8 ms·

Show HN: A Web Extension to save a page or selection as eBook

106 points by eg312 10y ago

brunelli 10y ago
Nice! I'll definitely keep an eye on it. I was just a bit disappointed when I went through the commit log, as it's not very descriptive. Here is a great article [1] on writing good commit messages. [1]: http://alistapart.com/article/the-art-of-the-commit http://alistapart.com/article/the-art-of-the-commit
- eg312 10y ago
  Thanks! ... You are right, I have a bad habit of not writing proper commit messages when working on my projects (because, usually, nobody reads them besides me :) ).
jflowers45 10y ago
Nice. Also cool that Google Docs now lets you save as ePub http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/08/google-docs-now-lets-you-export-files-in-epub-ebook-format/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/08/google-docs-now-lets-you-e...
erjjones 10y ago
Next. Someone in the community wire this up to an API (dropbox, or something) so that when I save as ePub it also puts a copy in my dropbox so that I can read it on the road.
- jaytaylor 10y ago
  ^ this, please! I'll definitely be looking into this to replace Evernote for my current clipping archival system. Check it out at http://jaytaylor.com/notes http://jaytaylor.com/notes I've been very dissatisfied with the absolutely terrible bastardized HTML served up by the Evernote API for web clippings, and this looks it could become a fantastic replacement!
  - eg312 10y ago
    Added on the to-do list. Thanks!
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rakoo 10y ago
  Couldn't you save the resulting epub to a dropbox folder ?
- unusximmortalis 10y ago
  Install dropbox sync app and point the extension to a subfolder of the dropbox sync root folder. Ta-da.
ikeboy 10y ago
https://dotepub.com/ https://dotepub.com/ does the same with a bookmarklet, although I don't think it's open source.
antar 10y ago
Amazon offers this extension for Chrome and Firefox. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-to-kindle-for-google/cgdjpilhipecahhcilnafpblkieebhea?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-to-kindle-for...
- captn3m0 10y ago
  This is what I'm currently using for taking my long-reads to my Kindle. Except it doesn't always work well. For eg, with the recent NYTimes article on the Arab world[0], it didn't give me the entire content. As a hack, I found that selecting all of the content and then using that as input worked, but I'm still losing out on all the images and some formatting. [0]: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-...
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    Have you tried adding to pocket and then using something like https://p2k.co/ https://p2k.co/ or https://help.getpocket.com/article/911-how-to-configure-calibre-with-pocket https://help.getpocket.com/article/911-how-to-configure-cali... to sync to Kindle?
pseingatl 10y ago
Epub has the potential of surpassing doc files as a document exchange format. It's so much easier to read an ePub than a pdf or a doc file on a phone.
MistahKoala 10y ago
Ooooh, now this is interesting! Presumably it clips just the article and not all the textual content on a page? I've long had an idea for an ePub app that will take email newsletters and compile them into something like a weekly ePub. I'm not a dev, though. I don't suppose there's any scope for this plugin to eventually work with non-browser content, is there?
- kej 10y ago
  For non-browser content it would be hard to beat Calibre for ebook creation. If you can get the content out of email and into the file system you could even script the Calibre conversion.
justjonathan 10y ago
This looks nice for a one off. If you are interested in automating this on a regular basis (perhaps to read the morning's news / blogs) I recommend Calibre, it is an amazing free (speech & beer) ebook management system that has this baked in. Here is the relevant manual section: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/news.html https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/news.html [Edit: formating and removed parenthetical within parenthetical]
dbalbright 10y ago
Anything that can work as well as Clearly. It's the best I've found at clipping articles for off-line archiving but it still makes me nervous having them on Evernote's platform when they said they were going to shut Clearly down (but apparently had a change of heart, for now).
kayla210 10y ago
Really nice! This is a lot more convenient than opening a Print dialog and choosing to save as PDF, which doesn't always work like you want it to. I haven't used ePub format yet, but it seems to be a format gaining traction in the eBook world.
anotheryou 10y ago
cool! Luckily my kobo ebook reader has pocket integration though :)
derefr 10y ago
I read a lot of "serial archive"-formatted things (webcomics, online novels, etc.) I've always wanted an extension like this that will spider rel="next" and rel="previous" links/headers (or, not finding those, try to guess a pair of links on the page that represent those) to build up an archive sequence; chew that into a set of pages+sections; generate a Table of Contents for those; and then stick all that together into an ePub. I've written scrapers to do exactly that for a few works, but they're one-offs that get their metadata (e.g. chapter titles) from explicit provided data-structures rather than from the site itself. A fully-general solution to this would be amazing.
- lfowles 10y ago
  Have you seen Dosage? It supports a lot of webcomics, but I don't remember how general it was. (Edit: I missed that you finished by publishing the content as an epub) http://dosage.rocks/ http://dosage.rocks/
  - derefr 10y ago
    Dosage seems to be more like a pseudo-RSS-client that relies on scraping cronjobs (for following live content that doesn't have an RSS feed; somewhat like what Dapper used to do) rather than a batch site-mirror-to-single-document transformer. I want this extension not for the new pages just coming out now, but rather to more comfortably go through the ten years of pages of something that have already built up (on my phone with a reflowed mobile layout†, and still available when offline.) Side-note: webcomic authors have realized that there's a market for physical book-prints of their work, but they're ignoring the fact that people like me would gladly buy a digital version of the same book from the Kindle or iBooks store—even though we can read the individual pages online. People are willing to pay for convenience! † And speaking of reflowed mobile layouts, I wish every webcomic reflowed the way Dinosaur Comics does (http://qwantz.com/index.php?mobile=1 http://qwantz.com/index.php?mobile=1). It wouldn't work for those special "frame-boundary-breaking" art techniques, but most comics don't even use those.
- rahimnathwani 10y ago
  Calibre recipes can do this. You still need to specify the start page, xpath to get the chapters etc., but it works.
j_k_s 10y ago
As someone who hasn't really used epub files, what's the benefit of it over PDF? I assume file sizes are smaller, but ... what else?
- DKnoll 10y ago
  PDF is meant to be a digital equivalent to paper, thus it does not scale well to different screen sizes. An objective of PDF is for a document to look the exact same no matter where you open it. ePub text and images can be reflowed to fit a smaller/larger screen, it is not proprietary, file sizes are smaller, and is overall an ideal format for ebooks.

