Why Full-Page Browser Screenshots Are Stitched Viewport Grids, Not Single Images
Browsers lack a native API to render an entire webpage as one PNG, so full-page screenshots are created by scrolling, capturing each visible viewport, and stacking the bitmaps together. This loop-based approach introduces errors when a page's height is not an exact multiple of the viewport, causing the final frame to duplicate content already captured in the previous one. Fixed and sticky navigation bars compound the problem, appearing repeatedly across the assembled image because each captured frame recorded them in their on-screen position. Developers must compute the exact pixel remainder for the last crop and selectively hide fixed or sticky elements — using visibility:hidden rather than display:none — to preserve page layout while removing repeated UI. Treating a full-page PNG as a timeline of viewports, rather than a single document render, is key to diagnosing and fixing these stitching artifacts.
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