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Reliable web page capture...

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johnk:
In my endless quest/obsession to find the perfect information manager, I've decided that one of the key features for me is reliable web page capture. Not pixel perfect. But close enough. There are lots of other features I'm willing to compromise on, but not that one.

Now you wouldn't think that would be a problem. But it is. Most of the information managers we know and love just are not as reliable as they should be. I have licences for three of the best -- Ultra Recall, Surfulater and Evernote. All claim that web page capture is part of their feature set.

And yet compared to the free Firefox add-on Scrapbook, their performance is variable, to say the least. Pictures speak louder than words, so here's a comparison of the three programs I mention above with Scrapbook, and web capture specialists Local Website Archive and WebResearch Pro.

I took a page from a mainstream site (BBC News) that I knew would present a decent challenge.

Reliable web page capture... (original page in Firefox)

Reliable web page capture... (Scrapbook) Reliable web page capture... (Local Website Archive) Reliable web page capture... (WebResearch Pro)

Reliable web page capture... (Ultra Recall) Reliable web page capture... (Surfulater) Reliable web page capture... (Evernote)

As you can see the three programs that major on web page capture do an excellent job. Scrapbook is faultless as ever.

Ultra Recall, Surfulater and Evernote are all ugly and broken. Yes, all the content is there, but it's not as pleasant or easy to read, and not recognizable as the original page.

If a free browser add-on can manage faultless web capture, I can't see why the power user information managers can't do the same. Web Research Pro takes a lazy (but very clever) route to perfect pages -- it uses the Scrapbook engine to capture pages. Why can't other programs do the same thing?

I'm trying to reduce the number of programs I use. I want to use one program for web capture and information management. Seems logical and should be achievable. But I'm still looking...

EDIT: A new version of Ultra Recall improves web page capture -- see further post below.

cmpm:
FireShot add on for Firefox.
Retains excellent picture zooming in and out also.
Scrollable...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5648

johnk:
Thanks for your response, cmpm, but that's not quite what I'm after. Fireshot is a screen capture add-on.

I'm perfectly happy with Scrapbook (or Local Website Archive) as a reliable web page capture program. What I want is for one of the heavyweight information managers (named in my first post) to improve their programs and start providing bullet-proof web page capture (which they should be doing already).

What sparked this post was a thread in the Kinook forums where I and others raised this issue about Ultra Recall:
http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=13653.

cmpm:
Well..hmmmm...
You can save the shot to any folder you choose,
even if it's in another program.
If that helps.

I know of more that are stand alone programs.
Screenshot Capture for one.

But I don't know of any good ones built into a program like you want, sorry.

If you can find a program that lets you choose your own preferred capture program, then that might work.

Shades:
Zotero - my favorite page grabber (plugin) for firefox. Also free.

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