Is is possible to edit Webpages saved - eg Add highlighting

[bookman]

Would be great if we could make some edits to webpages that we saved.

For example, such as highlight certain words. Perhaps even edit out certain sections so that one can concentrate on the key issues.

Basically when we save a webpage, the essence of the whole thing can be a paragraph above, a section of it in the middle plus some portions in the concluding paragraph. So being able to highlight and even make some annotations at our option can allow to add value to the saved pages for our own use.

Surfulater which essentially allows you to save webpages and edit the saved pages. See

Surfulater, software to capture, edit, organize web research
"Feature: Uses HTML to provide a graphically rich environment to view and edit information.
Benefit: Information is captured in its original format and WYSIWYG HTML editing gives you freedom to change or present text as you want."
http://www.surfulater.com/features.html

[cnewtonne]

This has been repeatedly requested and I believe Kinook has it on the features list. For now, these is not native support for such feature.

I simply copy it to as RTF and edit it as such. Some users, I believe, simply do a 'cntrl+j' to launch page in their favorite editor.

I once saw an app or a browser extension that allows you in situ editing, I just can not find it any more and it does in in a WYSIWYG fashion. I will share it if I find it again.

[bookman]

Originally posted by cnewtonne
I once saw an app or a browser extension that allows you in situ editing, I just can not find it any more and it does in in a WYSIWYG fashion. I will share it if I find it again.

Could it be the Firefox extension called Aardvark. I know it can remove unwanted parts like Adverts etc. But I don't think it can do insitu editing eg highlight or let you add a few words etc.

I did play around with it when I was using Surfulater. But I did remember that when I email the "edited" article (ie now missing the adverts etc) from within Surfulater, the edited portions appear in the copy received by the recipient.

It maybe something I did wrong somewhere. Have yet to figure it out. Maybe someone else may like to check this out.

Aardvark Firefox Extension
"Things You Can Do With Aardvark

* Clean up unwanted banners and surrounding "fluff," especially prior to printing a page
* See how the page is created, block by block
* View the source code of one or more elements"
http://karmatics.com/aardvark/

[quant]

if you use Firefox, I can suggest add-on called Nandu, it's a wysiwyg (or source code) editor.
CTRL+J to open stored website in Firefox (dont forget to set open html files writable), then edit with Nandu in Firefox, CTRL+S, done ...

but obviously it would be nice if this can be done just like it is with rft documents inside UR. User woudn't even need to know that he/she's editing rtf or html document, the same editing toolbars could work on both, that would be really nice ...

[maynard]

The Nandu version on the Firefox addon site only works through FF 1.5 and not 2.x. The author is currently rewriting the addon.

But... there is a link on the addon download page to a hacked version that DOES run on 2.x. I'm running it on 2.0.0.3.

Go here to download.
http://bundeenainfo.com/bundeena-nandu-hack-for-firefox-2.0-6.html

Cheers.

[tinjaw]

I would very much like to see this feature added. What I would like to see UR do is duplicate the functionality of the Scrapbook Firefox extension. I find myself using Firefox/Scrapbook more than I use UR when doing online research.

http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook/

[cnewtonne]

This is something I hope Kinook will be able to include in their next release. I've spent hours trying to find a way around it. There is not an efficient one for now. One option is to use HTML Quick Edit Bar (http://www.winutility.com/qeb/?from=prog_qeb). It works elegantly. Go to design mode, edit the page as you wish, then save it. Use UR buttons to copy/link the saved copy. Further edits can be done by cntrl+j and the cntrl+F5 to sync the docs.

When I need to use a feature that UR does not support, I first make it known to Kinook and raise forum support. If it can not be attained short term, I try to circumvent it. This is one way I did this.

From my experience with UR, IMO, it is not optimized for research work. It does good to capture your daily task work and small to medium editing. If you are a hard core researcher like myself, UR will restrict you. I had hoped to use it as such but it had me offer to many compromises I really was not willing to make.

It is not appropriate for me to mention other competitive products here that offer better tools ,but if you provide an email, I will be more than happy to provide some suggestions. You can also, read this thread which has a lot more idea.
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=2362.0

[Jon Polish]

Originally posted by cnewtonne
It is not appropriate for me to mention other competitive products here that offer better tools ,but if you provide an email, I will be more than happy to provide some suggestions. You can also, read this thread which has a lot more idea.
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=2362.0

I would appreciate hearing from you. My address is:
jon.polish[at]worldnet.att.net

Thank you.

Jon

[quant]

Originally posted by cnewtonne
If you are a hard core researcher like myself, UR will restrict you.

what do you mean by "hard core researcher"? Please explain

I'm researcher myself, and UR provides all I need: I have whole my library, that can be linked to sources, referenced inside other notes, exported, notes can be linked + wiki links, highly customizable database-like data structure with unlimited possibilities, forms, saved searches, features you won't find anywhere else ...

