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[DesignerPaul 0]

Current implementation of saving web pages to Evernote seems poor. The web clipper from firefox is terrible and retains no styling. From Safari it is better but still not great as a PDF is made as it would be printed. This isn't useful to me, as a web designer, I often want to save a page as inspiration for future projects and an ugly printed PDF is not good enough for this. I would like to be able to save the page as rendered online and even better have access to the original code at a later date.

I wonder why Evernote does not just save the entire page as a web archive and have an internal browser to display it inside Evernote? Other applications I have used do it this way (Devonthink and Together) and seems to me a much neater solution.

I love Evernote for its syncing capabilities, OCR, and IPhone app but this is the one thing that is going to stop me from switching over to it.

[Metrodon 2,188]

I'm guessing because Evernote is trying to appeal to a very broad audience, the majority of whom are do not need the level of detail that you require.

Good luck with the other apps.

[jbenson2 2,149]

I go to the other extreme. I don't want to see all the ads and cutesy site-layout tricks, just give me the information.

So I rely on "Readability" and "Read It Later"

https://www.readability.com/
http://readitlaterlist.com/

[Metrodon 2,188]

Safari has "Reader" built in - does the same as Readability.

[Phil Dean 150]

Due to having numerous style sheets available on the web we try to capture the most common styles out there which is why you get different results when saving to Evernote. I do have several options available to you to help capture this information in your Windows client.

1. When you wish to capture content from a web page please highlight the content/text you want to capture in Evernote then right click and Save to Evernote

2. Once captured in Evernote you can always try using the Simplified Formatting Option, this is the last option under the Format Menu in Evernote

3. If you have a MAC client you can always print the page to a PDF first then add it to Evernote

We are actively working on making formatting content easier and more readable when sending web pages to Evernote from a browser, but as I mentioned due to numerous style and formatting options available when creating web pages it is not an easy task to undertake.

Hope this helps

[jbenson2 2,149]

An advantage to stripping out the ads and other unwanted graphics is that the Evernote search results are more accurate.

[inkedmn 8]

OP mentioned PDFs -- if you hold Shift while clicking the clipper button in Safari, it will save the entire web page as a PDF and all styles and other visual elements will persist. The obvious downside here is that you won't be able to select any of the content like you would with a regular clipped page. But, if you're a Premium user, that PDF will pass through Evernote's OCR system and thus be indexed for search. Personally, I clip this way about 90% of the time because I want to remember how the page looked and will more easily recognize it in search results if it looks the way it did the first time I saw it.

Here's an example: http://evernote.com/pub/inkedmn/temp#v= ... 6af980&b=0

I clipped that a few minutes ago. If you look at the "Note Attributes" section, you'll see that it also captured the URL that I clipped (all of the clippers do this), so in addition to having an exact copy of the page as it looked when I clipped it, I can also revisit the page at a later date using the URL associated with the clip. Yes, obviously the page could change or disappear before you have a chance to revisit it, but it's better than nothing.

Does that help? Or did I completely miss the point of your question (entirely possible)?

Cheers!

[Edit]

Just saw your bit about also grabbing the code. This is sorta untenable because of the number of external files that are normally referenced in a web page (CSS files, JavaScript, what have you). If you just want to see how the HTML is structured, you could easily view the source of the page and clip that, then merge that note with the PDF note you made of the same page, but I'm guessing that isn't exactly what you're after.

[DesignerPaul 0]

OP mentioned PDFs -- if you hold Shift while clicking the clipper button in Safari, it will save the entire web page as a PDF and all styles and other visual elements will persist. The obvious downside here is that you won't be able to select any of the content like you would with a regular clipped page. But, if you're a Premium user, that PDF will pass through Evernote's OCR system and thus be indexed for search. Personally, I clip this way about 90% of the time because I want to remember how the page looked and will more easily recognize it in search results if it looks the way it did the first time I saw it.

Here's an example: http://evernote.com/pub/inkedmn/temp#v= ... 6af980&b=0

I clipped that a few minutes ago. If you look at the "Note Attributes" section, you'll see that it also captured the URL that I clipped (all of the clippers do this), so in addition to having an exact copy of the page as it looked when I clipped it, I can also revisit the page at a later date using the URL associated with the clip. Yes, obviously the page could change or disappear before you have a chance to revisit it, but it's better than nothing.

Does that help? Or did I completely miss the point of your question (entirely possible)?

Cheers!

[Edit]

Just saw your bit about also grabbing the code. This is sorta untenable because of the number of external files that are normally referenced in a web page (CSS files, JavaScript, what have you). If you just want to see how the HTML is structured, you could easily view the source of the page and clip that, then merge that note with the PDF note you made of the same page, but I'm guessing that isn't exactly what you're after.

Brilliant answer, thanks inkedmn. The method you describe is much more useful to me than default web-clipping. Also the content seems to be indexed even though I am not on a pro account. Are there any plans to implement a similar feature from firefox?

[lucaberta 0]

Brilliant answer, thanks inkedmn. The method you describe is much more useful to me than default web-clipping. Also the content seems to be indexed even though I am not on a pro account. Are there any plans to implement a similar feature from firefox?

+1 on this request, I too use Firefox and would love a 1-click way to grab a page into a PDF.

Honestly, printing on a PDF and importing that into Evernote doesn't do the same thing, as invariably the page layout used when printing messes up the page badly.

Ciao, Luca

[macguyincali 0]

PDFs are bunk. You can't capture a web page accurately with a PDF. PDFs don't capture long webpages well (splits it into pages) and often has trouble with wider webpages. A webarchive is an exact copy of the website with all the images everything, all viewable in the browser just as if it were the original webpage. Also, I believe it is a smaller file size than a PDF (in many cases). PDFs are fine, but they don't replicate a webpage. Webarchives are the way to go (though I know they're not perfect)

On Yojimbo, you simply drop the webpage into Yojimbo and you get a perfect replica of the webarchive, viewable on your mac or on your iPad (with the accompanying app). Unfortunately, Yojimbo doesn't have the connectivity or interactivity that Evernote does. In a perfect world, Evernote would have the usability / intuitiveness / nice interface (getting there) of Yojimbo with the interactivity and universality of Evernote.

Another vote for Webarchives.

-JP