Steve Maurer Publications Newsletter

Computer, Software, and Internet Tips and Tricks!

Hi, folks! We just got back from a vacation to Indiana. We had a great time with our family members up there. It's always good to visit family, especially when we live that far from them. Got to play with our little nephews and nieces, eat all kinds of good stuff and generally relax and get caught up on the family news. A storm blew in on the Fourth of July, creating a lot of damage in my parents' town, but fortunately no one was seriously injured.

Well, so much for news about me, let's find out what's in this issue of the SMP Computer Tips Newsletter! This issue will be about different ways to save a web page onto your computer so you can access it offline for future reference. I hope that you find my tutorials interesting and helpful enough to save!

One thing to remember, though, is that items on the Internet are copyrighted. Please don't use them on your own website or other publications without securing permission from the copyright holder. If you have any doubt as to whether or not your use of the information is permissible, contact the author. Most will work with you on reprints and other uses. Usually printing them out for your own use or reference is not a problem. Just don't try to pass the work off as your own. Now, on with the newsletter!

Steve

Saving a website to your computer - Copy and paste method

In the last issue, I described the copy and paste method of saving web page text, but I'll go over it briefly again here. First, highlight the text you want to save, then either right click in the highlighted area and choose "Copy" or go to the menu bar, click on "Edit", then scroll down to "Copy" and click, or you can use the keyboard combination [Ctrl] + [C]. The highlighted text is now copied to your clipboard. Now you have a couple of options.

1. You can print the highlighted selection. Actually, you don't have to copy the text into your clipboard if you just are going to print it. After highlighting the text, right click on the selected text and choose print, or go to "File", then down to "Print" to get your print dialog box. In the box you will find some options concerning what you want to print. In mine it is called "Print Range" and has several options, including "selection". This option will print just the highlighted text. (Here is a little "extra" for you...this also works in emails! If you just want to print part of an email and not the whole thing, highlight the text you want to print and use the "print selection" option. Save that paper!!!)
2. Here is a second option. After selecting and copying the text as in the first option, open up Microsoft Word (other word processing programs may have some similar features, I am a Microsoft Office user and thus have Word). In the new, open document, right click and choose paste, or go to "Edit", down to "paste" and click, or use the keyboard combination [Ctrl]+[V]. The text will be pasted with all the formatting. Any hyperlinks in the page will be useable, that is, you can click them and they will work. Graphics will not be saved with the text, however.
3. The third option will give you a different output. Select the text by highlighting it as above, and copy it to your clipboard. Now in your Word document go to the menu bar, click on "Edit", then scroll down to "Paste special" and click. Now you will get a dialog box that will give you some choices, Formatted Text (rtf) and unformatted text. Choose unformatted text and click "OK". Your text will be pasted into the document without any text formatting (bold, italics, etc.). The hyperlinks will not work, either.

Article copyright July 2003, Steve Maurer

Saving a website to your computer - The Save as... options

Let's take a look at the different options in the "Save as..." method. These options are used in the Internet Explorer browser. There are four different options. Choose the one that suits your situation best. Some will save with graphic included, others will not.

Option One - Web page complete

The first option is to save the web page as a complete HTML file, including graphics. I would suggest that you first create a folder to save your web pages in. This will make them easier to find later. I would suggest creating this folder on the desktop. It will be easy to find and you can move it later.

Now, browse in Internet Explorer to the web site and page that you wish to save for future reference. Once you are there, click on "File" on the menu bar, then scroll down to "Save as..." and click. A dialog box will come up with your save options. The first option is "Web page, complete (*.htm, *.html)". You can choose the folder to store your saved web page in by using the text box at the top of the dialog box. Either enter the information or browse to the folder.

At the bottom you will find a text box where you can enter the "File name". It will be the title of the page by default (the name of the page in the title bar at the top of the web page), but you can name it anything you want, especially if the title does not describe the page very well.

When you have selected your folder to save the page into and named your file, if necessary, click on the "Save" button. The page will be saved to your folder. When you open the folder you will find 1) the page file as an HTML file and; 2) you will also find another folder! This folder contains the graphics used on that page. The folder will be name "Name_of_page files", using the name that you gave the file when you saved it (or the default name, if you use that one).

Each time you save another web page, it will create a new folder for the graphics. Therefore, you can save several pages into your main folder with no problem, each page will have its own graphics folder. The only thing you have to watch is that you don't name the pages with the same filename!

If you are going to move the page to a different location on your computer, be sure to move both the HTML file and the graphics folder or your graphics will be missing when you open up the page.

Option Two - Web page archive

This option saves the web page as a single, archived file. Again, navigate to the page you want to save, click on "File", scroll down to "Save as..." and then click. There's that dialog box again! This time click the arrow beside the "Save as type" text box and choose "Web Archive, single file (*.mht)". This will save the page as a single file, with the graphics embedded into the file. The extension of the file will be ".mht". For an example, "my_page.mht" would be the filename if I named the page "my_page".

On a test page that I used when writing this article, I found that the web archive file is a little larger than the web page complete option. In my test, the web page with graphics folder was about 35 KB, while the web page archive was 46 kb. While the web page archive file is larger, you don't have to worry about including the graphics folder when moving it, so you will need to decide if the convenience of one file is more important than total size. 

Option Three - HTML only

This option saves only the HTML of the page. Graphics will be absent, but represented by a placeholder box with a red X in it. To save as this type, do the same steps as the above options, but this time click the arrow in the "Save as type" text box and choose "HTML only". When you open the file later, there will not be any graphics available, just the place holders for them. If the page you are saving contains mostly text, or if the graphics are not important to the page, I would suggest using this option. This file will be smaller than either of the first two options. In my test page, the file without graphic option was only 14 KB.

When using this option, the page will still retain all of the text formatting, such as bold lettering, italics, etc.

Option Four - text only

This last option will save the document as a text file. Again, go to "File", then down to "Save as..." and click to get your save as dialog box. This time choose the last option in the "Save as type" text box, which would be "Text". This will save the entire page as a text document. Even the navigation links will be save, but you won't be able to click on them.

Article copyright July 2003, Steve Maurer

I hope you enjoyed this issue! I am going to post the tips from this newsletter on my site as a pair of tutorials...with graphics! Be sure to check it out and try out the options I have described!
Steve

Quote-ables

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. -Rene Descartes, "Le Discours de la Methode," 1637

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