Printing Forum Thread With Pictures - How?

[Greg Guimond]

I just went to the "print thread" function and it will only print the text. Is there any way to set it up so that you can print the entire thread at one shot with all the associated photos? The text is fine but without pictures it kind of defeats the purpose. Any thoughts?

[Marlin275]

A screen capture image will always work but will not get the whole thread.
Just your current views, but this can be adjusted by making your views larger or smaller in the browser window.

[Greg Guimond]

Yes, I thought of that but I was hoping for an actual "auto" approach so I could print out my entire build thread which is just slightly verbose!

[Ghost]

Less than ideal but better than screenshots proper, there are packages like SnagIt that will do "window capture." That is, if you have an entire page of a thread in a window that's 10 times the size of your screen, it will grab the entire window in one shot, including what is scrolled off the screen. That would at least cut the screenshot approach down by a factor of 4 or 5.

[Greg Guimond]

Thanks Ghost I have to check that out. I have a lot of posts and I'd like to get the prints of the project. I was hoping that I could pay Scott to do it on the back end and burn a disc or two possibly but that is probably a bit far fetched.

[Greg Guimond]

I should have started to print the "book" when I started off with the build!

[MOP]

You can do a page page thing with the built in "Print Screen" key. You can print what you see by holding the control then pressing the "Print Screen", then open Word Pad in accessories right click and select paste. You can save, print or what ever you like from word pad. I just did it from another post and was going to load it here but the manage attachment thing keeps going to my previously posted photos. I copy many things with photos that I may not be able to easily find again. Phil

[Greg Guimond]

A business associate told me how to do this using Adobe which I am going to kick around a bit. He said it would "get everything including all the pictures". The only snag I believe is you have to have Acrobat XI Pro, whatever that is.

:doh:

[gcarter]

This is why I posted almost all the pictures full size in the TR thread.
It's a lot of work to re-size all the pictures and posting them that way. But it should make this type of work easier.

[Greg Guimond]

I fiddled around with Adobe and it seems to be an excellent way to reproduce threads with all the photos properly displayed. It takes some time, but a thread normally has about 15 posts to a page. You open up that page (and each page after that, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on) and you save the url to your desktop. Then you open up Adobe and "convert" the desktop url to a pdf. It stalls for a few seconds while it grinds through the conversion, then up pops "Page 1" with a pretty decent layout and all the photos and text. The layout is not great but it is good. You save that pdf to your desktop and then rinse and repeat.

I have to hack around with it some more .........

[Greg Guimond]

I think I figured it out. I decided to use a thread that had 15 posts in it titled 97.8 miles SWEDE from our Nordic friend.

I opened the thread up with Chrome
Then I chose "select all"
Then I moved the mouse outside of the url area, right clicked and chose "save as" and saved it to my desktop. Of course it saved it with the exact thread name.
Then I opened Adobe and ran my mouse over the desktop icon for the thread and clicked on "convert to pdf"
It grinds a little bit and then produces the attached pdf that includes all the pictures in color.

The format is not great but not that bad as you can see when you open it below .........:incredible:

[Ghost]

So, I looked at this and while it does give you a file, it still only captures a single page of a multi-page thread, right? Why not just do:
File > Save Page As


and choose "web page complete" as the type? While it won't put the page into a single file, it will put it into a single folder, locally kept and easily transferable just like a file. And loadable with a double-click just like a single file. And unlike the Adobe PDF version, it looks perfect. And all the thumbnails are not only there, they are clickable, expandable to full size. And it's less work than the Adobe approach. The Adobe thing is cool, but seems harder and with a lesser product. Am I missing something?

(BTW, I used Firefox. Haven't tried IE's version of the same feature on this site, but it has worked for me on others.)

