Need help tracking web pages

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 13, 2011 at 06:37 AM

Ken,

[1] I would suggest using Evernote (the free version should be more than enough):

- It is cloud based with a local client. You can work only in the cloud without installing anything if you so wish.

- There are extensions for IE/Firefox/Chrome/Safari but you don’t even need to install these. You can use the bookmarklet (scroll to the end of http://www.evernote.com/about/download/web_clipper.php ) which is a javascript link—keep it in your browser’s bookmarks and, when browsing a page, select what you want and click on the link. If you don’t select anything, you’ll be given the choice to capture the whole page and/or the URL.

- You can organise your collections in separate notebooks (just a flat list, no hierarchies) and/or use tags.

- If you use separate notebooks for your coworkers, you can share each notebook with the person responsible; they will then need to create their own free Evernote account to view/edit/annotate the pages.

- Alternatively, you can create a public notebook where you transfer the pages that you want them to view, in which case don’t need accounts. They won’t be able to edit the pages but they can simply copy the content to MS Word and annotate them there. A downside is that your public notebook will be available to anyone on the internet at http://www.evernote.com/pub/your-account/notebook-name but you can use a fairly complicated name for the notebook to avoid people reaching it by chance.

- Evernote will do a good job of capturing the content of pages as far as text and images are concerned, but not the styles (then again, most web collection software may have trouble with complicated layouts). If the layout is important, you may simply use Evernote in the same ways as above but without clipping anything, so only the links to the original pages are circulated.

Find below a couple of alternatives:

[2] MyInfo http://www.milenix.com/ is a classic and powerful two pane outliner which has been discussed here in the past. It can capture web content (I can’t vouch for its layout accuracy) and it can run from a USB stick. It can also export its content as HTML maintaining the hierarchical structure.

[3] Dropbox http://www.dropbox.com/ is an online file backup/sharing solution. As with Evernote, it has a local client which you don’t need in order to use the service (you should install it once, e.g. at your home PC, in order to create your account). You can save pages as .mht files in Internet Explorer, upload and share them with specific coworkers using just the web interface.

Hope this helps.