I Need A Web Page Archiver That Does This...

April 16, 2010 6:55 AM

I use DevonThink and have decided it's a bit of overkill for my purposes. So here's what I'm looking for: I want a tool that allows me to save web pages from within the browser of my choice. I want a series of Javascript pseudo-bookmark buttons along the top of my browser, each one corresponding to a category within the application. E.g., I might have buttons/categories for "Book Reviews", "Recipes", "Gadgets To try", etc. So, if I'm looking at a book review I want to keep, I click on the "Book Review" button and it is copied and stored by the application. I'd prefer to do this locally, but I'd consider an online solution. I am not, however, looking for a glorified bookmark service. I want something that copies pages and makes them available for searching and reading within the application. Oh yeah, it's for OS X.
posted by justcorbly to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

I'd just use Evernote and, when you clip a page, type in the category. Since the categories are remembered by Evernote, often all it takes is one keystroke to get the tag you want. It's really very easy, and unless you're going to be clipping hundreds of pages a day, I doubt the few extra keystrokes will make much difference.
posted by shivohum at 7:20 AM on April 16, 2010

zotero perhaps? You can store things by categories and it runs within your web browser.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 7:39 AM on April 16, 2010

Yojimbo is probably the lightest-weight solution for this. Or, if you are always online, pinboard can take copies of a web page.
posted by caek at 7:41 AM on April 16, 2010

It's a slightly longer workflow, but have you looked at the "PDF" button when you try to print a page? You can set up extra "workflows" beyond the defaults (like "Web Receipts"), which will basically dump the PDF into whatever folder or application you want. So you could have a "Save PDF to Book Reviews" workflow, etc.

Not sure if there'd be a way to trigger that automatically through Javascript, but this way you get PDF copies and thus aren't stuck with one app to access the archives.
posted by Remy at 7:46 AM on April 16, 2010

Response by poster: Hmm... saving PDF's would work, but I need the search capability. I like how Devonthink archives web pages. It's just too much for my needs, and increasingly very, very slow to load. Even tagging is more than I need.

Pinboard seems another bookmark thingie, and Zotero is for Firefox.
posted by justcorbly at 7:56 AM on April 16, 2010

iCyte?
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 8:43 AM on April 16, 2010

Isn't there a finder or some program which will search text in pdfs for Macs? Google desktop can do that for you.
posted by Barry B. Palindromer at 9:40 AM on April 16, 2010

Isn't there a finder or some program which will search text in pdfs for Macs?
PDFs produced by "print to PDF" contain copyable text that can be indexed and searched by Spotlight.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 12:10 PM on April 16, 2010

Response by poster: Spotlight is a very clumsy tool to launch a web archive from.

I want a simple tool that allows me to create categories, save web pages from within a browser into those categories, then use the tool to search for and display pages.
posted by justcorbly at 12:16 PM on April 16, 2010

You could save PDFs into Yep, which has organizational features like keywords and folders, and can search. Once it's installed an "add to Yep" option appears in the print dialog.

justcorbly: I like how Devonthink archives web pages. It's just too much for my needs, and increasingly very, very slow to load.
Creating a separate, smaller, DeonThink library for your web page archive might make it run faster.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 12:37 PM on April 16, 2010

I second Evernote, the Web Clipper feature does everything you are looking for.
posted by clearlydemon at 5:20 PM on April 16, 2010