HOME
TOPICS
SEARCH
ABOUT ME
MAIL

 
I don't save pointers to Web pages. I save Web pages.
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Bookmarks? Favorites? Send yourself Web pages instead


Dec. 13, 2000

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers

   I use my e-mail program to organize my note-taking. This works well because, like many of you, I run my e-mail program just about continually.
   I explained how I do this last week . This week I'll tell you how I've made my e-mail software even more powerful by turning it into a repository for Web pages.
   Most of you should be able to do the same thing, on any kind of modern computer, even if you're not running the same program I use. All you need is a mail program that handles HTML mail. (HTML means "hypertext markup language." It's the code used to make Web pages.) As long as your mail program can do that, you're ready for the big time. You can send yourself Web pages.
   Huh? Is this crazy or what?
   It's crazy like a fox. You probably already know that you can create bookmarks (or favorites) in your Web browser. These are shortcuts or pointers to Web pages. Click on a bookmark and your browser goes out and finds the page. If all is well, it opens the page on your screen.
   The "if all is well" part can get in the way. If the site is busy or if your Internet connection needs a shot in the arm, your Web browser might take a year and a half to open an page from your bookmarks.
   That's why my method works better. I don't save pointers to Web pages. I save Web pages. I do make bookmarks for sites I want to look at again, but if I really want to save a Web page I do just that -- I save the Web page. Bookmarks are for wimps.
   The secret? When you have a Web page open, you mail it to yourself using the built-in menu option your browser has for sending pages. Both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator have that option.
   Internet Explorer puts it in the "File" menu under "Send," then "Page by Email." Netscape puts it one level higher, under the "File" menu, then "Send Page." When you choose either of those options, your Web browser gathers up all the elements of the page currently open and passes them to your e-mail software. The e-mail software sends the entire page, not just a link to it.
   The best part is yet to come. When these pages arrive in your Inbox (in your mail program, in other words), they're not treated like Web-browser pages. They're treated like e-mail letters that just happen to contain Web pages. This makes them MUCH easier to handle than Web pages would be. You can just drag them from one folder to another to sort them out, for example.
   You can also use your e-mail software's Rules (or Filters) to deal with these pages automatically. You can create a rule that looks for two specific things in each letter that comes in -- is it from you (from yourself to yourself, in other words) and does it have a Web address in the text? (If you simply set up the rule to look for "http:" you'll be fine.)
   That way, the rule or filter can take care of a lot of the extra work of organizing saved Web pages.
   Here are two examples.
   I save a lot of pages that deal with tips and tricks for Windows and Linux. Before I finish mailing the Web page to myself, I can type a short keyword into the subject line of the message. (Each page is sent as a message, and you can edit the subject yourself.)
   If I'm sending a page that has Windows 2000 tips, I'll put :w2k: in the subject. If I'm sending a page that deals with scanner tips, I'll put :scan:. By putting a colon on each end of my keyword, I make sure that the rule or filter I create looks only for keywords I designate. (I include the colons in the search criteria. Is that simple or what?)
   This sounds like a great idea, right? But it's got a big flaw. Read the next part carefully.
   When you send Web pages, you're sending everything on each page. Bookmarks and favorites take up very little space. Web pages full of images can take up a LOT of space. If you have so much disk space that you can't imagine filling it up, I've just shown you a way to do it.
   On my main Linux PC, where I do all my mail and Web browsing, the primary folder where my mail is stored contains about 350 to 450 megabytes of files. A few months ago I did a cleanup and temporarily moved out all the stored HTML mail (all the Web pages that came in the mail, in other words). The folder shrank to 12 megabytes.
   But space is cheap. Big disk drives don't cost much, and having entire Web pages at your disposal can make life a lot easier. Why wait for your browser to retrieve a page when you already have it in your mail?