Ask Lemmy

In my experience, I can never fully archive HTML properly. There's so many associated files to go along with it now a days that I usually end up with a broken page or stuff missing. PDF at least gives you a self contained snapshot.

There's an addon for Firefox called SingleFile which lets you save a page as an HTML file but also includes all images, formatting, etc. It might be available for other browsers, but I'm not sure.

Saving the website will be smaller so if you're doing a lot of archiving that'll save space. Also probably easier to find HTML renderers on weird platforms than PDF. Full disclosure I hate Adobe so I'm not unbiased, but HTML still has advantages.

Use “Reader” mode in the browser, then print that to PDF.

If you just want to save the text to read later, go with HTML.

If you want to archive it with graphical elements and embedded images, PDF is the better choice.

If I only plan to read or view the file myself, I save PDF. If I need formated text extraction, save the page.

I'd say html. Websites don't translate well to pdf and and pdf is a hellish format that cannot be modified after the fact

@DenizEfe@lemm.ee that is a good question! I would say as HTML because it is easier to do post processing (e.g., extract), but you will probably lose the layout (libraries and css will go 404, etc). If the amount is not too large, why not both?

PDF would likely be more useful unless you take extra care with copying the website using a crawler.

I don't use it and inthibibthere might be some privacy concerns but I think Firefox bought pocket. It's useful for just this purpose. You bookmark (pocket) a webpage for later reading and it syncs it to your devices in a readable format.

However, to more directly answer your question, it will completely depend on your use csse. Either should work but pdf will be more reliable.

On desktop all browsers should be able to save Websites as HTML or PDF. Firefox on Android also offers "printing" sites to PDF.