(Archived) Why can't HTML be copied well?

[cravingsunshine 0]

so i've been using evernote for quite a while now and some of the features i thought i wanted before might not be as important as i thought. but there's one huge problem that aggravates me to no end -- and it's also a problem that's kept several of my friends from using evernote after i recommended it: if you try to capture part of a web page (by using the evernote web clipper, for example) and use it to create a new evernote note, the formatting often gets _completely_ screwed up.

one prime example: capturing yelp items/reviews. often when going on a trip, i'll do research on yelp and want to aggregate restaurants that look good into one single evernote note. but when i use the clipper to capture an entry, it gets totally messed up when put into the note (e.g., the stars don't convert, formatting gets screwed up, etc). in fact, the formatting gets so messed up that it's not worth the effort to try to fix it. i suppose i could create little "jpeg" grabs of each item, but that seems like a huge pain.

why can't portions of a web page be captured better, with formatting intact? (as you can guess, i'm no html expert). i realize that when you capture a portion of a web page, you may not be copying formatting information that's elsewhere on the page. but couldn't there be a programmatic way to find formatting that applies to the part that you're capturing?

i'd love any suggestions/solutions, since this is a huge pain in using evernote. and by the way, i realize this isn't unique to evernote...but if the evernote folks could solve this problem, it'd be another great distinguishing/useful reason to use evernote.

kr

[engberg 89]

Many web pages aren't just "HTML" any more ... they're dynamically constructed applications using a mix of CSS, Javascript, Flash, etc. We do copy the HTML, but we don't try to recreate all of that other stuff when you ask to save the content.

If the exact layout of a web page in a particular browser is more important to you than editability, you can print the web page to a PDF and add the PDF into Evernote. This is easy from the Mac (where PDF support is built into the OS). From Windows, there are a variety of free an inexpensive solutions to print to PDF:

http://www.primopdf.com/index.aspx

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/Writer.asp

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

i'd love any suggestions/solutions, since this is a huge pain in using evernote. and by the way, i realize this isn't unique to evernote...but if the evernote folks could solve this problem, it'd be another great distinguishing/useful reason to use evernote.

I don't know if this will help with your particular situation(s), but I use Readability, when what I want to save extends over a single screen (otherwise I just use a screencap.) Once Readability converts it, I select all & copy/paste into a new note.

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

[mediauras 0]

Are there any plans to allow for "exact copying" of web pages? EN is a great app/service, and its cloud/syncing is especially appealing, but it doesn't really suit my needs as a researcher archiving a few dozens web pages a day. The workaround isn't that appealing. (I'm currently using EagleFiler but would switch....)

Again, though, great app (and I'm thankful for android functionality).

[engberg 89]

If you want a pixel-perfect reproduction of what you saw within a particular web browser, your best bet is to print to PDF and add the PDF to Evernote. This is supported natively on the Mac, and there are several free or inexpensive print-to-PDF tools available for Windows.

[mediauras 0]

Thanks for the reply. But through that process you lose the original source link, etc. Your product is great, its just a specific feature I need.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Did you try Readability that I mentioned above?