Author Topic: IDEA: HTML Organizer/Viewer (Read 19151 times)

web_stalker · « **on:** May 05, 2006, 08:30 PM »

I have got a lot of html files dealing with various topics and subtopics. It will be very messy to create folders for each topic and subtopic. What I would like to see is a app which would act as a container/link to all these files with an internal html viewer. It should be possible to create virtual folders and files (tree format) within it and link the files to an actual html file. Clicking the file should open in the internal viewer and double clicking it open in the default browser. To put it simply, it would be like an enhanced bookmark manager with internal viewer. Is it possible? Thanks.

Veign · « **Reply #1 on:** May 05, 2006, 08:44 PM »

Maybe:
http://www.treepad.com/

web_stalker · « **Reply #2 on:** May 05, 2006, 08:59 PM »

I don't think so. Does it allow creating virtual folders and allow virtual files to be linked to actual files in the hard-disk? KeyNote allows creating virtual files but shows only the source view of the html files instead of the html view. There is another product MHTArchive which has internal html viewer but it integrates the html file into its own database instead of just showing the linked file. Anyway thanks for the speedy response.

mouser · « **Reply #3 on:** May 07, 2006, 12:37 AM »

i wonder if "local website archive" would do this for you?
http://www.aignes.com/wsarc/index.htm

a lot of us here are huge fans of martin's other program "website watcher" so it's worth a look.

web_stalker · « **Reply #4 on:** May 07, 2006, 09:49 AM »

Hi mouser,

Thanks for the suggestion. I have already tried it, but it does the same thing as MHTArchive. What I actually need is a bookmark manager (with drag and drop capability and ability to create folders within it) with an integrated browser. Only difference is, instead of links pointing to www, it will point to a local file. Now I think I'm more clear. Hopefully this will bring in more suggestions.

urlwolf · « **Reply #5 on:** May 07, 2006, 02:20 PM »

Hi mouser,

Thanks for the suggestion. I have already tried it, but it does the same thing as MHTArchive. What I actually need is a bookmark manager (with drag and drop capability and ability to create folders within it) with an integrated browser. Only difference is, instead of links pointing to www, it will point to a local file. Now I think I'm more clear. Hopefully this will bring in more suggestions.
-web_stalker (May 07, 2006, 09:49 AM)

sounds exaclty like website-watcher, by the same author, and mithic application loved in this forum.

Maybe I'm not getting what you are saying. Another possibility is Opera + Obook or firefox + scrapbook. drag and drop, folders, local links.

otherwise, if you need to mirror an entire site instead of a page you could use wget from the comand line by using the -r flag.

Hope this helps

mouser · « **Reply #6 on:** May 07, 2006, 02:47 PM »

i understand what he wants, and it makes some sense.
he wants the program to be able to bookmark and refer to LOCALLY stored files.

in other words he wants the pages and files to be left alone on his local disk where he can manipulate them as normal files; and just let the manager program work with them there instead of trying to repack them in its own format.

im actually a bit interested in what you might find for this so i hope you'll keep us informed if you find something that works. this is sort of relevant to the discussions we've had about note taking apps - and the issue of how data is best stored.

nevf · « **Reply #7 on:** May 07, 2006, 04:51 PM »

I have got a lot of html files dealing with various topics and subtopics. It will be very messy to create folders for each topic and subtopic. What I would like to see is a app which would act as a container/link to all these files with an internal html viewer. It should be possible to create virtual folders and files (tree format) within it and link the files to an actual html file. Clicking the file should open in the internal viewer and double clicking it open in the default browser. To put it simply, it would be like an enhanced bookmark manager with internal viewer. Is it possible? Thanks.

-web_stalker (May 05, 2006, 08:30 PM)

Surfulater should meet your need nicely here. Create whatever virtual folders you want, add articles to them, then simply attach your HTML files to the articles or link to them. If you attach them they will be stored in the Surfulater database and you can delete them from your PC. This puts everything in the one place, so you can easily carry it around, move it to another PC, back it up etc.

You can attach or link to any files, PDF, ZIP, Word Documents, HTML files etc. And you can have as many attachments or links in the one article as you want. Further they are compressed to save disk space.

See the Help topic: Power Features | Attaching & Linking Files to Articles.

At present all attachments are opened in their associated application, however in future you will be able to open HTML attachments directly in Surfulater, if you want to. You'll probably also be able to edit them.

