(Archived) REQUEST: Old Safari clipper with Print to PDF

[benguild 1]

This is the only feature I use in Evernote, and without it I'm at a major loss.

I know that Evernote didn't plan for Apple to remove Plugin support, but an Extension is mandatory for my continued use of this product. This is something I (as well as many others) pay for and I've yet to find a suitable replacement function to even hold me together in the meantime.

The closest thing I've found is Google Chrome's clipping as a PDF ... which does a perfect job *except* that it doesn't include some images from the page for me, for some reason. I can't figure this out, but with gaps in the pages these screencaps are useless.

Please help, seriously. I've been at a huge loss since Safari 5.1 and I've been making manual notes of the things I need to clip later.

EDIT: Yes, I was quite excited to see the new 3.0.1 version... but I don't see an Extension included.

[Metrodon 2,184]

Take a look in this forum and you'll see that the new Safari clipper is going to be released very soon. In the meantime, the Chrome and Firefox clippers do work.

[Lew 0]

Printing a web page to Evernote still works just fine.

You should also Check out Skitch, now owned by Evernote. It will allow you to save clips to Evernote or any other app.

Lew

[benguild 1]

Printing a web page to Evernote still works just fine.

You should also Check out Skitch, now owned by Evernote. It will allow you to save clips to Evernote or any other app.

Lew

Printing/saving to PDF breaks it into pages and adds a half inch margin.

You're right though, Skitch does do an almost perfect job! Thanks for this.

The one thing missing would be the ability to highlight text or search it, which the PDF offers but not Skitch'ed JPEGs. So I'm still hoping for the final extension.

[Lew 0]

The one thing missing would be the ability to highlight text or search it, which the PDF offers but not Skitch'ed JPEGs.

Have you tried saving the Skitch file as a PDF? Click on the arrow next to .jpg above the Drag Me tab to change the file format to .pdf.

Lew

[benguild 1]

The one thing missing would be the ability to highlight text or search it, which the PDF offers but not Skitch'ed JPEGs.

Have you tried saving the Skitch file as a PDF? Click on the arrow next to .jpg above the Drag Me tab to change the file format to .pdf.

Lew

Hmm, I have now ... but it makes no difference.

I also just installed the Beta extension for Safari ... but it's not saving background colors of elements nor all of the content at once.

Kind of a shame, the PDF clipper via right-click before was the best thing ever.

[RussOniPhone 0]

This is the only feature I use in Evernote, and without it I'm at a major loss.

I know that Evernote didn't plan for Apple to remove Plugin support, but an Extension is mandatory for my continued use of this product. This is something I (as well as many others) pay for and I've yet to find a suitable replacement function to even hold me together in the meantime.

The closest thing I've found is Google Chrome's clipping as a PDF ... which does a perfect job *except* that it doesn't include some images from the page for me, for some reason. I can't figure this out, but with gaps in the pages these screencaps are useless.

Please help, seriously. I've been at a huge loss since Safari 5.1 and I've been making manual notes of the things I need to clip later.

EDIT: Yes, I was quite excited to see the new 3.0.1 version... but I don't see an Extension included.

Same here miss that feature, guess Evernote will get around to it after a few more updates : (

[benguild 1]

I don't see why they can't just add this feature to the Evernote App?

If Skitch can "Snap Safari" ... why not just move the old plugin's feature into the App itself. Should be possible, no?

Some sort of work around would at least be nice in the meantime.

[Alexander1 0]

I'm curious if there's any work being done on PDF capturing of webpages. Anyone know?

[raluke 0]

I also need the "Save webpage as PDF to Evernote" option for Safari 5.1. I know it is supposed to be in the new clipper that will be released Real Soon Now but wanted to chime in and say I hope that means soon.

[Alexander1 0]

There's a beta of the new Safari 5.1 clipper in the Evernote for Web forum, but it doesn't support PDF clipping.

File a support request if you need this feature, please.

[timnote 5]

I completely agree the ability to "Save webpage as PDF to Evernote" is the main feature I use in Evernote, and without it I'm at a major loss. I've tested the extension beta 0.9.0 and was very disappointed to see the PDF web clipper was not included. Please, bring back that feature.

[Metrodon 2,184]

With the changes in Safari 5.1 it has become very hard to save as PDF from our extension and enable native clipping.

[Alexander1 0]

I read "very hard" in that statement as "possible", and clearly there are quite a few people who would use that functionality.

