Zengobi Forums

brab · Joined: 14 Nov 2007 Posts: 4

Hello,

I'm doing some research for a project where I want to store and annotate some content found on the web. I created web archives of the pages that interest me, but I don't know how to view them and create annotations about them in Curio.

As Curio seems to be able to display live web pages (using Web Views), I guess it should also be able to display web archives, but I cannot figure how to do it.

Thanks a lot.

george · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2007 Posts: 1978

We're currently only showing a preview of the web archive in the idea space. Double-clicking on a web archive figure should open it in Safari for full rendering.

brab · Joined: 14 Nov 2007 Posts: 4

[quote="george"]We're currently only showing a preview of the web archive in the idea space. Double-clicking on a web archive figure should open it in Safari for full rendering.[/quote]

Argh, so there is no way to annotate it then? Is there some other format I should try (like printing the page to PDF)?

george · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2007 Posts: 1978

Printing to PDF is a good idea. You can also use the print direct to Curio Scrapbook feature. In Safari, or any app actually, choose File > Print, then click on the PDF popup button, choose Save PDF to Curio Scrapbook and it will be printed directly to Curio's Scrapbook shelf as a PDF. From there, you can then drag-and-drop it into any Curio idea space. Then you can annotate it or use Spread PDF to spread it across several idea spaces and annotate on each page. Hope that helps!

brab · Joined: 14 Nov 2007 Posts: 4

Spread PDF works great! Thanks for the suggestion.

After playing with this, I'd like to add two feature requests:
- having the option to be able to view a web archive in place (i.e. not as a preview)
- when printing to PDF in scrapbook, record the URL somewhere (probably in the URL tab of the Extras -> Asset Info inspector)

macbliss · Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 29

I'd like to echo the last request as well and add the following. I have always wanted dragged text from the web to also grab the URL - just like dragged pictures do. For easy return access. This makes that feature much more useful. Without it, you have to manually enter urls, of course you can drag a url as well, but not as ideal. Sometimes you just want a certain section of the web page -- not the whole page -- and not just a url.

george · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2007 Posts: 1978

Actually, if you drag text from Safari then we automatically attach a "From: //blah/blah/blah" suffix to the dropped text. That way you can easily click on the link and get back to your referencing web page. To drag text from Safari, select the text then click and drag up to drag it off the page and drop it into Curio. I use this trick all the time in my own Curio projects.

macbliss · Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 29

Thanks George,

It works in OmniWeb too which is great.

Being able to store text clippings in Scrapbook would be cool.

brab · Joined: 14 Nov 2007 Posts: 4

[quote="george"]Actually, if you drag text from Safari then we automatically attach a "From: //blah/blah/blah" suffix to the dropped text. That way you can easily click on the link and get back to your referencing web page. To drag text from Safari, select the text then click and drag up to drag it off the page and drop it into Curio. I use this trick all the time in my own Curio projects.[/quote]
It would be great if the same happened when printing to Curio's scrapbook.

macbliss · Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 29

I concur with Brab's request and here's one other thing I'd like to put my two cents in for ...

I'd like to be able to have the URL appended to text clippings when using Service, "Add to Curio Scrapbook," from a browser, just like when you drag or copy some text from a web page into Curio.

Sometimes this would be a preferred method over dragging text.

When using Services, it would be nice if it could place the url in the URL field and optionally preserve formating/links as well.

I would use Curio Services while surfing if it had that ability. For now I use mini mode and drag text, which is great, but when you are not working on a specific project you just want to grab something interesting from the web or for a different project, without having to open the specific curio project - it would be quite handy to be able to use "add to Curio Scrapbook," if it captured url in addition to text/images.