Saving woodworking articles for later viewing, Part 2

If you have a Macintosh, you can simply "print" to a PDF printer - and that includes interesting articles that you've stumbled upon on the Web.  If you are a PC (user) then there isn't a native method to do this.  (See Part 1 for native methods to save webpages.)   However, for the last few months, I've been using PrimoPDF, a free print-to-PDF driver that is added to your printer selection combobox.  I especially like being able to highlight something and then print just that selection to a PDF file.  PDF is an acronym for Portable Document Format.  Like an MHT file, it stores everything you need in one file. A nice thing about PDF files is that they can be viewed on any machine (the first word in the name is Portable, after all.)  On a PC, the best way to view PDF files is by using Adobe Reader (also free!) which used to be called Acrobat Reader.  So, if you aren't afraid to install two pieces of software, ignore everything I said in Part 1! 

Saving Woodworking Articles for later viewing, Part 1

The web is great - I'm sure we've all found a lot of information that we can't live without, surfing around. Sometimes you will find a really useful article that you don't want to lose track of, and are a little afraid about finding it on the 'net again. Sure, you could print it, but the images lose their crispness and much of the detail.
Internet Explorer can help you out. You can save entire webpages for offline viewing, here is how:
When you use viewing any webpage, go to the File menu and use the Save As... option - choose a desination and name, but select the "Web Archive, single file(*.mht) as the Save as type: - this will create a file with all the pictures that can be viewed offline, backed up to CD and stored, whatever. There are other methods for saving webpages, but only this one puts everything into one file. I think you are fine about doing this for your own use, but I'm not sure about the legalities about sharing .mht files with others. Remember, this only works with Internet Explorer. Whoops! I'm wrong! There is support for MHT / MIME HTML files in other browsers. I wish I had known about this feature a few years ago - I stumbled across a guy that made a pair of Stickley style recliners out of flame figured Maple, with good pictures of each step of the process... ...and could never find the page again.