If I run a search and it captures 300 results and I archive all, what is archived? Seems like it’s more than just the URLs. I love the idea of filtering search results of archives to only get new info (although I think it doesn’t always work), but I don’t want to use up 5 gig of disc space on this.
The HTML pages are saved to the Archive.
Yes, that takes more disk space than saving the URL links to the Archive. But I like the fact that the HTML is actually downloaded during a search. There are two advantages:
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Page(s) can be directly transferred to a DT Pro database with my choice among file type options, whether I’m online or offline; and
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Increasingly, I’ll copy digest(s) to my database as rich text notes. In many cases that digest summary of a page is just what I need in the database. And of course the URL to the source page is included in it’s digest summary. It’s neat that in Digest view I can select the displayed digests by clicking on a Topic word, or add my own topic to select search result digests.
In that vein, there are several things that might be considered for future development:
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Add an option to save the digests rather than HTML source of search results – either to the Archive or to a DT Pro database. Of course, there will be information loss, but digest summaries are often useful.
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As an extension of the above to the DA browser, add the option to view and save a summary of the page to a DT Pro database – an addition to the current options to add a page as URL, selected text/images rich note, HTML Page, PDF or WebArchive. Of course, one could use the Summarize option in DT Pro to accomplish this, but that’s an extra step.
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Allow a previous set of search results already sent to the Archive to be viewed in Digest mode. This would probably imply a search set that can query the Archive rather than the Internet. Very useful, I think.
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Possibly an option to save (perhaps to a different kind of Archive) just the URLs (bookmarks) of search results. (But that would have consequences for changed pages; one would lose historical versions.) And of course one would have to be online to view or make other use of the URLs.
Fortunately, given the current version of the Archive, hard drive space is pretty cheap and i’ve got quite a lot of it.
Comments? Christian has a lot of development priorities already on his plate, but DEVONtechnologies is receptive to user suggestions that can make the applications more useful.