When I wrote my clipper bookmarklet, I thought of having server-side PDF rendering of the URL. This isn't perfect, as it wouldn't capture things like form post replies, but it could do public web pages very nicely.

[benguild 1]

I really hope they're at least able to add this to the dropdown menu in the Apple menu bar. I'll take anything at this point.

[gazumped 11,664]

Just for information, Firefox on Android offers "save page as PDF" as a standard option. On the desltop, Firefox 6.0.2 doesn't have the function built in, but a number of web pages / add-ons are available - see http://pdfcrowd.com/ as an example. It's also possible to save a page as PNG or JPG and use a PDF-maker to convert the image if necessary. Again as example, my snapper of choice is http://www.screengrab.org/ for all or part of a page or window. It will copy long pages that overflow a single screen.

[feynman 0]

I'm also a premium Evernote subscriber (for 2 years I think) and my main use case has always been to save web pages as PDFs. I use Evernote for lots of other things as well (I have an excellent Fujitsu Scansnap for example ... ), but saving web pages is by far the most important.

That said, I'm a software engineer and I have the utmost respect for both what the Evernote developers have created over the years and the difficult situation with Mac OS X Lion and Safari. I'm also not very fond of the obnoxious tone in lots of posts in the support forum regarding this issue.

I think everyone involved understand how important this feature is to a large part of the user base.

But ...

This makes me really worried. Important use case for a high percentage of users and an underlying technical problem known for over a year. The only conclusion I can make, is that the "save webpage as PDF" feature might never come back. I would continue to be a premium subscriber, but would be a lot less happy with the service.

Some questions:

I use Safari as my main browser, but I could possibly fire up either Chrome or Firefox to save a webpage as a PDF, but neither of these Evernote plugins seems to have this feature? They used to, right? I thought the technical issue was Safari specific (the removal of the plugin architecture)?

Could the Evernote support staff have a good official support forum thread (preferably pinned at the top of the Mac forum) about this issue? Even if it just says "We're working on it!" or "Feature has been removed due to technical issues — Don't get your hopes up!" ...

/ET

[dlu 628]

preferably pinned at the top of the Mac forum...

I'm actually moving this over to the web forum, where it'll get better responses. The Safari Extensions (Clipper) actually get lumped in with Web and not Mac so all the Extensions/Clippers can be grouped together.

[mtin79 0]

Hello everybody,

i as well miss the feature: "save page as pdf to evernote" very much.

but meanwhile i use skitch (which was acquired by evernote lately) to save safari pages as pdf (or any other file type) and i have to say it works well.

please checkout skitch. to grab the frontmost safari window you have to go to the menu on the skitch window frame and from there you can drag it into evernote after skitching it.

hope that smooths things out for a while. ....

[raluke 0]

Hi mtin79, thanks very much for this! It works nicely, although I'm still hoping for a return of the "save as PDF in Evernote" functionality --- because the result is (or was) a direct PDF rendering of the web page instead of a jpeg image put into a PDF wrapper. As I'm sure you already know, zooming in on text on a direct PDF rendering results in no loss of sharpness of the vector-based fonts, whereas zooming in on an image file does.

Your method will definitely help me for the case of web pages that don't come out well by simply "printing" them to a PDF file.

Thanks again for the great info!

Robert

[kmblue 0]

PLEASE SUPPORT!!!

[pessi 0]

You can use the free html to pdf convertor online at pdfaid

http://pdfaid.com/html2pdf.aspx

[feynman 0]

Now when the "save webpage as PDF" functionality in the Evernote web clipper isn't around, is there any other good way to save a web page as a one-page PDF (to be imported by me into Evernote)? I'm open to all suggestions (other browsers than Safari, command line tools, gui tools, web services etc) except weird web services that charge money.

I'm also open to all suggestions to solve the actual problem — how to save a webpage locally, rendered as close as possible to what I see in a modern web browser — without actually using PDFs.

So far everything I've tried either doesn't work or just doesn't work good enough.

Requirements:

• 
  [*:2jnrj6ca] Working in a MacOS X Lion environment.
  [*:2jnrj6ca] One page, no margins. Result as close as the rendered web page as possible.
  [*:2jnrj6ca] Text as text, not a bitmap picture of the rendered text. Searchable.
  [*:2jnrj6ca] Fast to use, non-invasive.
  [*:2jnrj6ca] Optional bonus-points if I can save exactly what I see in my browser. Makes it possible for example to control if I want to save ads or not (by turning on or off the ad blocker extension).

