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Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Archiving and Offline browsing: Difference between revisions
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Firefox/Feature Brainstorming:Archiving and Offline browsing (view source)
Revision as of 07:38, 16 May 2008
, 16 May 2008→Save/Archive sites
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* This requirement may be posted elsewhere, but most of my research is on the web, and I use Adobe Acrobat for primary archive/offline storage, search & access of web data. As a Firefox user, I only use IE for that purpose--to create PDF files of those pages, text & graphics (with links), that are compressed and searchable. I maintain a separate folder with appropriate subfolders for just this purpose. I can then use Adobe Acrobat to search this entire folder for relevant information, and have it displayed in context regardless of where it originates. The links to and dates of creation are also stored in the pdf. Acrobat is a ubiquitous web reader and supported by all browsers. The ability to create PDFs from web pages is the ONLY thing I use IE for. If I find a site I want to archive data from on Firefox, I copy the URL, open IE and paste the URL there to extract the data and save it on my hard drive. | * This requirement may be posted elsewhere, but most of my research is on the web, and I use Adobe Acrobat for primary archive/offline storage, search & access of web data. As a Firefox user, I only use IE for that purpose--to create PDF files of those pages, text & graphics (with links), that are compressed and searchable. I maintain a separate folder with appropriate subfolders for just this purpose. I can then use Adobe Acrobat to search this entire folder for relevant information, and have it displayed in context regardless of where it originates. The links to and dates of creation are also stored in the pdf. Acrobat is a ubiquitous web reader and supported by all browsers. The ability to create PDFs from web pages is the ONLY thing I use IE for. If I find a site I want to archive data from on Firefox, I copy the URL, open IE and paste the URL there to extract the data and save it on my hard drive. | ||
* '''Relative linking in saved pages''': when using File->Save Page As... and then selecting the "Web page, complete" option relative links are ''always'' converted to absolute links, and this is very inconvenient. Say I wanted to save a section of a website in its entirety for convenient offline browsing, and say it is housed entirely at http://www.***.***/x/y/directory_in_question/ . Saving these pages using File->Save Page As... and selecting "Web page, complete" would modify all of the relative linking to other web pages also in the section (housed entirely in directory_in_question) to absolute linking, prohibiting one from browsing conveniently offline. Therefore, it would be useful and a simple modification to allow an option in Firefox at File->Save Pages As... where one could select (perhaps in a checkbox) to "Convert relative links to absolute links" when selecting "Web page, complete", instead of having it applied every time. If the option was not selected, then addresses to other web pages would not be touched and the only modifications would be to the addresses to images and such, since they are to be preserved for offline viewing with the "Web page, complete" option. Perhaps it would also be useful to have a counter-option to select to "Convert absolute links to relative links" so to also cover the case of when web pages already contain absolute links even to pages that could be represented by relative ones (i.e. are stored at the same web site). This option would also help facilitate easier archiving and viewing offline. The way I have presented these options here is very crude, I know, but it is only to get the general idea across - obviously somebody with much more intelligence than me would need to think about it a bit deeper so that they could be elegantly implemented into the user interface when entering File->Save Page As... , even if | * '''Relative linking in saved pages''': when using File->Save Page As... and then selecting the "Web page, complete" option relative links are ''always'' converted to absolute links, and this is very inconvenient. Say I wanted to save a section of a website in its entirety for convenient offline browsing, and say it is housed entirely at http://www.***.***/x/y/directory_in_question/ . Saving these pages using File->Save Page As... and selecting "Web page, complete" would modify all of the relative linking to other web pages also in the section (housed entirely in directory_in_question) to absolute linking, prohibiting one from browsing conveniently offline. Therefore, it would be useful and a simple modification to allow an option in Firefox at File->Save Pages As... where one could select (perhaps in a checkbox) to "Convert relative links to absolute links" when selecting "Web page, complete", instead of having it applied every time. If the option was not selected, then addresses to other web pages would not be touched and the only modifications would be to the addresses to images and such, since they are to be preserved for offline viewing with the "Web page, complete" option. Perhaps it would also be useful to have a counter-option to select to "Convert absolute links to relative links" so to also cover the case of when web pages already contain absolute links even to pages that could be represented by relative ones (i.e. are stored at the same web site). This option would also help facilitate easier archiving and viewing offline. The way I have presented these options here is very crude, I know, but it is only to get the general idea across - obviously somebody with much more intelligence than me would need to think about it a bit deeper so that they could be elegantly implemented into the user interface when entering File->Save Page As... , even if they would be a minor detail. | ||