I need to print an entire copy of a company's website

[Exterous]

An odd request to be sure but we are buying a subsidiary of another company. I have been asked to find a way that we can print out the entire contents of the website exactly as it appears in order to mark up, get various approvals and then send out the markups to be created.

Does anyone have any tips or recommendations? Thanks!

 

[ShawnD1]

I've never done exactly what you're asking, but this might work.

HT Track is a program that I use to save website stuff so I can read it at work. You can set it to save everything on a page and all of the linked content for that domain, so theoretically it could rip an entire website as long as all of the pages are linked somewhere. From there, you would just manually open each saved page (.html) and print it.

 

[Exterous]

I've never done exactly what you're asking, but this might work.

HT Track is a program that I use to save website stuff so I can read it at work. You can set it to save everything on a page and all of the linked content for that domain, so theoretically it could rip an entire website as long as all of the pages are linked somewhere. From there, you would just manually open each saved page (.html) and print it.

Interesting - I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

 

[Engineer]

I've never done exactly what you're asking, but this might work.

HT Track is a program that I use to save website stuff so I can read it at work. You can set it to save everything on a page and all of the linked content for that domain, so theoretically it could rip an entire website as long as all of the pages are linked somewhere. From there, you would just manually open each saved page (.html) and print it.

I came here to post the HT Track program! Worked great on pulling in stuff that we needed at work!

 

[EagleKeeper]

The only problem you may have is if content is dynamically generated by their server.

 

[Exterous]

Ok so I've got the copy of the website but when I go to print the html it has the same formatting issues than if I manually printed the page. Are we just asking for too archaic of a process in physical printing and markup?

 

[Mushkins]

Ok so I've got the copy of the website but when I go to print the html it has the same formatting issues than if I manually printed the page. Are we just asking for too archaic of a process in physical printing and markup?

For all intents and purposes, you *are* manually printing the page. The .html and any associate files are literally the code that makes up the page. If it doesn't print out the way you want it, you might be able to fiddle with the print properties to make it work (shrink to fit, use a nonstandard paper size, play with margins, etc).

Websites are designed to look good in a browser, they're typically not designed to be 8.5x11 printer friendly. You might even have better luck taking screenshots of the pages and taking them to a Kinkos or Staples to have them custom printed on extra large paper.

 

[C1]

If you want the web pages to look exactly as they appear on the screen then do screen prints.

 

[Exterous]

You might even have better luck taking screenshots of the pages

If you want the web pages to look exactly as they appear on the screen then do screen prints.

Yeah - I'm just trying to avoid doing that if there was a more efficient method as they want the entire website. They love columns and all the columns show in verticle order when printing regardless of paper margins/orentation or scaling size as opposed to side by side in html

 

[rsutoratosu]

nvm

 

[Exterous]

It seems Adobe Pro gives you the ability to create a visually identical PDF. For anyone's future reference open Adobe Pro and go to Create PDF -> From Webpage. It will then download the entire site in what appears to be a very similar manner as HT Track and then PDFs everything. I was then able to print all the pdf pages for markup

 

[ShawnD1]

It seems Adobe Pro gives you the ability to create a visually identical PDF. For anyone's future reference open Adobe Pro and go to Create PDF -> From Webpage. It will then download the entire site in what appears to be a very similar manner as HT Track and then PDFs everything. I was then able to print all the pdf pages for markup

How were you looking at the HTML before this? I made a copy of the worst website ever made (link), viewed it in Google Chrome, then did a Print to PDF with the headers and footers box unchecked. The resulting PDF file looks fairly accurate.
Opening that HTML file in Acrobat 8 doesn't look right; it's too wide.

 

[Exterous]

How were you looking at the HTML before this? I made a copy of the worst website ever made (link), viewed it in Google Chrome, then did a Print to PDF with the headers and footers box unchecked. The resulting PDF file looks fairly accurate.
Opening that HTML file in Acrobat 8 doesn't look right; it's too wide.

I did those same steps and it would have worked for about 75% of their website - however the pages it wasn't working for were the most important 25%. For part of the website there were columns with separate images, text and links. When printing from chrome, IE< firefox these would no longer show as side by side columns but as verticle listings and would lose formatting.

 

[Jodell88]

There's a addon for firefox (I can't recall the name) that takes a screenshot of the entire webpage (It doesn't matter if the page is 25 miles long). Perhaps that can work?

 

[Exterous]

There's a addon for firefox (I can't recall the name) that takes a screenshot of the entire webpage (It doesn't matter if the page is 25 miles long). Perhaps that can work?

Thanks for the heads up but I was able to do what I needed with adobe pro