How do I archive a web page?

I used to use DT Pro Office until about a year ago when I switched to Together to utilize smart folder functionality. Now that 2.0 is out, I’m willing to take it for another test spin to see if it fits my work flow but I’m forgetting how to do something basic and the documentation is not helping me out here.

A lot of what I store is web pages. I find a web page I want to save as a web archive (in case the link is broken or the content is removed or changed) and I want to quickly and easily dump it into the database. I tried dragging the URL onto the DT Pro icon in the dock and that created a bookmark in the database. So I figured maybe there was a preference to tell it to create a web archive instead of a bookmark, but I’m not seeing that.

So, how do I take a web page and turn it into a DT Pro web archive? In Together, I just drag the URL to my Together tab and it’s done. If I have to do a multiple step thing with DT Pro to make this work, I’ll probably just stay with Together. I need this to be quick and easy.

Thanks for any responses.

Two ways that come to mind that work for me:

  1. Command-A in your browser to select the entire page, then Command-% (Services>DTP>Capture Web Archive).

or

  1. Install the “Save as Web Archive” bookmarklet from the Extras folder on the install disk image.

Greg, thanks for the response.

But I’m not having much luck with either method.

Re using the bookmarklet, I dragged it to my bookmark bar but when I’m on a webpage I want to save as an archive and then select that bookmarklet, it changes the link to a DTPro link, displays a blank page in the browser instead of the page I was looking at, and imports nothing into DT Pro.

Re the first method, if I select all then go to services/DT Pro, there is no ‘capture web archive’ option listed. It’s all text-based options.

So far this has been an exercise in frustration and reminds me of one of the reasons why I stopped using this app in the first place. Something like this should be a mainstream use of the app and should be easy and intuitive to accomplish. But I’ve got about 45 minutes into trying to figure this out and still haven’t figured out how to create a web archive.

The Bookmarklet and the Service worked fine for me. Perhaps you need to remove the old version from your Applications folder and log out and log back in.

OK, think I figured something out. I use OmniWeb as my default browser and that’s where I tested this and it didn’t work. So I brought up Safari and it did work.

What I noticed was when I dragged the bookmarklet to Safari, it prompted me to name it and provided the suggested name “Archive”. In OmniWeb, it just saved it with the name ‘localhost…Archive.inetloc’.

So, something about this doesn’t play well with OmniWeb, for some reason.

Re Services, what is available is append plain/rich notes, take plain/rich notes, lookup and summarize. That’s it. Same options in either OW or Safari.

You have to log out and back in or restart for services to become available.

FWIW, the way I do it is:

Open link in DevonThink Pro’s internal browser.
Right click on page (ctrl-click with one button mouse)
Select Capture Web Archive from context menu.
Done.

(This is in DTP v.1.5.4, not the new v2.0 beta.)

Katherine

Katherine, that method would be fine if I was using DT Pro as my browser, but I am not. So that method is simply too inefficient for me.

Next time I log out and log back in I’ll check the services.

Re the bookmarklet, I copied the content from the Safari entry to the OW one and it works there now. Doesn’t copy into OW properly, for some reason.

not a fan of the bookmarklet approach, though. Last thing I need is more clutter on my bookmark bar, or another entry stashed in a ‘scripts’ folder on it. Very surprised I can’t just drag and drop it and be done with it.

I appreciate all the feedback, guys. Will play with it and see how it works.

Very nice to see DT finally incorporate smart folder functionality. Long overdue. Did not walk away from DT Pro with enthusiasm and would consider coming back if the workflow is efficient.

Perhaps the developers might consider making Opt+drag of the URL a shortcut to import as a webarchive or something. I dunno.

I just never saw the point of webarchives. PDFs seem to work much better from my point of view.

the reason I prefer web archives is that when printing a web page to a PDF, it doesn’t always format ‘natively’. Web archives more reliably retain the appearance of the original page.

That, and there are extra steps to converting a web page to a PDF. If I had the option of dragging the URL to DTP and having it turn it into a PDF, I could easily live with that. But making me invoke a series of commands to make it happen is to cumbersome for me.

Mmm, but I like non-native :slight_smile: Particularly with Wikipedia, for instance, where a lot of unnecessary crap is cut out in the print stylesheet. But that’s just my workflow, I have no idea what yours is like and I’m sure it makes sense for you.

I’ve been pondering the idea of trying to get some simple Cocoa programming done and one idea I thought of was making some Services. This sounds like an excellent idea for Services – making a few extra things (with hotkeys, of course) to add a little functionality onto DEVONthink that might otherwise not be implemented. I’ll look into this and, if I can get this done, I’ll be sure to post back in this thread. (Natch, it’d be easier to do this other ways, and this isn’t what services are intended for, but oh well)

If nothing else, it’ll be a fun exercise and something to put in my portfolio of Crap I Have Actually Accomplished.

My general purpose browser is Firefox, which doesn’t support services. So I copy and paste URLs into DTP. (In v1.5.4, I right-click on DTP’s dock icon. In v.2, obviously, the new Sorter would be perfect.) Then I review them later to see what, if anything, I want to keep, and in what format. That’s when the web archive decision is made.

When I’m doing more focused, research-oriented browsing, I use DevonAgent, which saves directly to DTP in a variety of formats. Yeah, it costs more, but it’s by far the best solution if you know that you’ll be capturing a lot of stuff in a given session.

Katherine

If you drop it (the URL) in the Sorter, by default it will create a webarchive. Once the Inbox is supported in DT2 public beta 2, dropping it in there will make it very easy to get what you want.

thanks anand.

Can you clarify what you mean by ‘dropping it in the sorter’?

And how is that different than ‘dragging to the inbox’ and how will that be accomplished?

Right now, the best way for me to get these archives into DT Pro will probably be the bookmarklet for now. I don’t want to have to make the DT Pro window visible, I want to just dump it somewhere quick and have it imported. Then I’ll bring up the DTP window later when I’m ready to do processing and viewing.

And Katherine, agreed on DT Agent. I have it. Don’t use it all that much any more, for a variety of reasons. But when I do, it does make that process easy.

OK, I think I figured out the Sorter. It’s a Shelf feature. Found the preference pane for it but don’t see where you can change where it’s located.

That said, it seems to have the same issue I have with other Shelfs that mount on the side of the window, they don’t play well with Spaces. When I drag something to the shelf on the right, it moves me to Space 2.

Anyone else running into this?

You can place it where you want by dragging it there along the screen edges. Spaces does not play well with these windows, that is an Apple problem unfortunately.

thanks anand.

Question: how does one drag the Sorter? It does not seem to appear unless I’m dragging an item onto it, and if I’m doing that, how do I also grab hold of the sorter to drag it?

You drag the Sorter with a click-down on it’s tab, dragging along the edge of the screen to where you want it, and then release the mouse button.

but how do I get the tab to display without dragging something onto it?

And if I’m dragging something on to it, I’m already clicked down so I can’t click onto the tab.

Not seeing how to do this. If I just mouse over where the Sorter is, the tab does not appear unless I’m dragging something there.