Internet Explorer, Firefox,
Flock and Google Chrome make it easy to save a Web page as an HTML file for
viewing offline, but that is far from your only option when you want to
preserve some or all of the content on a Web page.
In
this article, I will teach you how to save a
Web page's content for offline browsing, plus a reason why you may never need
to bookmark another page.
1)
THE QUICK DRAW MCGRAW
APPROACH: The
fastest way to capture what's currently in the browser window is to press
Alt+Print Screen in Windows to copy the currently active window, or
Command+Shift+3 on a Mac to take a snapshot of the entire screen. (On a Mac, Command+Shift+4
lets you select the portion of the screen to capture.) Then open any image
processor (such as Paint in Windows) and press Ctrl+V to paste the window or
desktop capture into a new file. Save the file as a JPEG, PNG, BMP, or other
image format.
The screen capture is fast, but you
probably want to copy more of the page than can fit in one browser window, or
you may want just some of the page's text or images, not the whole enchilada.
Also, you won't be able to copy text from or otherwise interact with the
duplicated content: it's one big image.
2)
THE CONTENT CAPTURE
APPROACH: To copy all of
the page's content, press Ctrl+S to open the Save As dialog box. Internet
Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome let you save the page at the
default "Web Page, complete" setting or "Web Page, HTML
only." Firefox adds two other file-save options: "Text files"
and "All files."
"Web Page, complete" saves
the HTML file and a folder containing other elements on the page, such as
images and scripts. When you open the local file in your browser, links,
images, and other elements on the page may or may not work, depending on
network connection, availability of the host Web server, and other variables.
The Firefox Help site explains your
page-saving options in that browser. Microsoft's Help & How-to site
provides the same information for IE 9.
3)
THE TEXT ONLY APPROACH: If you merely want the page's text
without images and interactive elements, the fastest way is to press Ctrl+A to
select the entire page, press Ctrl+C to copy it, open any word processor or
text editor, and click Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted text. The
resulting text file includes all the text on the page, some of which you
probably don't want, such as the page's site navigation.
The text-pasting is more precise if you
use the mouse to select only the text you want to copy rather than the entire
page. Then press Ctrl+C, open your text editor/word processor, and press Ctrl+V
to paste the semi-formatted text. In many word processors, links in the
resulting text will be Ctrl-clickable. Alternatively, you can click Edit >
Paste Special > Unformatted text to paste plainly.
4)
THE PRINT AS PDF
APPROACH: Google
Chrome's built-in support for "printing" a page to a PDF file gives
the browser an edge over Firefox and IE. Simply click the wrench in the
top-right corner and choose Print > PDF > Save as PDF. In Windows the
print-preview window lets you adjust the page layout from portrait to
landscape, select only certain pages, and access other options by clicking
Advanced.
Google Chrome's built-in print-to-PDF feature lets you tweak the
options for saving a Web page as a PDF file.
The print-to-PDF
options in the Macintosh version of Chrome let you fax or e-mail the PDF, among
other settings.
The Print dialog in the Macintosh
versions of Chrome and Firefox (as well as every other Mac app) provides a PDF
drop-down menu that lets you create a PDF of the page and fax or e-mail the PDF
file, among other options. The Save As dialog lets you add a subject or
keywords for the file. You can also require a password to open, copy, or print
the PDF.
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