Chrome extension selection

Hi,

is there still no way to import only a selection of a webpage via Chrome?

Thomas

This should work fine in Chrome, at least as of v1.2.1 of the Clip to DEVONthink extension: select some text, and click the Clip to DEVONthink button, and the selected text gets entered into the Note field.

If you select Note as the Format, it imports just the selection, with the web page’s title used as the new note’s title and referencing the originating URL.

yes but that removes basically any useful information from a website. that is completely not useful.

its the web, importing media and links is an absolute must.

I agree, as I’m rarely satisfied with just a plain note capture of a Web page selection, especially if the page contains images and links.

DEVONthink installs two Services that are my favorites for capture of a selection from a Web page, capture as rich text (‘Command-)’) and capture as WebArchive (‘Command-%’). Both capture modes retain the text, images and links in the database. Rich text produces the smaller file size of the two and I generally use that mode.

There are important reasons to capture only the portion of an HTML Web page that contains the desired information, such as an article, while excluding extraneous content on the page. The most important reason is that the focus of searches, Classify and See Also are greatly improved if irrelevant text isn’t contained in the captured document. Significant savings in file size usually result, also. It’s not uncommon to find that the file size of a rich text capture is smaller by hundreds-fold, by comparison to a WebArchive capture of the entire page.

Example: I captured a recent editorial article in Science Magazine, “Innovation Needs Novel Thinking”, as rich text. File size is 47.8 KB and the word count is 700. As a test, I also captured the full page as a WebArchive. File size is 809.7 KB and the word count is 916. Those extra 216 words weaken the information content of the article, as they could lead to false hits in searches and to confusion for the Classify and See Also AI features of DEVONthink.

Fortunately, the designers of the Science Magazine online pages have made it a simple matter to select just the desired article or paper, complete with source and citation information.

Capture of selected content of a Web page helps me keep the database lean and mean, and with highly focused information content by contrast to the bloat and fuzziness that would often result from capture of full pages.

I did that rich text capture from within DEVONthink. It also works superbly in Safari or in DEVONagent. But it doesn’t work in Firefox, and there’s no way to make a direct capture of rich text from Firefox. Nor would it work in my check of an early version of Google Chrome. I haven’t checked the current version of Chrome. When I’m busy capturing data to my databases I use the best tools for that purpose, and for that purpose I avoid Firefox and Google Chrome.

Science Magazine and some other journals provide the option of viewing papers as PDF or as ‘full text’ HTML. I prefer the HTML view, as often useful content is added such as supplements that are not available in the PDF version.

These are my personal views and opinions. Feel free to regard me as eccentric, and that’s probably true. :slight_smile:

i agree with you on all counts. i also have a license for devonnote but i hardly ever open it.

the thing is, i just tried DN (latest beta version) and safari and the import of the selection is the same. it also ruins the layout. while it retains the pictures, they are not where they should be.

and i am fairly certain that i managed to import a selection “as is” in the past. Am i mistaken? wasn’t that somehow possible?

Can you give me a URL I can test this against? It ought to be importing the page exactly as it is in the browser (modulo window sizing—obviously web content will reflow to fit the DEVONthink window if it’s smaller than the browser one!).

Basically, I’m just not sure that I entirely understand you. Once I’m on the same page I’ll see what we can do to improve it :slight_smile:

Thanks!


and here the import

single column layout that isn’t working:
cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/6 … 1759.shtml

if only the middle column is selected, it imports without the layout in mind.

tested with current devonnote

Looks like it’s missing the CSS. I think we’d need to have a rich text option for it to capture the styling, and that will probably be most easily done using DEVONthink’s existing services at present.

any news on this front? updated to the latest DT Pro and it still seems to be unable to do it.

more embarrassingly, I just tried Evernote and their Chrome extension seems to be able to even recognize the content of a website correctly…

difference? 1758kb on this single page alone:
nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magaz … ml?_r=1&hp

Hi, I am brand new to DTP, and I need help in clipping a selection on a web page in Google Chrome to a DT web archive.

I’ve searched the DTP User Manual, these forums (found this thread) and a general Google search, but have not found a solution.

I want to clip the fully formatted HTML (text and images) in the selection.

When I make a selection, like one post this this forum, and click on the DT Chrome Clipper, it captures the WHOLE page and puts the plain text of the selection in the Note field – NOT what I want

When I make a selection, and use the DT Bookmark “Selection” it captures the selection as plain text – NOT what I want

How do I capture ONLY the selection on the web page (in Chrome) as a DT web archive?

Thanks.