How to save pages as HTML in Mobile Firefox?

[shmerl]

I'm testing Fennec now on Meego/Harmattan (N950 handset), but I didn't have much experience with it yet. One of the obscure things to figure out was how to save a page (which is straightforward in the desktop Firefox). I figured that clicking on the site info button opens a menu with an option of saving the page as PDF. While that is useful for some cases, why isn't there an option to save the page as regular HTML? Or did I miss some other menu for that? I thought it's such a basic feature, that I was surprised when I didn't find it. And secondly, I think the saving feature should be less hidden. It's way too obscured now.

[mbrubeck]

Sorry, there's no "save page" command exposed to the user in mobile Firefox. In Firefox 8 and earlier there is a "save link" command in the context menu, which will work if you have a link to the page somewhere. However, "save link" has been removed from the context menu on the Nightly channel: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=642996

"Save page" is one of many menu commands left out of the mobile browser just to avoid cluttering up the UI. It could be exposed by a simple add-on if anyone is interested in writing one...

On Android, "Save as PDF" is in the main menu, but on Maemo/Meego we don't have a main menu button so everything is kind of hidden in the site menu. If any Meego developers want to propose a better location for menu items on Meego, I'd be happy to review a patch. (I don't have a Meego device myself.)

[shmerl]

I see, I'm using a nightly build, that's why save options are absent. But why is save page entry considered cluttering? It's an important usability feature. And also why suddenly to use PDF and disable HTML option? While PDF can be useful, HTML is useful for other things, like offline page/scripts source reading. Basically when I tried to save a page to read the code later in subway which has no network connection, I found myself unable to do it in Fennec. That was frustrating, since it caused opening a terminal and wget-ting the page. (Why should I revert to using wget, if any normal browser should be able to pull through that task for me). At least the save dialog which opens from the menu command, could offer a choice (HTML/PDF), then the initial UI won't be cluttered more that it is now. By the way, is view page source also hidden but potentially available?

On a side note - I don't have an Android device, so I can't compare. Are there any screenshots of this Main menu and where it's invoked from in Fennec on Android?

[mbrubeck]

Firefox mobile has a fairly minimal UI intentionally, because it's so easy to fill the screen with options when you have a small screen and large touch-friendly buttons. We try to include only the most-used commands and not provide many different ways of doing the same things. When we leave out an feature, it doesn't mean that feature isn't useful; it just means it's not one of the very few most-used features.

Of course, not everyone will agree about which features are most important, which is why Firefox is also customizable. "Just write an add-on" is not a good answer to every feature request (in particular, it doesn't help people who don't have the knowledge to write add-ons themselves), but it's one of the compromises we make to avoid having our menus or preferences grow longer and longer. I hope over time the collection of extensions at addons.mozilla.org will grow to include all the most popular requests.

One of my own add-ons can help with reading on the subway, though it's not exactly the same as a "save page" command: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile ... ding-list/

On a side note - I don't have an Android device, so I can't compare. Are there any screenshots of this Main menu and where it's invoked from in Fennec on Android?

Every Android handset have a "menu" hardware button, which display's any app's menu as a grid of icons at the bottom of the screen. Here's a screenshot of an early version of Firefox's menu on Android:

https://bug610784.bugzilla.mozilla.org/ ... ?id=522857

[Spurred_On]

It's been dang near a year since the last post to this question. Any new developments?

Being able to save HTML pages as HTML pages is a basic part of browsing. Being able to save to a specific folder is, too. I've got a new Galaxy S3 with a 16 GB "external" micro SD card. (The card is inside the phone, but external to the phone's system SD card.) When I "Save as PDF" from Firefox, the file is saved to the system SD card. I don't want to fill up my system SD with saved data. That's what I have the external micro SD card for. The same would be true for being able to save HTML pages.

As to the limited space for commands, in most all of the system menus for on my phone, I can scroll down or up a long list of commands or actions. On some long list menus there is even an item called More which expands down or opens an auxiliary menu list of more options. Why can't Firfox either have a longer scrollable list or a More item? Neither method would compromise display availability nor be confusing to any user used to scrolling on a touch screen.

mbrubeck — a cautionary note on your add-on: If you don't have an unlimited data plan, then you will be charged for data usage while your Web articles are being downloaded over your carrier's network. To avoid this charge, use a Wi-Fi connection, such as in an airport terminal or on your home wireless network to download the articles.

[francwalter]

Amazing!
Since years not anyone has written a good extension for the mobile Firefox to save pages offline.
On a smartphone with data plan this is crucial.
The save as pdf is not the solution, changes too much of the site and anyway, this downloads the whole site down again! Why this? The site is in the cache and could be saved from there "easily".

The stock browser of JB, KK, LP etc. can do it, why not the Firefox?

I am on SGS4 with CM12 (unfortunately this stock Browser can not download pages either, the CM-stock browser is more or less useless, I never use it) and the Beta of Firefox for Android.

frank

[James]

Sorry but this thread is about four years old so locking Please start a new thread with a link to this one if you want to have a discussion on this.