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Problems saving web pages (Android version)

  • 3 ردود
  • 1 has this problem
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  • آخر ردّ كتبه gliu20

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There are several problems with saving web pages in the Android version:


1. When saving a web page as PDF, most often one of the following occurs (depending on how the page is set up, I suppose):

Either the menu bars and other elements in the top layer are repeated on every page of the PDF, covering the text underneath. The text cannot be recovered even by selecting and copying, so I assume it is not only being covered, but actually discarded.

Or only the basic layer which contains the text is saved; in this case, most often everything else (images etc), apart from the text, is discarded.

(Of course none of these problems occurs when the page has only one layer.)


2. With some pages, only one page of the generated PDF contains text, even if the text in the page is much longer; so most of the contents gets lost. It happened, for example, with the following pages:

https://www.gob.pe/477-revalidar-o-convalidar-estudios-primarios-y-o-secundarios-del-extranjero

https://peru21.pe/economia/indecopi-como-ser-un-influencer-y-no-ser-multado-en-el-intento-instagram-facebook-redes-sociales-noticia/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/03/10/webcam-security-cover-wikileaks-comey-zuckerberg/98953462/

Again, this does not occur with all pages; it seems to depend on the specific way how the website is set up.


3. Some pages are saved as a PDF with disproportionally large or disproportionally small font sizes. A notorious example is Wikipedia: Wikipedia pages are regularly saved with a font so large that only a few lines fit into a page. In some cases, additionally the last letters at the right margin are cut off.


4. Some pages generate PDFs of a disproportionally large file size. For example, the following page contains only 18 KB of text (when copied into a text editor) and a few small images, but it produced a PDF of 39 MB (MEGAbytes):

https://www.hochsensibilitaet.ch/aktuell/neues_aus_der_forschung


5. In ALL saved PDFs, hyperlinks are discarded.


Sometimes I have to interrupt browsing on a page with interesting links. Due to limited bandwith, I would be glad to be able to save that page locally, and resume browsing by loading it locally. But since links are not preserved, I cannot do this.

Also, the Android version does not allow to save pages as HTML. That would be helpful too, since it would preserve the links (and consume less storage space, in most cases).

There are several problems with saving web pages in the Android version: 1. When saving a web page as PDF, most often one of the following occurs (depending on how the page is set up, I suppose): Either the menu bars and other elements in the top layer are repeated on every page of the PDF, covering the text underneath. The text cannot be recovered even by selecting and copying, so I assume it is not only being covered, but actually discarded. Or only the basic layer which contains the text is saved; in this case, most often everything else (images etc), apart from the text, is discarded. (Of course none of these problems occurs when the page has only one layer.) 2. With some pages, only one page of the generated PDF contains text, even if the text in the page is much longer; so most of the contents gets lost. It happened, for example, with the following pages: https://www.gob.pe/477-revalidar-o-convalidar-estudios-primarios-y-o-secundarios-del-extranjero https://peru21.pe/economia/indecopi-como-ser-un-influencer-y-no-ser-multado-en-el-intento-instagram-facebook-redes-sociales-noticia/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/03/10/webcam-security-cover-wikileaks-comey-zuckerberg/98953462/ Again, this does not occur with all pages; it seems to depend on the specific way how the website is set up. 3. Some pages are saved as a PDF with disproportionally large or disproportionally small font sizes. A notorious example is Wikipedia: Wikipedia pages are regularly saved with a font so large that only a few lines fit into a page. In some cases, additionally the last letters at the right margin are cut off. 4. Some pages generate PDFs of a disproportionally large file size. For example, the following page contains only 18 KB of text (when copied into a text editor) and a few small images, but it produced a PDF of 39 MB (MEGAbytes): https://www.hochsensibilitaet.ch/aktuell/neues_aus_der_forschung 5. In ALL saved PDFs, hyperlinks are discarded. Sometimes I have to interrupt browsing on a page with interesting links. Due to limited bandwith, I would be glad to be able to save that page locally, and resume browsing by loading it locally. But since links are not preserved, I cannot do this. Also, the Android version does not allow to save pages as HTML. That would be helpful too, since it would preserve the links (and consume less storage space, in most cases).

All Replies (3)

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Hi

Thank you for your feedback.

We try to make Firefox for Android as fast and well equipped as possible, but we also need to make sure that it is small enough to run on many different Android devices all over the world. As such the .pdf tool may not be as well equipped as the desktop tool, but it is something that may be looked at again in a future update.

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I see. But in this case, would it not be less resource-consuming to offer HTML download instead of PDF conversion?

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An HTML file alone is not printable, and thus, wouldn't help for your case. Also, it requires viewing through a browser.