I want to put a web site on my Kindle.

April 10, 2009 12:20 PM

Is there a simple way to convert a multi-page website to a mobi-format book for reading on a Kindle? The site contains html-text plus graphics, but no interactivity.

It's an online computer manual. It has a home page, which is a table of contents. Each item in the contents links to a different web page.

The individual pages are composed of text and screenshots of the application.

I want to be able to read this manual on my Kindle, rather than on my laptop. I don't want to read it on the crappy Kindle web-browser, because I won't always be able to be online. (My apartment is in a Sprint dead zone.)

I assume that I'd have to make one big web page out of all the site pages and then convert from html to mobi.

Is there a way to turn a site into a single page?

Is there a way to then turn that page into a mobi document (or something else the Kindle reads) that still contains images?

posted by grumblebee to computers & internet (10 answers total)

An easy option:
Use a pdf printer (such as CutePDF to print the webpage as a PDF file, and then convert the PDF file to something readable by the Kindle.
posted by comwiz at 12:22 PM on April 10, 2009

I should mention that I'm on a Mac.
posted by grumblebee at 12:27 PM on April 10, 2009

I'm wondering if comwiz's solution will maintain the graphics. Also, comwiz says "web page." Does CutePDF make each page into a separate file? I need one file (one book) containing all the pages.
posted by grumblebee at 12:28 PM on April 10, 2009

So far the .pdf files that I have converted for use with the kindle using the Amazon conversion (the [at]kindle.com address) seem to have brought their graphics across OK, but I don't think I have converted anything with graphics more complicated than black and white drawings yet.

Alternately, the Mobipocket software (Publisher Edition) is supposedly a good way to do the conversions for yourself.

That still leaves the question of consolidating the site. Hopefully someone will come through on that one because I would like do that myself :)
posted by Lord Widebottom at 1:15 PM on April 10, 2009

I'm pretty sure the Mobipocket creator will allow you to create a file from multiple sources. The only problem is the software is Windows only.
posted by wongcorgi at 2:13 PM on April 10, 2009

Did you look at Calibre yet?

There is a pretty straightforward description on how to get multiple pages converted in a specific order that sounds just like your already available table of contents html page.

It converts straight to mobi (among others) and is available for the mac. (Great for all those Sony PRS-505 owners.)
posted by mmkhd at 3:52 PM on April 10, 2009 [1 favorite]

Combine PDFs (freeware) will stitch those PDFs together for you.
posted by neuron at 4:18 PM on April 10, 2009

Preview.app can stitch PDFs together (and has been able to do so since Tiger). All you do is enable the Sidebar view and drag the pages from one document's sidebar into the other, you can reorder as well.

As for the larger question, perhaps a FireFox extension that downloads an entire set of pages, and then PDF-inate the site?
posted by onalark at 8:05 PM on April 10, 2009

htmldoc is a quick, automated way to turn a single web page into a PDF document. If you combine this with a simple script to extract the URLs from the table of contents page and run htmldoc on each one, you have everything you need.

Any chance you can post the URL you're trying to convert?
posted by larsks at 5:04 AM on April 11, 2009

Iarsks: here.
posted by grumblebee at 9:25 AM on April 11, 2009