactions These are not triggered automatically. To capture dropdowns, tooltips, or modals that require a hover or click, configure hover and click selectors in your scan settings. See Hover and Click Selectors.
Page-load animations (hero fade-ins, timed banners) These fire when the page loads. If they complete before the screenshot is taken, the elements appear. If the animation has not finished by capture time, the element is frozen at whatever frame it has reached.
If a timed element takes longer to appear, increase the page load timeout in your scan settings to give it more time.
Removing elements that cause noise
Section titled “Removing elements that cause noise”Some elements look different on every page load — not because your site changed, but because they are always moving. These create false positives in your comparisons.
Auto-playing carousels and sliders Carousels can land on different slides depending on timing, which creates inconsistent screenshots.
Ad slots Ads refresh on every load and always show different content.
Live tickers and countdown timers These display changing numbers or text on every load.
Rotating testimonials and content blocks Elements that cycle through content automatically will look different every run.
If your site has elements like these, use dynamic content selectors to remove them before the screenshot is taken. See Dynamic Content Selectors.
Previewing what Sitepager will capture
Section titled “Previewing what Sitepager will capture”To get an idea of what your screenshot will look like, use Chrome’s full-page screenshot:
- Open Chrome DevTools (Cmd + Option + I on Mac, Ctrl + Shift + I on Windows)
- Open the Command Menu (Cmd + Shift + P on Mac, Ctrl + Shift + P on Windows)
- Type screenshot and select Capture full size screenshot
This gives you a rough preview. Sitepager’s capture may differ slightly because it disables animations, pauses videos, and removes dynamic content selectors before capturing.
Let animations finish before adjusting settings. Most scroll-triggered and page-load animations complete naturally before the screenshot. Only adjust settings if elements are missing from your results.
Use dynamic content selectors for elements that never stabilize. Carousels, tickers, and ads are better removed than frozen. Freezing captures an arbitrary frame. Removing keeps comparisons clean.
Still seeing noise? Raise the threshold. If minor pixel shifts from animations are flagging pages as changed, increase the Threshold under Visual Settings in your scan settings. The default is 1% — raising it tells Sitepager to ignore smaller differences and only flag more significant changes.
Increase page load wait time for slow animations. If a timed element (like a promotional banner that appears after a few seconds) is not showing in screenshots, give the page more time before capture.
Check your screenshots after the first run. Review the baseline to confirm everything you expect is visible. If something is missing, adjust your dynamic content selectors, hover and click selectors, or page load wait time.