I “clip” a lot of web pages into DevonThink Pro from my browser. But I notice that when I later view these entries, DevonThink appears to be fetching them again. This makes me a bit nervous as the whole point of clipping the pages is in case they disappear from the hosted website or are materially changed. Otherwise I’d just keep a bookmark to the page.
So when I clip a web page, is the HTML actually stored by DevonThink Pro in the database so that I’ll have a local copy of it forever? What happens if the contents at the original URL change – will my original copy still be preserved?
I did a quick forum search and didn’t find an answer to this question, so I apologize in advance if it’s already been asked and addressed.
Thanks,
Neil
Yes, when you clip a webpage as HTML, the actual HTML is stored inside DT. When you load this HTML file inside DT, you’ll see a delay and you’ll notice a fetching. This is because the HTML code is only a part of a web page, you also need other resources like images, javascripts and stylesheets to complete the webpage.
When you clip a webpage as HTML, DT will only store the HTML, but not the external resources.
What happens if these external resources disappear, or the whole server where the original webpage was located disappears? Well, then when you try to load the HTML file inside DT, these resources will not be found and you will only see the textual contents of the HTML. No images will be displayed, and if the webpage made heavy use of stylesheets then the content will look very plain or different.
Now, if the original webpage has been updated, you won’t see those updates unless you click the reload button. If you want to permanently store the updated HTML then you can Ctrl-Click on the page content and select “Update Captured Page” from the pop-up menu.
If the images of a webpage are important part of its content, and you want to be sure they will be stored in DT, then you shouldn’t clip the webpage as HTML. You should clip these webpages as Webarchives or PDFs, or RTFs even.