Safari - saved web pages problem

[patrickq]

Have a problem with saving webpages in Safari. This has been long term, in fact so long I can't remember if it has always been like this!

When I 'Save' a page, either using keyboard, or under 'File', the page is rarely saved properly. I save as 'Webpage' to the desktop. If I then go to open that page later it always takes a few seconds at least to load up, that's when its at it's best, usually it just doesn't manage to open.

I never had a problem with IE5, the pages were there instantly, complete with text, images etc and, if I recall correctly, the original url showing. Safari behaves like it has been out on the town the night before and can't remember where it left anything, plus it doesn't show the url in bar, but something along the lines of 'file:///Users/.....20%...blahblah...webarchive' which is fairly useless.

I've looked through loads of posts on Safari and haven't seen this problem mentioned, so guess it is a glitch in my system. I have done all kinds of things, including resetting Safari, reloading software etc, also have latest updates installed.

Any suggestions? ... apart from using Camino, which I recently downloaded and will probably switch to, when I have the time to use it as fluently as I do Safari ... saving excepted

 

[mad jew]

It's really quick for me. Is Safari otherwise slow for you?

By the way, an alternative to saving the web archive is to create a PDF of the page via the Print menu. Once again this isn't ideal though because the links are not active and the formatting is constricted to your page setup settings. However, it's universally readable by computers and it has the URL in the footer.

 

[patrickq]

Still not resolved this problem, surely someone else must have had the same thing happening?

To explain further ... if I want to download a webpage, maybe a current newspage from bbc.co.uk for example, I click 'save as' and page downloads to desktop or wherever I have chosen for it to go. If I then move this into a folder and try to open it at another time, when I'm not connected to the internet (otherwise it just connects and takes from the site), the page usually fails to load and to make matters worse it doesn't display the URL (just a useless file reference) so I have no way of finding the original source.

Does anyone know of any good 3rd party apps that I can use to save webpages, even Camino saves as a folder and separate webpage, so you end up with 2 items on desktop, so if I'm saving dozens of pages things swiftly become cluttered.

Here's hoping

 

[angelwatt]

... the page usually fails to load and to make matters worse it doesn't display the URL (just a useless file reference) so I have no way of finding the original source....

This behavior is typical because you aren't opening the page from the url, but from your file system. That's why I usually copy the url and throw it into the source code when I need to save a page. I'm not sure about your slowness, I don't save pages with Safari.

 

[patrickq]

What do you use to save webpages? I need something quick and easy, just click/save and be able to open instantly. I don't understand why Safari doesn't just do this, seems like some naff programming

 

[angelwatt]

What do you use to save webpages? I need something quick and easy, just click/save and be able to open instantly. I don't understand why Safari doesn't just do this, seems like some naff programming

Well I use Firefox most of the time. I just did a quick save of this page and it worked fine. I also tried Safari (I'm running version 3) and saved as both source code and web archive and it saved and opened up fine and quickly. You could always try version 3 (if you haven't yet) and see if that helps. It comes with an uninstaller if you want to switch back since version 3 is still beta.

The only other thing I can think of is if you have any third party extras installed for Safari that may be interfering.

 

[patrickq]

Still not found a good solution to save webpages yet, reluctant to try Safari 3 until it's sorted, seem to be far too many problems, prefer to stay with those I know for the moment

However, regarding the URL, I just discovered this excellent little plugin (DownloadComment 1.1), must first give my thanks to www.pimpmysafari.com and www.pimpmymac.wordpress.com who led me there. It resolves the problem I was having of not knowing the original URL of a saved webpage when I opened it later.
The download link is:
http://www.ecamm.com/mac/free/DownloadComment.zip
I’m running Tiger 10.4.10 and Safari 2.0.4 on a G4 PPC, think it works with Intel as well, but not sure about Safari 3 or Leopard. Very quick to download and seconds later was installed and working, tested and it’s great, just choose ‘Get info’ on the file and it shows the original URL, along with the usual info.