Clipper does not clip HTML button elements

[Paul Olson 4]

I frequently clip recipes from the America's Test Kitchen site. They wrap some of their ingredients in a button tag and the Web Clipper is not capturing that as part of the clipped page. This information is critical to capturing a recipe. If button elements cause problems for some people perhaps you can offer a configurable setting. Otherwise I would suggest including this text as part of the page that is captured.

You can see in my screenshot that "hoisin sauce" is part of the button element and when I view the recipe in Evernote I only see this:

GATHER YOUR INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons  
1 tablespoon 

 

It needs to say "2 tablespoons hoisin sauce" otherwise this is worthless to me.

[gazumped 12,072]

Hi.  Try a screenshot instead?  Or look for a 'print' option on that page - which usually simplifies the layout and makes it easy to clip.

There are so many different ways of coding the visible elements on a web page that Clipper is not guaranteed to be successful.  To suggest an upgrade please supply the URL of the original page to Support.

[Paul Olson 4]

Taking a screenshot is not an acceptable workaround.

Any page that has a button element will have this problem. Here is an example page:

https://html.com/tags/button/

If you clip this page you will be missing the text "Click Me!" because it is included within a button element. I am not sure why you would not include the text of a button when I clip the entire page. 

[PinkElephant 8,819]

It is not one page, it is a mixture of content from several sources, pulled together by the content management system used. It may well be the button only works in conjunction with some external code, that is drawn from a remote server - this is the way how many tracking tools work. It is similar to the Facebook "Like" button: You click it, it remotely calls Facebook in the background, and it will store the information from which computer, on which IP, from which website etc. the click event happened.

If you have a FB account, this will be added to your hidden click history. If not, FB will anyhow try to identify you and relate the information to the data they already have. Maybe you sign up in a year, maybe in 5 years - whenever this happens, the information that is already there will be connected with the new account, and makes you fully transparent from second 1.

Others try to do the same.

Welcome to the brave new world ... I appreciate if the buttons are NOT working in clipped content.

[Paul Olson 4]

The problem is "the text of the button" is missing from the clipped content - not the functionality of the button. I also don't want a button to do anything in Evernote, but I do expect a clip to include all relevant meaningful text on a page, and this would include button text in all cases that jump to mind for me. Why would you purposefully exclude the text of the button?

There is no ask here to make buttons work in clipped content. Just capture the information from the page (not the functionality from the page).

[PinkElephant 8,819]

The button is an object, text, layout and code. The text might even be dynamic, provided by a script, depending on your language settings.

What do you expect: Unwrapping it all, reordering, selecting what you have in mind, and then rebuilding the site ?

For cases like this there is the option to capture a screenshot: Preserves the layout, but nothing else.

[Paul Olson 4]

<button> is markup. The <button> is no different than <div>, <h1>, <p>, etc.

Somehow by the magic of technology the clipper "clips" div, h1, p, etc. AND somehow it ignores/removes button. Just don't remove it (shocking idea!!)

What I expect is a functional application. No need to over complicate the request.

[gazumped 12,072]

1 hour ago, Paul Olson said:

What I expect is a functional application.

The application is perfectly functional.  The fact that it doesn't perform as you expect is unfortunate,  but this is not a bug or some coding error.  It's a factor of the many coding languages and styles applied to web pages,  and the increasingly paranoid security applied to online content,  that Clipper will absolutely NOT give you a perfect copy of every web page.  It works 95% of the time,  which is borderline miraculous in itself.  (There are no others out there with quite the same features...)

When Clipper doesn't work on a specific page,  you can certainly report the issue (and the URL) to Support for possible future action.  But if it doesn't currently work,  there's no magic wand that will make it do so in the near future. To get a viable result - try a different method. 

I've had to use other options from time to time,  and I'm sure I'll do so again. They include but aren't limited to:  take a screenshot / look for a simpler page layout / print to PDF / copy and paste / use one of the many other online resources that will provide an image of a web page. 

If you don't want to do any of that - there's nothing more that anyone here can do to help you.