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Need help tracking web pages
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Posted by Ken
Jan 12, 2011 at 11:15 PM
I have received an assignment at work that requires me to report back to our web master of any needed changes to web pages belonging to our work division of approximately 35 people. While this assignment only happens twice a year, it is a bit like herding cats as I need to farm out the pages and links to staff so they can review their respective pages and report back any needed changes. Now, I can print out the pages and the linked pages, and their linked pages, to track progress and responses, but I thought that I would try to save a tree if possible. I do not believe that my employer will give me any tools to track this assignment (other than the common components of MS Office), and while I am certainly not a Luddite, I am not versed in web page maintenance. So, as I am on a tight deadline, can anybody recommend any basic software that does not need to be installed on a PC (i.e. cloud-based or “no-install”) that will allow me to attach note or comments to copies of each web page. From past posts, I am guessing that Surfulaltor might work, but it needs to be installed on a machine. Also, I am a bit loathe to spend funds for a work project, but might consider doing so if a program really made a difference. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
—Ken
Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 13, 2011 at 12:37 AM
Ken wrote:
From past posts, I am guessing that Surfulaltor
>might work, but it needs to be installed on a machine. Also, I am a bit loathe to spend
>funds for a work project, but might consider doing so if a program really made a
>difference.
I could imagine Surfulator working well for this, even if you need to install it. It would be easy to create a folder for each employee, and then create sub-folders with dates, where you could store the captured web pages, so various versions can be compared and progress can be tracked. Each folder and article can be annotated. But I’m not an expert in this area either. I suppose Ultra Recall could also do these tasks, but I generally found Surfulator just more intuitive and easier to use.
Posted by Ken
Jan 13, 2011 at 05:37 AM
Well, I am home from work now, and have had a few minutes to do a bit more research. There appear to be several options, but I am not sure if any one specific one will fully meet my needs. The programs that seem to have caught my attention are Surfulater, MyInfo, WebResearch (and to a lesser degree, LinkStash, which I already own). LinkStash and MyInfo will run off of a USB drive, and that makes them easy to use at work, but LinkStash is really a bookmark program, and MyInfo does not have a trial version of its portable program. Surfulater and WebResearch seem best suited to the task, but both will require a machine on which I can install them. My biggest issue for selection right now, however, is time. This project needs to be completed by Jan. 25, and that means I need to get to work immediately, so the learning curve on whatever I choose has to be very short and easy. In short, I am willing to trade off features for ease if necessary. If I had tot he time to research this a bit more, it would be an enjoyable assignment. As it stands, it feels a bit like a burr under my saddle.
—Ken
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.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 13, 2011 at 06:41 AM
P.S. Sorry, I mentioned MyInfo, forgetting that you already referred to it in your own post. The portable version is practically identical to the installable one. You can try the installation at home and, if you purchase a license, this will be valid for both versions.