Thread: Good Ideas Document

An excellent idea. But I'd shy away from using a full-blown word processor - the bells and whistles seem to get in the way. I just use Notepad (or equivalent in other OS's) and save as ASCII, for temporary references when posting. For small tidbits, I've been saving the text and pics in separate folders; adding the URL address would be a nice touch. And the technique you suggest would be dandy for substantial threads. I sure wish I'd started it way back when. Too soon old, too late smart.

Joe

after a while websites & links dissapear, so youre better off copying the whole article as a doc and saving it for your own reference

Originally Posted by echnidna

after a while websites & links dissapear, so youre better off copying the whole article as a doc and saving it for your own reference

I print the information to a pdf file, plenty of free utilities around that will do that (CutePdf is one)

I have found the same as echnidna, a lot of links disappear over time.

I have set up a folder structure to easily find any info saved this way, I also save any pictures of interest.

Originally Posted by echnidna

after a while websites & links dissapear, so youre better off copying the whole article as a doc and saving it for your own reference

Another way may be to run an intranet and just copy them to that.

Originally Posted by Groggy

Another way may be to run an intranet and just copy them to that.

Can you expand on this? I tend to save as a local file if I see a page I like.

Host the page on your own network but only internally, not open to the web. That way it only disappears when you no longer need it. If I am using something for reference while I am building it I copy the relevant files to my web, just in case the move the files while I am part way through.

Thanks Groggy but it all sounds to complicated to me after I Googled it and found out what is involved. What I have done is saved pages to my network drive and bookmarked them from there, it just takes a bit of organisation. If the network drive dies I lose it all but that's life. The really important stuff is backed up, the rest takes its chances.

The easiest way is to use the Save Pages As CTRL+S in a folder

That all sounds very complicated to me, I would need a personal tutor to show me how.
Thought I was doing well to.

What is the advantage of a PDF file?

Get hold of Microsoft Frontpage.

Open a new "Web" (think of it as a folder) and open a new page. Now "select all" or highlight the bit you want to copy in the webpage you want to keep and paste it into the new page in Frontpage. It will copy the page and the pictures. You can stop it at this stage if you want.

If you learn a little more, you will have a folder (your new web) containing lots of your saved pages. Your saved pages will look like your own woodwork internet site. You can set up headings in a navigation bar on the side of the page that is shared by all your copies of favourite pages.

You can move around it even quicker than you can move around on the internet. Of course, copyright laws might apply on the webpages you want to copy so anything you do is at your own risk. Very few webpages have the security necessary to stop you copying though.

Originally Posted by bookend

Get hold of Microsoft Frontpage.

If there is a lot of a website that you would like to take a copy of, there are free software packages that will mirror the site to your local drive. This would be a cheaper option than buying MS Frontpage. Look at GNU wget This is just like photocopying for your personal use, but web sites are getting more sophisticated and complex dynamic content sites are getting more difficult to crawl.

For copies of complex single pages I sometimes use internet explorer to save a .mht file (Web Archive complete) image, much better that just saving the page which ends up with very odd files and directories wherever you save it.

If printing to a pdf I usually use that in conjunction with firefox and the aardvark plugin. Aardvark allows you to selectively delete parts of the page before you print. Typically I use it to remove 'decorative' frames to just archive the interesting content.

Originally Posted by David L

What is the advantage of a PDF file?

Making a PDF copy is like printing the page, however you end up with a single file on your computer that you can view at any time using the Adobe Acrobat Reader rather than having a pile of paper sitting on your desk.

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

If there is a lot of a website that you would like to take a copy of, there are free software packages that will mirror the site to your local drive. This would be a cheaper option than buying MS Frontpage. Look at GNU wget

It sounds like Gnu wget only downloads one site and then you have to open each site separately. Does this program allow you to set up something like http://www.homesteadfinishing.com/ which looks like it was set up in frontpage?
I'm not associated with the site but it is a similar setup to the way I keep a couple of mini libraries on my computer.

Once you download the webpage in Frontpage and give it a place in your "web", it is a one click operation to use, like surfing the net but without the download wait delays.

You can set up the headings in the way that suits you too. Some of mine for woodwork include design, finishing, jigs, power tools, timber, turning etc and I "surf" my library until I find what I want.

There are so many options with wget you can probably do anything you want, but it may take a little experimentation.

The options you will eventually need depend a bit on the way the original webpages were authored.

The --mirror option seems to work best on most sites I have been interested in. You end up with a mirror of the web site saved somewhere on you file system. If you bookmark your local copy of the top level html file in your standard browser bookmarks it should all work locally. Sometimes you may need to add the --convert_links option which will ensure some absolute links in pages are converted into links relative to you own file system. The --no_parent option is also often useful for limiting the download to just small portions of a website.