Way OT - Saving web pages

Frenchy wrote on 11/25/2003, 1:06 PM
In the two years or so I've been visiting these forums, as I've come across (many) particular topics which contain techniques I may want to refer to later, like many here, I add it to My Favorites (in IE). For example I have links to four or five "Credit Roll" techniqes (CreditRoll01, CreditRoll02 - you get the picture) I have an extremely slooooow copper connection at home, so even though these pages load fairly quickly, it still takes too much time, and I usually end up forgetting what I was looking up anyway...(damn that short term memory!)

I want to save these pages to a CD-rw, so I can quickly refer to them while at my home pc. I know how to save a web page (File>SaveAs) and give it a name and location. This is the most obvious solution. I also know how to make a web page available offline (Favorites>Add to Favorites> and check "make available offline")

Two questions for this group: 1) Is there a way to "batch save as" ma group of web pages. I know I can do these one at a time, but I don't want to do this 150+ times.
2) Where does IE save the webpages for offline viewing? Can one designate a folder where they are saved, and burn them to a cd for (easy) viewing later.

Are there quicker, easier methods to accomplish what I am trying to do, or am I making this too difficult? (ok, there were four questions ...)

thanks

Frenchy

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 11/25/2003, 1:40 PM
In Windows XP it looks like the pages and their associated graphics are stored in your Documents and settings/current user/Local Settings/Temporary Internet Files directory. Unforutnately all sorts of other crud such as the browser cache and cookies. Under Windows 98 and it's ilk, offline pages are stored in the windows\offline web pages directory, and that is all that is stored there.

I know there must be batch web page fetching software available since i see people using it to grab large numbers of pages from my web server faster than a human could be browsing. To date though my only interest has been finding ways to stop it rather than ways to use it. ;)

If i might suggest, assuming you're going to resign yourself to one page at a time, you might want ot instead highlight & copy the text from the page (avoiding the stuff at the top & bottom that you wouldn't want), then paste this into a text or word processor document. Add appropriate section breaks in bold. You'll then be able to search through the document for toipcs with the Find command. Unfotunately you won't get the URLs of links when people have made links like this: go to my page ... all you'll get is the "my page" part and not the actual web address. Even still, it's worth considering.
Winterlover wrote on 11/25/2003, 2:27 PM
The simplest way to save web pages that I would like to keep is to print those with ACROBAT into PDF files. That requires of course that you have a Acrobat writer.
Frenchy wrote on 11/25/2003, 3:50 PM
Thanks Kelly - after I posted, I found the locations, including "unfortunately all sorts of other crud such as the browser cache and cookies." My home pc is running 98SE.

I've considered the technique you mention, and I'm probably resolved to doing it this way. I'm not too concerned about getting the URL's as links - usually I just want to get some detailed info contained in the particular post. I also found a couple of programs which have a trial period which I may try. One is called URL2File, and another is called Surfsaver. Anybody try these?

Thanks again - Everybody have a great Thanksgiving

Frenchy
craftech wrote on 11/26/2003, 5:55 AM
I have hundreds of pages from this forum saved for reference. The way I do it is to print the page if there are only one or two pages of a thread that have an answer I may want to refer to later. Then I write the topic at the top and put it in my file cabinet. I write it larger than the thread topic which is often wordy. For Vegas Video, I have about 20 file folders in my file cabinet which cover different topics. Sometimes I revise the folders, but in general they are fairly well organized. If I want to save the entire thread (rare) I copy and paste each person's comments to an open word document, give it a title and print it. Then it gets filed.

The other advantage of doing it that way is that it free's up your computer and in my case I have a separate computer for editing. Having a piece of paper next to you while you are editing is a lot easier than running a separate window and scrolling back and forth through documentation, especially if you are trying to look at several at once.

John
JohnnyRoy wrote on 11/26/2003, 7:06 AM
Here’s a tip if you use Internet Explorer: When you save as a web page (i.e., html), IE makes a subdirectory with all the images and this could be a pain when you want to regroup these pages in a directory structure. Instead, use SaveAs... and under Save as type: select “Web Archive, single file (*.mht)”. This will not make any subdirectories and save each page as single file including all the graphics. This should be much more manageable.

~jr
cheroxy wrote on 11/26/2003, 10:51 AM
I also save helpful info from this forum.

Rather than doing any of the above I find it easier to just copy and paste the text into a word document and save it in that form. That way I can always change the text or add stuff in later when I am using that info.
Carson