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I would like to make a 'backup' of this web page, preferably in PDF format. Like a screenshot, read-only, for reference.

Trying to print the page into a PDF (OS X, Safari) causes weird printer layout handling, which is a stylesheet issue etc. Let's not go there. I want exactly what the browser shows on screen. Like a screenshot (which I could take, but is tedious since the page needs scrolling).

Safari allows for "Save as web archive", but I would prefer a portable single-file format s.a. PDF. Really - is there no way?

I was sure SO would have an answer to this. Did not find the question asked, yet.

Addendum: Found this but it requires a non-free EagleFiler software. Looks like the most promising approach, though.

Addendum 2 Thanks for all the great suggestions so far. I will keep this open until a true killer-of-them-all solution is found. That would be i.e. any of the major browsers allowing true save-as-PDF without rendering the page for a printer.

For now, my own solution is to keep .webarchive files. Actually, unlike I first though, they are single files which is good. Naturally, the solution is OS X specific.

akauppi
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4 Answers4

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I would suggest using something like html2canvas to render your entire document as an image, and then printing (or saving) that image.

aroth
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  • html2canvas looks promising and is a feat in itself. But it fails to render some of the text right (overlaps words) - and how should I 'save as image' the contents of a canvas entry? – akauppi Aug 22 '11 at 04:13
  • [This page](http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/canvas2image/) has a good example of how to do that. In a nutshell, you can use `toDataURL()` to get an encoded representation of your current canvas state, and then you can add an image tag that displays it. Then you can copy/save/manipulate that image as you would any other image. – aroth Aug 22 '11 at 04:22
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I went to http://www.capturefullpage.com and put in your URL and got this image.

There are other web sites out there to do this as well. Furthermore there are browser plugins so you don't need to depend on sites like these.

ckittel
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  • Thanks. That actually renders everything fine, though the font seems a bit vague compared to my browser's rendering. Seems to work. However, as a JPEG I would lack the ability to copy-paste text out of a screenshot (that PDF backup would grant) so I'm keeping the question open, for now. – akauppi Aug 22 '11 at 04:16
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Paparazzi! allows you to capture a whole page as a picture from Safari. Dunno if it's scriptable, but I guess you could fake it with AppleScript in any event. http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060712064929281

tripleee
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  • The tool looks really good. If it did PDF I'd probably select this as the official answer. And, it's OS X specific which is not a problem for me, but for others may be. So the jury is still out - hopefully some browser coder falls onto this page and sees the need. :) – akauppi Aug 22 '11 at 15:23
  • For a command line version (as referred to on the Paparazzi page): http://www.paulhammond.org/webkit2png/ Also that is OS X specific. – akauppi Aug 22 '11 at 15:24
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PdfMyUrl.com looks like a nice online thing, with many options, but the options need payment. Free Online URL to PDF Converter (nice name!) does what it says and is, well, free.

akauppi
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