Save web pages for posterity
Q
What’s the best way to save Safari web pages complete with their images and any other embedded content?
A
There are two basic formats to choose from in Safari: you can use the File > Save As command and select Webarchive, or File > Export As PDF. If you prefer your PDF paginated ready to print, then use File > Print and select ‘Save as PDF’ in the Print dialog.
Each of these also works in Safari Reader mode, but recently that has tended to create PDFs from some pages with all embedded images removed. Reader tidies up the layout to strip most extraneous content like adverts, but in the course of doing so might omit items important to you.
Webarchive isn’t peculiar to Safari, but isn’t a public standard in the way that PDF is. You could find yourself coming back to old Webarchive files in a few years and discover that they’ve become unusable. But it does preserve the layout, embedded images and other content and links very well.
For archives to be accessible in more than five years time, PDF remains the best choice. The serious archivist will want to convert regular PDF files to a PDF/A standard intended for longer-term records, but that needs to be performed by a high-end app like Adobe Acrobat CC (Pro), which is costly.