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Jacob Bugge
Community Expert
Jacob BuggeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 10, 2011
Question

Reference destruction

  • November 10, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 1241 views

It seems that, starting today (or quite recently), when you try to save a thread as a web page, for an archive or similar, the page is no longer saved by the title of the thread, but by the number.

This means that the meaningful reference, which makes it possible to know and use the saved thread, is replaced by a meaningless number.

Please undo the undoing of meaningful references, John.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    adobe-admin
    adobe-admin
    Legend
    November 10, 2011

    I’m not aware of any changes in the system. Can you give me the steps to reproduce?

    Jacob Bugge
    Community Expert
    Jacob BuggeCommunity ExpertAuthor
    Community Expert
    November 10, 2011

    When you use (the equivalent of) File>Save Page As (by which you can save the page in different formats, including  Web Page, complete with basically the same appearance when you open it so you can recognize it), you get the number of the thread, in this case 923465, as the name of the web page. This number is obviously useless as a key to recognizing, and using, the saved web page.

    Earlier, the actual name of the thread constituted the name of the web page, for this thread it would have been Adobe Forums - Reference destruction.htm which would be immediately recognizable and usable (I have some 9.000 of them, the archive started many years ago when I realized that every thread would fall into the abyss (I reposted in quite a few from time to time, to keep them alive), long before I even knew about this forum).

    Rather than File>Save Page As, the quick way to save is/was to use a shortcut, Alt/Option+F+A, before returning to the forum.

    Thank you for looking into this, John.

    Edit:

    Sorry, you are right, John: no change in the forums.

    I just realized that it must be a change with the new Firefox 8.

    I hope someone has a clue how to get the earlier save name back.

    Someone?

    Noel Carboni
    Noel Carboni
    Legend
    November 12, 2011

    First, it appears File - Save As within IE9 currently yields a default filename that's apparently derived from the page title.  For example, this thread yields a default filename of "Adobe Forums Reference destruction.mht". 

    Is this same page title the one you're seeing within Firefox?

    Second, it's an interesting strategy you're following, saving threads as local files...  I guess you must feel the history of the forum online will at some point become unavailable?

    Generally speaking, most folks tacitly assume that things they can get to online today will remain online from now on.  Of course, that's not a given by any means, but it's just not something most think about.  I can, for example, easily find a post I made in 2010 via Google or the forum search.  It doesn't cross my mind to save a local copy just so I'll have it in case I can no longer do that.

    On the other hand, a lot of information is dated - e.g., specific information about what computer to buy or how to use a particular version of a program - and may not remain useful forever.  Saving things locally implies one needs a strategy for culling it.  I have, for example, things in my Downloads folder tree that are no longer practically useful.  Occasionally I have to delete that stuff or it all just accumulates and uses up resources and becomes difficult to look through.

    Very interesting thoughts indeed.

    -Noel

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