All these things were what was so great about the old Evernote webclipper.

Printing as PDF isn't good enough as you get margins and it splits it into physical pages.

All tools that really just takes a bitmap-picture of the webpage and then saves it as a PDF are out of the question. Among the many problems with this is the obvious loss of fidelity and that the text non-searchable.

So ... suggestions?

/ET

PS. I'm posting this in the Mac forum as I'm looking for all possible tools that I can use in a MacOS X Lion environment.

[Metrodon 2,184]

Just out of my own interest.... Why does it matter if you get a 'perfect' copy or not? Isn't capturing all the content the key thing?

Have you tried Skitch?

[feynman 0]

Just out of my own interest.... Why does it matter if you get a 'perfect' copy or not? Isn't capturing all the content the key thing?

Have you tried Skitch?

Content is not just "content", not only the actual text. Content is layout, typefaces, pictures etc. I want to preserve web pages as I saw them in my current web browser, when they were published.

Yes, I've tried Skitch and as far as I understand, it makes a bitmap of the web page. Not the same.

/ET

[Metrodon 2,184]

Skitch does a variety of formats: jpg, pdf, png, svg, tif, gif and bmp.

OK, I'm just interested as to why it has to be pixel perfect.

[TheGurkha 1]

Text within images is searchable in EN, once the image has been processed by the EN servers. Synch the note to the server, wait a while and then synch again.

[feynman 0]

Text within images is searchable in EN, once the image has been processed by the EN servers. Synch the note to the server, wait a while and then synch again.

Yes, I am aware of this, but this is not what I want.

I don't want to save a snapshot, a picture, a lossy copy of a webpage and then have Evernote try to recreate the information in the original. I want the best of both worlds: a rendered web page as it looked when I looked at it originally and with the information in it as intact as possible (search, copy/cut-paste).

The saved PDF-version was like that. In 10 years, when I go back to all my old web clippings in PDF I have in Evernote (and in my Dropbox account and on my local harddrive and on my backup-NAS-raid), they will look the same and I can use the information in them. A server side OCR processed copy of a PNG/JPG-image is not the same thing.

Please understand, I am not complaining about the loss of this feature in Evernote (see this thread in the Evernote Web forum: http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=29001#p127660). I am just trying to find a solution to the problem.

/ET

[ashmole 0]

Web clipper + newest version of Safari are incompatible. This problem is well known

on this forum.

We were told more than

6 weeks ago that the problem was 'in hand' and a fix would be issued in the near

future (See FAQS). Its only a problem if you downloaded the newest version of Safari.

Personally I purchased Evernote more for the web clipper than anything else.

If they could at least give us some indication of when the update will be released, it would

be greatly appreciated.

I find the help desk of this application really quite time-consuming and always end up

on this forum, going round and round like a headless chicken.

I ask myself, why did I GO PREMIUM if the thing does not work???????

[Metrodon 2,184]

Get the new (beta) clipper here

http://update.evernote.com/public/ENMac ... safariextz

[nm2 0]

Hi,

I know you are aware of the bug(s) with your Safari Extension for OS X Lion.

Nevertheless I wanted to ask, if there is any chance to get the old Extension back, where the Webclip was posted direct to the Evernote Mac App and not via Internet Extension.

The Reason? It was the fastest Web Clipping Experience I ever saw! Now delay when clipping a whole Page until it is transferred to your Server.

Or you put in a solution like in your Google Chrome Extension or maybe Readitlater or Memonic (best clipper at the moment) to get the Data in the background.

Thanks!

[jmpsfs 23]

I've gone back to the bookmarklet until the kinks are worked out of the clipper.

[objectiveous 0]

My ability to create clips has been severely impacted by the change. Basically, I no longer use Evernote to capture material because the process is just too slow. I use to be able to hold down shift and click a button and know that I had captured the material I was viewing and it would never be lost. Now the experience is tedious enough that I can't be bothered.

It's too bad as I once really loved evernote and thought it was well on the way to fixing much of what is wrong with the web. Sadly, they seem to have forgotten that the clipping feature is the primary way in which people interact with the system. Then again, I could be wrong. I would suggest they take a quantified look at how people use the tool and what effect changes to the clipping plugins have had on the users. I suspect they'll see a decrease in the number of notes created after they botched the upgrade.