And of course once you are using Surfulater, you can capture and save Web content very easily.

Coming soon is the ability to publish Surfulater content to your local PC or a Web server so you can share it with colleagues and friends.

And if you want to add content from other applications see my recent articles http://blog.surfulat...her-programs-part-1/ and http://blog.surfulat...her-programs-part-2/

And ...

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #8 on:** May 07, 2006, 07:30 PM »

Yes I think Surfulator or NetSnippets might well fit the bill.

Coming soon is the ability to publish Surfulater content to your local PC or a Web server so you can share it with colleagues and friends.

That sounds interesting but won't it cause all sorts of copyright issues? You would be effectively publishing other people's work???

web_stalker · « **Reply #9 on:** May 07, 2006, 08:25 PM »

i understand what he wants, and it makes some sense.
he wants the program to be able to bookmark and refer to LOCALLY stored files.

in other words he wants the pages and files to be left alone on his local disk where he can manipulate them as normal files; and just let the manager program work with them there instead of trying to repack them in its own format.
-mouser (May 07, 2006, 02:47 PM)

YES, that's exactly what I want. At last I'm able to make someone actually understand what I want.

im actually a bit interested in what you might find for this so i hope you'll keep us informed if you find something that works. this is sort of relevant to the discussions we've had about note taking apps - and the issue of how data is best stored.
-mouser (May 07, 2006, 02:47 PM)

Definitely. But being on a slow dial-up my ability to scavenge the net (and my ability to respond to the posts in the forum) is very limited. But my quest continues and if I find anything worthwhile, I will definitely share with the forum.

PS: I have tried to revive the topic https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=2362.160 with a new post. But no response so far. I guess that everything possible has
been discussed.

web_stalker · « **Reply #10 on:** May 07, 2006, 08:48 PM »

Hi Neville,

Surfulater should meet your need nicely here. Create whatever virtual folders you want, add articles to them, then simply attach your HTML files to the articles or link to them. If you attach them they will be stored in the Surfulater database and you can delete them from your PC. This puts everything in the one place, so you can easily carry it around, move it to another PC, back it up etc.
-nevf (May 07, 2006, 04:51 PM)

That's exactly what MHTArchive (the program i'm presently using) does and that's exactly what I don't want. I want the program to just point to the file in my hard disk and not try to integrate it into its database. But your idea of just linking files seems to be what I want, but with no internal viewer, I think I will wait for that day.

Maybe you could download MHTArchive and see what I'm talking about? I'm saving and viewing not only html files, but also the hundreds of PDF files I have, with it. I would like the same functionality without actually importing the files into its own database.

This is not to put down your product, but my needs are different. I can use Surfulator for storing future pages, but I need something to organize thousands (literally) of pages I have already saved.

PS: BTW, I use http://www.tranglos.com/urlinject4.zip to add the URL and date/time stamp into the saved html file. It is another excellent product from Marek, the maker of keynote. This is different form InjectURL, his old version.

Perry Mowbray · « **Reply #11 on:** May 07, 2006, 11:40 PM »

I want the program to just point to the file in my hard disk and not try to integrate it into its database. But your idea of just linking files seems to be what I want, but with no internal viewer, I think I will wait for that day.
-web_stalker (May 07, 2006, 08:48 PM)

I use SurfuLater and have written a add-on programme to add references to files with the option of importing the file contents as well.

But you're right, it is not a "file browser" (the link to the local file works fine, but the file contents are a snapshot at the time when they are imported); but that's what I use it for: recording a snapshot at a particular time.

SurfuLater has implemented a lot of new features in this area recently, apparently also coming is the ability to refresh links and attachments.

nevf · « **Reply #12 on:** May 08, 2006, 12:52 AM »

Hi Neville,
...
That's exactly what MHTArchive (the program i'm presently using) does and that's exactly what I don't want. I want the program to just point to the file in my hard disk and not try to integrate it into its database. But your idea of just linking files seems to be what I want, but with no internal viewer, I think I will wait for that day.
-web_stalker (May 07, 2006, 08:48 PM)

Hi WS, Ok gotcha. Surfulater can link to any external files, which is what you want. Click on the link and the file opens in its native app. The ability to display these external (and embedded) files within Surfulater is coming. Note this will likely only be for HTML files though. See the Help topic: Power Features | Attaching & Linking Files to Articles for details.

