Web Capture: Links in the article are rewritten to another URL

[bborghi 8]

MacOs Montereay 12.0.1, Brave or Google Chrome, Evernote Web Clipper Version: 7.17.0.273-302f6e1

When clipping an article, the links in the article are rewritten, so that the original URL of tyhje link is replaced by the URL of the article.

For example, the post https://dariusforoux.medium.com/a-simple-technique-for-inner-peace-b5ed99284fcb

The line He has a series of lectures on the Waking Up app, based on his meditation retreats. has a link (Waking Up). In the article, the reference URL is https://wakingup.com/ when in the clipped note in evernote, the reference URL has been transformed to https://dariusforoux.medium.com/a-simple-technique-for-inner-peace-b5ed99284fcb

That means that every link in evry page i clip with Evernote Web Clipper is not the original link. Clipping web pages with Evernote web clipper is mostly useless in these conditions.

Please fix this quick !

[gazumped 11,698]

Hmmn.  Currently using Linux Mint and Brave,  but I get the same result. The page link in the clip is to the main Medium article,  not the external reference quoted by the original.  However... Medium is a controlled airspace - trying this out cost me a free article - so I'd suspect that when Clipper comes along to copy the content,  Medium is deliberately obstructive.  They want you to register as a user,  not copy content for others.  

If you try this out on other articles on other websites you should find that this is not an issue elsewhere.  You could contact Support on this (we're not them.) but if this is an occasional issue,  copying and pasting the content,  or just correcting the links manually may be enough.  This is just one of those relatively few websites when Clipper tech is not sufficient to give you an accurate copy.

[Mike P 2,661]

A quick look at the underlying html (I am no expert) might suggest that this is intended behaviour

The good news is that a simple print to pdf (using Chrome in my case) provides quite a reasonablr rendition which can be attached to a note in EN and does preserve the original links.

[gazumped 11,698]

1 minute ago, Mike P said:

A quick look at the underlying html (I am no expert) might suggest that this is intended behaviour

The good news is that a simple print to pdf (using Chrome in my case) provides quite a reasonablr rendition which can be attached to a note in EN and does preserve the original links.

Wow = that's evil, sneaky,  nasty (them,  not you!) and I like it!  

[bborghi 8]

Thank you for your answers.

However, i don't think the apparent link rewrite is the intended behavior for 2 reasons :

1- the links remains correct when I capture the same Web page with Evernote on iOS = no link rewrite

2- with Evernote web clipper, the undesirable behavior is not just with Medium.com - I can observe it on many other pages. For instance, http://donnercorpsalavie.fr/fr  , page for which I am sure that there is no protection against Evernote Web Clipper.

[Mike P 2,661]

All fair comments. Neither does a print to pdf change the web links. Again, looking at the html it looks awefully like a a "badged" medium site. I can't recall ever having seen this behaviour before so either I'm very lucky in the webpages I routinely clip or you are very unlucky!

If you are a paying customer I would definitely raise a support ticket. I also hope somebody with alot more html knowledge than me (not hard) might comment in the future.

[Mike P 2,661]

7 minutes ago, Mike P said:

I can't recall ever having seen this behaviour before so either I'm very lucky in the webpages I routinely clip or you are very unlucky!

I spoke too soon! It now appears that this behaviour is happening for me as well on sites that in the past have been fine. I will raise a support ticket.

[Mike P 2,661]

@bborghi and @gazumped

Support ticket raised. I've re-clipped an old article (from 16th October) and shared both the original and new version for info.

Original clip:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s317/sh/f7c5528a-3222-4550-a91c-d0261e8c52ad/17c014ceca923846183642b166a82d39

 

New clip:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s317/sh/cd5ab96f-4742-4dd2-8c57-25b5e6775026/80bcee726ad13a22f036d10cf1fcd47d

 

Just hovering over the links in the shared webversion allows you to immediately see teh corrupted form of the links in the new version.