106 points by eg312 10y ago

Nice! I'll definitely keep an eye on it. I was just a bit disappointed when I went through the commit log, as it's not very descriptive. Here is a great article [1] on writing good commit messages. [1]: http://alistapart.com/article/the-art-of-the-commit http://alistapart.com/article/the-art-of-the-commit

eg312 10y ago
Thanks! ... You are right, I have a bad habit of not writing proper commit messages when working on my projects (because, usually, nobody reads them besides me :) ).

jflowers45 10y ago

Nice. Also cool that Google Docs now lets you save as ePub http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/08/google-docs-now-lets-you-export-files-in-epub-ebook-format/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/08/google-docs-now-lets-you-e...

erjjones 10y ago

Next. Someone in the community wire this up to an API (dropbox, or something) so that when I save as ePub it also puts a copy in my dropbox so that I can read it on the road.

jaytaylor 10y ago
^ this, please! I'll definitely be looking into this to replace Evernote for my current clipping archival system. Check it out at http://jaytaylor.com/notes http://jaytaylor.com/notes I've been very dissatisfied with the absolutely terrible bastardized HTML served up by the Evernote API for web clippings, and this looks it could become a fantastic replacement!
- eg312 10y ago
  Added on the to-do list. Thanks!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rakoo 10y ago
Couldn't you save the resulting epub to a dropbox folder ?
unusximmortalis 10y ago
Install dropbox sync app and point the extension to a subfolder of the dropbox sync root folder. Ta-da.

ikeboy 10y ago

https://dotepub.com/ https://dotepub.com/ does the same with a bookmarklet, although I don't think it's open source.

antar 10y ago

Amazon offers this extension for Chrome and Firefox. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-to-kindle-for-google/cgdjpilhipecahhcilnafpblkieebhea?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-to-kindle-for...

captn3m0 10y ago
This is what I'm currently using for taking my long-reads to my Kindle. Except it doesn't always work well. For eg, with the recent NYTimes article on the Arab world[0], it didn't give me the entire content. As a hack, I found that selecting all of the content and then using that as input worked, but I'm still losing out on all the images and some formatting. [0]: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-...
- ikeboy 10y ago
  Have you tried adding to pocket and then using something like https://p2k.co/ https://p2k.co/ or https://help.getpocket.com/article/911-how-to-configure-calibre-with-pocket https://help.getpocket.com/article/911-how-to-configure-cali... to sync to Kindle?

pseingatl 10y ago

Epub has the potential of surpassing doc files as a document exchange format. It's so much easier to read an ePub than a pdf or a doc file on a phone.