[Tinchohs 6]

I would have to pretty much agree with this. Part of the beauty of this software was the highly effective process to capture data. It no longer is and it's becoming tedious. At least it would be good to have the option of a clip to mac instead of web only approach. Thanks.

[MikeH 17]

I also agree completely. It must seem like a small change, but the way the new clipper works (the pop-up and then forcing the user to click again on the "clip article" button) severely impacts its usability for me. It's drawn very slowly, and requires additional button clicks, and doesn't have the functionality that I miss most: the ability to get a single-page PDF of a web page, like the old clipper could do.

I read somewhere else that API changes made it impossible to implement in Safari 5.1, but this can't be entirely true: DevonThink can do it, and Paparazzi can do it, so there must be a way.

The advantage of the PDF-based web clipping is that it preserved everything about the web page being clipped: the layout and the background. The new, non-PDF clipper doesn't do it, and for many pages I encounter, the page layout is altered in the resulting clipping.

If the DevonThink plug-in can do it, why can't Evernote?

I hope the Evernote developers are listening and can work on returning the functionality of the old clipper.

Thanks,

Mike

[Metrodon 2,184]

Just search the forum, there is tons of discussions on here about this including comments from the Evernote staff.

[DreamingMacaron 0]

Just search the forum, there is tons of discussions on here about this including comments from the Evernote staff.

Even if it's been discussed before, if Evernote users keep speaking out and keep asking for the old version, surely the Evernote staff will take notice and try working towards a better solution.

Anyway, I miss the old webclipper too and would love to see it back. I know Safari doesn't really support plug-ins anymore, so it would have to be an extension, but I really want to have that old functionality back.

[Metrodon 2,184]

I'm sure they are not deliberately trying to make your experience worse and they have said multiple times that they are continually working towards an improved situation.

Hence my suggestion to search....

[blissing 0]

I'm chiming in here in case it helps. The other issue is that for my note to show up, I have to sync, whereas before it was automatic.

It also used to be very clear that you were either clipping a whole page or just a selection, now not so much. We're all busy and may not have time to search through all the discussions--Evernote should be more proactive about letting us know what's going on.

[dlu 628]

The old webclipper isn't compatible with Safari 5.1 (and newer) so for technical reasons, it can't be brought back. If you have an older version of Safari, you can continue use our old webclipper. (If jbignert comes around correcting details, he's better versed in these details than I am)

We are continually trying to improve that experience (across all webclipping and not just on Safari) so thank you for the feedback and guidance.

[VosjeVos 2]

I am very aware of all other threads on this subject. However, I like to cast in my vote for a decent alternative to the old Safari clipper functionality. The current web clipping can't be called a replacement.

Safari Clipping was for me the most appealing cool feature that made me upgrade to premium membership. It was fast, reliable and made a perfect copy of any webpage. I just loved it!

After the troubles around Lion started and were not solved within 2 months, I blocked renewal of my premium subscription with an explanation to the Evernote staff. Hoping it would create awareness at the management of Evernote to take it's customers seriously. It did not. The replacement came in late en was very disappointing. I kept looking in these forums every day for any news that would give hope on a replacement of the old cool feature. After months of patience, I have lost faith.

In my opinion, the current network-based web clipper is no serious alternative. I believe that the architectural choice to synchronise a clip back and forth over the network will never be able to match the instant real-time behaviour of the old functionality. It is a different design that will likely never meet the look and feel of the old functionality.

Next to that, I really do not understand why it seems such a challenge to Evernote to create a descent looking copy of a web page.

As a customer, I experience some responses of Evernote employees in this forum as insulting. They seem not able or allowed to recognize and confirm the importance of this functionality to customers. Instead, I see them downplaying the relevance in several ways. And I see a lot of technical excuses why it will never be the same. I find this not very convincing.

This is not a farewell note, but a desperate last attempt to ask Evernote management to make this average product the excellent solution again that it used to be.

[maxziebell 0]

Hello,

I found a third-party solution:

http://www.tastyapps.com/websnapper/

It captures full images/PDF and saves them in Evernote (local) if you want it to. It even has a Safari-Plugin! So not true that there is a tech. Problem. Well at least not with Safari. I think they just try to avoid every body using there maximum Upload-Limit and have the PDF.Premium feature (scan text) work day and night.

Back to capturing nice design! Horray!

[Metrodon 2,184]

You think wrong.

Websnapper is capturing images and PDFs as you said, which is not the same as the Evernote clipper that captured all the elements of webpage.

[heather 604]

There's also this: