WEBSITE SENDS WEBSITES VIA EMAIL
If you've ever tried to save a website, you already know that most
browsers do a poor job at best. Sure there's a "Save Page" option on
the File pull-down menu but just give it a try and you'll see what I
mean. Depending on the brand of browser you're using, you will get
different results. In fact, you'll most likely get different results
saving different website pages from within the same browser. Most
browsers will save website pages but they won't really look much
like the original. Depending on the web page's content such as
links, embedded JavaScript, applets, animations and more, you can be
fairly sure that what you are saving won't really resemble what was
originally there. But there's a website that attempts to save
websites by emailing them directly.
EmailTheWeb.com is set up so that you can easily email most any web
page and it lets you do so at no charge. You may ask yourself why
not just email the webpage's address. You can but remember that web
pages are constantly changing and what you want them to see may have
changed by the time they read your email. Chances are highly likely
that the webpage's content will somehow change sooner or later. By
using EmailTheWeb.com, the page you see is the one that the
recipient will get.
According to the site's developer, there may be some small
inconsistencies but things should be close if not exact to what you
saw when you sent it. Using EmailTheWeb.com is a snap. Just type in
the web address and click the send button. You can elect to send the
web page as an attachment or send it inline which means you will see
the actual web page within the body of the email itself. You are
prompted to enter in the email addresses to which you want the
captured web page delivered. There's even a checkbox that lets you
email it to yourself since EmailTheWeb.com has automatically
detected your email address. FireFox users are offered an extension
that helps aid in the accuracy of the transmission.
Other options let you preview your captured page or view the live
page itself. You can add a subject line and there's even a line for
additional notes you want to send to the recipient.
Once you're ready to send, you just click the send button at the
bottom of the screen and that's pretty much it. I tested out
EmailTheWeb.com by sending myself a copy of my radio talk show's
website home page. I typed in
http://www.computeramerica.com and hit the send button. The home
page that appeared in my Microsoft Entourage email inbox was dead
on. Even the font was the same although experimentation on some
other websites yielded a few slight discrepancies. Still, the
accuracy of the transmitted website was far more accurate than
anything else I had tried to use in the past. And now there's the
ExactPage feature that further enhances the accuracy of rich website
pages and adds more compatibility with different email applications.
Other nice features let all of the links that appear in the sent
website to be completely active yet all JavaScript on a page is
automatically stripped out. This protects your recipient from popups
and other annoying and sometimes malicious activity.
If you find yourself needing to accurately capture and send a web
page complete with all of its links and do it all for free, then
you'd best check out EmailTheWeb.com. The service is offered for
free with some limitations such as only being able to send 25 emails
a day. Their Silver, Gold and Platinum services add more sends per
day as well as archiving and more usage of ExactPage. Check out
their website for more details.
www.EmailTheWeb.com
| Craig Crossman is
a McClatchy-Tribune newspaper columnist writing about computers and
technology. He also hosts the nation's longest running nationally syndicated radio talk show on
computers and technology, Computer America, heard on both the Business TalkRadio
Network® and the Lifestyle TalkRadio Network®, weeknights at 10PM Eastern
time. Visit his website at http://www.computeramerica.com |
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