MistahKoala 10y ago

Ooooh, now this is interesting! Presumably it clips just the article and not all the textual content on a page? I've long had an idea for an ePub app that will take email newsletters and compile them into something like a weekly ePub. I'm not a dev, though. I don't suppose there's any scope for this plugin to eventually work with non-browser content, is there?

kej 10y ago
For non-browser content it would be hard to beat Calibre for ebook creation. If you can get the content out of email and into the file system you could even script the Calibre conversion.

justjonathan 10y ago

This looks nice for a one off. If you are interested in automating this on a regular basis (perhaps to read the morning's news / blogs) I recommend Calibre, it is an amazing free (speech & beer) ebook management system that has this baked in. Here is the relevant manual section: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/news.html https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/news.html [Edit: formating and removed parenthetical within parenthetical]

dbalbright 10y ago

Anything that can work as well as Clearly. It's the best I've found at clipping articles for off-line archiving but it still makes me nervous having them on Evernote's platform when they said they were going to shut Clearly down (but apparently had a change of heart, for now).

kayla210 10y ago

Really nice! This is a lot more convenient than opening a Print dialog and choosing to save as PDF, which doesn't always work like you want it to. I haven't used ePub format yet, but it seems to be a format gaining traction in the eBook world.

anotheryou 10y ago

cool! Luckily my kobo ebook reader has pocket integration though :)

derefr 10y ago

I read a lot of "serial archive"-formatted things (webcomics, online novels, etc.) I've always wanted an extension like this that will spider rel="next" and rel="previous" links/headers (or, not finding those, try to guess a pair of links on the page that represent those) to build up an archive sequence; chew that into a set of pages+sections; generate a Table of Contents for those; and then stick all that together into an ePub. I've written scrapers to do exactly that for a few works, but they're one-offs that get their metadata (e.g. chapter titles) from explicit provided data-structures rather than from the site itself. A fully-general solution to this would be amazing.

lfowles 10y ago
Have you seen Dosage? It supports a lot of webcomics, but I don't remember how general it was. (Edit: I missed that you finished by publishing the content as an epub) http://dosage.rocks/ http://dosage.rocks/
- derefr 10y ago
  Dosage seems to be more like a pseudo-RSS-client that relies on scraping cronjobs (for following live content that doesn't have an RSS feed; somewhat like what Dapper used to do) rather than a batch site-mirror-to-single-document transformer. I want this extension not for the new pages just coming out now, but rather to more comfortably go through the ten years of pages of something that have already built up (on my phone with a reflowed mobile layout†, and still available when offline.) Side-note: webcomic authors have realized that there's a market for physical book-prints of their work, but they're ignoring the fact that people like me would gladly buy a digital version of the same book from the Kindle or iBooks store—even though we can read the individual pages online. People are willing to pay for convenience! † And speaking of reflowed mobile layouts, I wish every webcomic reflowed the way Dinosaur Comics does (http://qwantz.com/index.php?mobile=1 http://qwantz.com/index.php?mobile=1). It wouldn't work for those special "frame-boundary-breaking" art techniques, but most comics don't even use those.
rahimnathwani 10y ago
Calibre recipes can do this. You still need to specify the start page, xpath to get the chapters etc., but it works.

j_k_s 10y ago

As someone who hasn't really used epub files, what's the benefit of it over PDF? I assume file sizes are smaller, but ... what else?

DKnoll 10y ago
PDF is meant to be a digital equivalent to paper, thus it does not scale well to different screen sizes. An objective of PDF is for a document to look the exact same no matter where you open it. ePub text and images can be reflowed to fit a smaller/larger screen, it is not proprietary, file sizes are smaller, and is overall an ideal format for ebooks.