Perry Mowbray has written some 'Send To' Extensions for Windows Explorer that do what you want. Right click on a file in Explorer, select 'Send To | Surfulater - Reference' and you'll get a new article with a link to the file.

rjbull · « **Reply #13 on:** May 08, 2006, 04:42 AM »

Coming soon is the ability to publish Surfulater content to your local PC or a Web server so you can share it with colleagues and friends.

That sounds interesting but won't it cause all sorts of copyright issues? You would be effectively publishing other people's work???
-Carol Haynes (May 07, 2006, 07:30 PM)

It sounds like nevf has invented the printing press, but what you print with it is still your own responsibility? Copyright is a serious issue, and has to be dealt with, but information is frequently only useful if it can be shared. Proprietary file formats need special viewers to read their files. It seems to me a sad lack that not every notekeeping program has a freely-distributable read-only viewer, or some equivalent means of making the information available.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #14 on:** May 08, 2006, 05:42 AM »

The reason for my question was that as I see it Surfulator is designed for grabbing stuff for the web so that you can read/search and store a copy locally. Given that most of the material is grabbed in this way republishing any of it is likely to infringe copyright.

rjbull · « **Reply #15 on:** May 08, 2006, 08:25 AM »

The reason for my question was that as I see it Surfulator is designed for grabbing stuff for the web so that you can read/search and store a copy locally. Given that most of the material is grabbed in this way republishing any of it is likely to infringe copyright.
-Carol Haynes (May 08, 2006, 05:42 AM)

At work we use a service that interprets copyright so severely that they won't let us store "their" data for more than 90 days

But I think you're being too sweeping. Yes, much stuff on the Web is copyright, but much of it is little more than advertising puff they would be pleased for you to disseminate. I doubt whether anything truly valuable is placed in open view, and having to pay and jump through hoops to get it is likely make you very aware of its status.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #16 on:** May 08, 2006, 09:39 AM »

I doubt whether anything truly valuable is placed in open view

??? Why would anyone even use the web then - and why would anyone want to republish stuff that is of no value.

Actually as I understand it just about everything published on the web is copyright (even if the owners don't know it). A lot of people won't be particularly bothered if you use their stuff but there are many people who design websites (private and commercial) who would be pretty pissed if whole pages or large chunks were lifted and published elsewhere. You only have to read some posts on this forum to realis how annoyed people can get when their stuff is used without permission.

OK advertisers aren't going to gripe as it gets them free advertising but if I was republishing interesting stuff from the web one thing I would do in surfulator is to remove all the crap first!

Example - how would the authors and Mouser feel if all the reviews on this site were lifted wholesale and published elsewhere? In practice Mouser is unlikely to sue anyone for doing it as there isn't a budget for enormous legal fees, but I think a few choice words might be exchanged!

rjbull · « **Reply #17 on:** May 08, 2006, 09:48 AM »

I doubt whether anything truly valuable is placed in open view

??? Why would anyone even use the web then - and why would anyone want to republish stuff that is of no value.

Actually as I understand it just about everything published on the web is copyright (even if the owners don't know it). A lot of people won't be
-Carol Haynes (May 08, 2006, 09:39 AM)

OK, I phrased that badly, and focus on my own uses, but how valuable is valuable? Most of the stuff I personally save from the Web is pretty much links to software sites, postings from a.c.f. and just occasionally "how to" articles. To an extent, if I share that with anybody, it'sfree advertising. I wouldn't bother to lift DC reviews or the like wholesale (unless I was afraid the site would disappear) but I'd just write a quick description and save the link. Stuff that I would consider very valuable (or at least expensive), like Derwent patent information, I wouldn't share and isn't easily available on the Web even from subscription services.

SleepingWolf · « **Reply #18 on:** December 22, 2008, 03:17 PM »

I know this is an OLD post but I'm interested to know if things have moved on since then. Are there other (maybe better programs) out there now? I think I'm after pretty much the same thing, and I can't believe there aren't many others (especially dial-up users) who save web pages en-masse for later off-line attention.

PPLandry · « **Reply #19 on:** December 22, 2008, 04:14 PM »

There is now InfoQube (www.sqlnotes.net) which seems to do exactly what you want (and more)

Free while in beta (very stable beta)

I'm the designer of InfoQube