Why does "Save Page As" not save copies of web pages as they originally appeared? What's the way to fix it?
When using Firefox's "Save Page As", web pages are saved improperly, shreaded, or missing parts. The save copy should look identical to the web page and contain all files for offline viewing.
All Replies (7)
when dialog box opens after clicking on save as select save as type as web page complete this will save complete web page.
The problem occurs when selecting "Web Page, complete".
When I save a web page to my desktop, it shows up as 2 different Icons. One is a file folder Icon with all of the graphics from the web page. The other Icon is a white framed blue square with 3 white dots in the upper right hand corner. When I click on it, all I get is page after page of what I think is HTML garbage. I have tried all of the suggestions from the above posts, and it is still the same. Today I removed (uninstalled) Firefox, and started all over...Same results I tried IE for a couple of days and didn't have problems saving web site pages, but it is soooo slowww, so I am trying Firefox again and I am getting frustrated. I can't even save this page correctly to return to it.
I hope someone can help. Thanks, Benny
Modified by bennyrhoads
manidhwn, thanks, I can see the complete web page now. I only wish it didn't save it in 2 parts (so to speak).
Question: What is the setting to have it save the page as 1 file, not 2? Thanks.
P.S. Benny, maybe if we learn how to save the page as 1 file, then u won't have the icon quandary afterwards....maybe it will yield a workaround fix for you, I hope so.
When I click on the 'file' with the Firefox icon, then Firefox opens a complete page view; the other is a folder with the MS std folder icon and in it are the html objects. [Windows 7 Home Premium, FF v22]
I wonder if there's a setting in about:config that would allow us to "save page as" 1 file?
I'll post back if I find an answer before someone answers. Best regards to you. Thanks manidhwn for the complete page save solution.
Hi Tks4FF, most browsers will save a main page and a folder of supporting files. This is just the nature of how web pages are constructed, from lots of separate bits.
IE has an option to combine all the files into an Archive file in MHTML format. Firefox does not support this natively, but there is an extension that adds it (I haven't tried it myself):
Personally I prefer to save pages as PDFs. You either can print them to PDF if you have a free or non-free PDF printer driver, or use an add-on. For Windows, I really like this extension: Print pages to Pdf. Due to a change in Firefox 22, you have to pick up the updated version from the versions page until the Add-ons team finishes its review.
Hi bennyrhoads, sorry you didn't get a response earlier.
The "3 dots" sounds as though a different program had taken over opening .htm files instead of Firefox. Try dragging and dropping the file onto an open Firefox window to see whether the page saved correctly.
To change the program that opens those files, you could try using right-click > Open With > Choose Default Program. I think on older versions of Windows you had to hold down a key (maybe the Shift key?) to get that option.
Hi ethic, many web pages are filled in dynamically with JavaScript, such as Google search results and the Facebook news feed. I'm not sure Firefox can save those correctly. For those sites, PDF probably would work better.