Originally posted by cnewtonne
It is not appropriate for me to mention other competitive products here that offer better tools

Please do mention them, I'm sure Kinook would appreciate constructive criticism. Could you please say what features in particular are you missing in UR and/or what software does better in that particular feature. Thanks! :)

I tried many many PIMs, and in my personal opinion, UR is by far the best research tool available at the moment

[cnewtonne]

For the sake of being fare to Kinook and its users (and I'm one of them), I can certainly mention what UR is lacking from a 'hard-core research' perspective. First things first, I have and will always be recommending UR to other users when I see that it does address their information management issues. Here is an example I just wrote recently http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=2362.500

I consider my self a power researcher. I spend 10 hours a day or more writing research papers and articles on different issues. I generate 3-5 papers a week. Once I'm done with data gathering, I have may be 8 pdfs, 20 web articles, 3-5 docs, 2 ppt, 30-50 emails. My job is to put all this data together in one final paper.

This process relies heavily on 5 main efficiencies ...
1- ability to capture content
2- ability to save and organize content
3- ability to compose content.
4- Ability to compare and contrast content
5- ability to publish it

Please note that the objective here is to come up with one final document that addresses issue at hand based on all gathered content. I say this because the mere fact that I can create tree branch containing everything I captured is not the goal in-of-itself, rather a step in towards the final goad.

UR does an excellent job in 1 and 2. Its capturing and organization facilities are the best I have see (I saw at least 20 others). I enjoy working the UR for this very same reason.

UR, however, falls short on 3 and 4. A lot of users probably need not proceed to these steps. They consider their ability to capture content and organize it the end of the story and they're happy with that. This is why we can both talk about same thing but sound as if each one is on a different wave length.

The ability to compose content is severely lacking in UR. Imagine having to deliver a document that is 10 pages long. How can you do that with such limited editing features in UR. Not being able to do style formats, indentation at minimum is restricting. I brought this issue to kinook several times. A quick forum search will show you this effort. Furthermore, UR does not provide an efficient way for us to edit web pages inline (as does many other products). This is very important for my work as it allows me to study web content and highlight and annotate content.

Another feature I find lacking is the ability to concatenate content. In its latest release, UR implement info item merge feature which is great. As much as I needed it, the implementation proved it cumbersome to use. The fact that I have to go the option panel to turn it off and on is absolutely fatiguing. I want to concatenate content all the time and I also want to do multi-selection to move and organize pretty often. If I want to reorg, I do not want UR to merge content, there is no way to do this other other turning it on and off. I have no idea why is it so difficult to simply provide a right click menu item to 'merge selected' vs having to bury it deep in the options dialogue and having to go there so often.


The ability to compare and contrast content is another problem with UR. So often, I have to put 2,3,5 docs next to each other in one view so I can tell how a graph looks like, or how each content solves a particular problem differently, or how each content image compares. There is not easy way (or even a way) to do this in UR. You can go as far as using tabs which you're advised to keep to a minimum prevent instabilities. Other products allow you to tile your info item content pages as you like. You can pin a particular one or more, can generate a copy of it for read-only and many other facilities.

Believe me, I tried and spent hours to work around these issues and found some ways. But all, even though sounded workable in theory, proved to be impractical and short-lived at best.

Initially I thought I can use UR for this kind of work and soon I realized It just won't work. However, its elegance, capturing and organization facilities are so attractive to resist. I just love working with it during the day. So I kept it to manage my tasks and some minor editing work. For every thing else, I use a more powerful product.

[quant]

ok, I see, we are completely different kind of researchers and UR users :)

What you need is a good editor, comparison tools + some kind of collection tool, that's more or less it. I see from this forum that some users would like the "editor+website grabber" features in UR. I suppose you dont make much use of forms, attributes, saved searches, internal and external links (this is where UR stands out, especially attributes is what makes UR different to other "editor+grabber"-like softwares.), maybe I'm wrong.

UR, from it's name is something different, "Ultra Recall" - ie. you can very effectively recall valuable pieces of information (of different structure given by it's properties, attributes, forms) you collected over possibly long period of time, can make various relations among it ...

I think this website explains very nicely what UR could do for user, http://www.kinook.com/UltraRecall/why.html ,
for your very short-time collection of flat structured data, I'm in no doubt there is a better alternative to UR.

[mmacauley]

Originally posted by cnewtonne
Initially I thought I can use UR for this kind of work and soon I realized It just won't work. However, its elegance, capturing and organization facilities are so attractive to resist. I just love working with it during the day. So I kept it to manage my tasks and some minor editing work. For every thing else, I use a more powerful product.
Out of curiosity, what product?