Of course, it'd be that much cooler if there were a "thread export" button. Or a "show whole thread" button that would load an entire thread sans pagination. Which would be useful, even if it did make the server hate George Carter. ;)

[Greg Guimond]

Cool, I just tried your approach in IE Ghost. I got the "single folder" with the precise name on my desktop as you describe. But then, when I double click the folder it opens up to 40 thumbnail pictures from I'm not sure where. I do not have any of the chosen threads content :banghead:

[Greg Guimond]

I'm looking and in IE I don't have a "save page as" option .............? I only have a "save as". Perhaps that is only a Firefox thingy?

[Ghost]

I'm looking and in IE I don't have a "save page as" option .............? I only have a "save as". Perhaps that is only a Firefox thingy?

In IE it's just called "save as" but it does the same thing. When you use it, you pick between "web page complete" and "file" or something along those lines. One saves a collection of files in a single folder, the other saves as a file. The former should keep all the thumbnails expandable I think.

EDIT: just tried it and it did fine. I could view the thread from my local copy, see the thumbnails, and expand the thumbnails. All using IE.

[Greg Guimond]

Ok, save as "web archive, single file" ....................hmmm

Yep, save it as "web archive, single file" gets the icon onto the desktop but this does not give me a folder like "web page, complete" gives me that can be moved .........hmmm

Saved it as "web page, complete" and then copied the folder to a word doc and it weirdly copied a bunch of content that I don't know where it came from. Strange.

[Ghost]

Ok, save as "web archive, single file" ....................hmmm

Yep, save it as "web archive, single file" gets the icon onto the desktop but this does not give me a folder like "web page, complete" gives me that can be moved .........hmmm

Saved it as "web page, complete" and then copied the folder to a word doc and it weirdly copied a bunch of content that I don't know where it came from. Strange.

Web page complete has a bunch of files that are used to build the page. Behind the scenes stuff, and components of what you're used to seeing.

[Greg Guimond]

I still have to fart around with your approach. Can you do a "key word" search ie:find in the thread content like you can with the Adobe approach?

[Ghost]

Yes, I'm sure you can. It basically saves the page's components as a collection of files (one master, the rest as reference content that the master points to). When you open the page from your local copy, the disk on your computer serves the page up to your browser just like a web server normally does. Instead of a URL at donzi.net being in the address window, you'll see the address of the web page on your hard disk's filesystem. The browser is just showing a web page like any other, it just happens to be on your computer rather than out on the web.

Hence, the page renders just like it does off the regular web site. And browser functions (like Find) work just the same way they do with the page when it is served up from harbormaster's servers. (For clarity, the browser "Find" function searches the content of the current page that is WITHIN the browser. The search and advanced search functions are done by the donzi.net webserver, not your browser, and thus they won't work.)

A word search in your Adobe approach does the same thing: it uses Adobe Acrobat to search the text in the document. And similarly, it can't search the whole site (or even a whole thread), just a whole page that you saved as a file.

[Greg Guimond]

Very cool. What happens to all the designated thread content if the servers or site go poof, is your content "saved" somewhere for the vault? Is it on your C drive?

[Ghost]

Very cool. What happens to all the designated thread content if the servers or site go poof, is your content "saved" somewhere for the vault? Is it on your C drive?

The page you saved has nothing to do with the donzi.net site and is unaffected. It is a folder on your hard drive with a bunch of files in it.

[Greg Guimond]

I figured I would take another run at the "Ghost" method.

Opened up IE,
logged onto the site,
went to the thread 97_8 miles SWEDE,
saved it to my desktop and YES a folder appeared in addition to the URL shortcut,

clicked on the folder and got the attached mumbo jumbo ..........?

[Ghost]

I figured I would take another run at the "Ghost" method.

Opened up IE,
logged onto the site,
went to the thread 97_8 miles SWEDE,
saved it to my desktop and YES a folder appeared in addition to the URL shortcut,

clicked on the folder and got the attached mumbo jumbo ..........?

You don't click on the folder of goodies to see the page, you click on the master .html file.