Comment by wis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wis | Hacker News Reader

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For saving a webpage you have open, I use a browser extension called SingleFile, I've been using it for a while (IIRC I discovered it on HN's front page a few years ago), in my experience it "just works", works really well.

You click the "browser action" icon/button of the extension and it saves a single HTML file that looks exactly like the webpage you have open.

From its FAQ[1] on GitHub:

  # What does SingleFile do?
  SingleFile is a browser extension designed to help users save web pages as complete, self-contained files. The extension's primary function is to capture an entire web page, including its HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and other resources, and package them into a single HTML file.

  # I am a web archivist, is it ok to use SingleFile to archive content?
  No, SingleFile is not a tool used by professionals to archive content on the Web, especially in the academic field. Professionals prefer to rely on tools based on the WARC specification instead.

[1] https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/blob/master/faq...

> For saving a webpage you have open

There's also print-to-PDF that most OSes now have.

Yeah, pretty much all browsers on all OSes have print-to-PDF/save-to-PDF, I prefer saving an HTML file over saving a PDF file for 3 reasons:

1. SingleFile allows me to save a an HTML file that looks exactly like the webpage I saved. I never used a save-to-PDF functionality in any browser that allowed me to save a PDF that looks exactly like the webpage I was saving/printing. I wish browsers implement that, somebody did that once, they patched chromium to save a web page as SVG[1], AFAIK if you can save to SVG you can also save to PDF with not much modification to the code, unfortunately the fork is not maintained anymore.

2. The HTML files that SingleFile creates are responsive (just like the webpage you had open), PDF is not responsive. I like that because it makes it easier to read the webpage I saved on my phone later, with a PDF file you saved on your desktop, you have to pinch to zoom and pan while you read it on your phone.

3. HTML-files/Webpages are accessible to screen readers and my browser's extensions work on them, extensions don't work on PDF files (they _can_ work on HTML files opened from disk, if you allow/enable it in the extension's settings).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33584941

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