[John in Michigan USA 129]

Agree it isn't just medium, indeed, it isn't just paywall sites that can result in problems with the clipper. The workarounds, like printing to a PDF, seem promising. Has anyone experimented with selecting just part of the article (containing the links in question) and clipping that way? I'd be curious to know if the clipper behaves differently than when you are clipping a whole page or article or simplified article.

[Hogweed2 3]

Hi all, 
I tested it with most of the available options - result is the same for all.
The links are corrupted in the mentioned way.
I have also opened a support ticket, as the results are not useful/helpful in those cases

[gazumped 11,698]

In case it hasn't been mentioned yet..  Clipper does have a 'remarks' area for additional comments.  I'd guess a work-around for clips with only one or two links would be to copy and paste the URL independently into that area to clip with the page.  (NB I haven't checked to see whether they also get corrupted!).  Other than that,  contacting Support is the best strategy - it gives them some real-world clips to test against,  plus the possibility of accessing users' logs to investigate further.

[Mike P 2,661]

On 12/9/2021 at 5:30 PM, Mike P said:

Support ticket raised.

Completely given up with support who seem to have elevated "asking irrelevant questions rather than actually seeing if they can replicate the problem" to a whole new artform. I have manually reverted to Chrome webclipper version 7.16 and everything is working perfectly again.

[bborghi 8]

hello all,

I installed the newest Evernote Web Clipper extension 7.18 in Chrome and Brave. Same results : the URLs are corrupted. I tried with Firefox and Safari -> idem. The latest web clipper extensions corrupt the URL in every browser. That's the joy of a single code base.

So, as Mike P. suggested, I reverted manually to Evernote Web Clipper 7.16.

Not as easy as it sounds. For those interested, I found the older version at https://www.crx4chrome.com/crx/263665/ . I downloaded a CRX file, and I drag-an-dropped it in the extension panel in Google Chrome. It worked fine. However, the same procedure did not work with Brave which has extra protection.  I had to transform the .crx file into a .zip file with https://crxextractor.com/ , then I unzipped the zip file, turned on the developer mode in the Brave extension panel, and loaded the unzipped folder. Now it works. Quite a journey.

Thank you all for your help.

[DotMish 3]

Mike P - also submitted a support ticket with another free non-paywall site example: R-Bloggers, for example: https://www.r-bloggers.com/2021/12/advent-of-2021-day-24-data-visualisation-with-spark/.  As expected, all links in the clipped article resolve to the article's URL.

Sure hope that this can get fixed, I clip a lot of stuff and having links translated is not good.

Curious how you reverted to an earlier clipper version.  I saw the post by bborghi but am a bit uneasy about going to a website that offers older versions of extensions.

[gazumped 11,698]

Not sure how long this has been happening for me,  but yes - I now also get all links pointing to the parent URL.  Not a major hassle on odd occasions to go back to the source page and jump from the original material,  but a definite and annoying speed bump in any operation.

[DotMish 3]

Update - heard back from support, the fix will be in the next Clipper version 7.19.  No ETA provided.

[JenTo 13]

On 12/15/2021 at 8:13 PM, gazumped said:

In case it hasn't been mentioned yet..  Clipper does have a 'remarks' area for additional comments.  I'd guess a work-around for clips with only one or two links would be to copy and paste the URL independently into that area to clip with the page.  (NB I haven't checked to see whether they also get corrupted!).  Other than that,  contacting Support is the best strategy - it gives them some real-world clips to test against,  plus the possibility of accessing users' logs to investigate further.

Just noting that the source URL of the clip itself works correctly even if the links in the clip are fubar.  And in case no one else has mentioned it, because it doesn't involve the clipper, emailing notes to Evernote preserves the links.

This issue started somewhere around November 23rd, as best as I can tell, as clips before that all have working external links. When I raised this issue to Support about the same time this thread started, they suggested copying and pasting the desired text into a new note.

I agree with @gazumped The more people who contact Support directly might help grease whatever wheels are needed to get 7.19 out. Web Clipper 7.18 is nearly useless and I'm not technically proficient enough to try and install an earlier version of the clipper.

At this point, I'm trying to be patient, but not really succeeding.