29.7.4 Working with web pages
Archiving web pages is often a troublesome task. The reasons are manifold and we cannot go into all of them. We can discuss only a few major obstacles and how to remove them.
First of all we should not forget that the major hindrance to simply saving a web page as file onto our hard disk is that web pages normally consist of several files. Sometimes web pages are put together dynamically as when its contents are retrieved from a database.
The easiest solution is if the web page we want to archive possesses a link to a print version. Some web pages offer this possibility because printing is explicitly desired.
If there is no print version available we should make sure that in terms of browsers there is not only the Internet Explorer installed but also Mozilla or Netscape (both rely on the same technology). Normally we get better results with Mozilla but in some cases Microsoft's Internet Explorer yields a more satisfying print output. If both fail, try a third type of browser (like Opera): it might give you the result you want.
Let us take a look at a web page in the print preview. It is not what we expect because the background is turned off and the preview's orientation is 'portrait.'
In 'Page Setup' we can change these values:
You find these options either directly in the 'Print preview' or, depending on the version of the browser you are using, in menu 'File.'
After these adjustments the page will look much better although it may happen that the contents have been miraculously moved to page two.
We can either start printing from page two or change the zoom factor to get a better result.
As soon as the print preview looks acceptable we print the page with the Archivista printer. The subsequent import of the page should not create any problems.