h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

hi everyone

Safari pages that I have saved on my desktop have lost all their images (not all pages but most of them, even really old ones). This has happened before and Applecare troubleshot it for me but I can't remember what we did. I think it involved removing a safari file and restarting the computer. Or maybe downloading Safari again. Any ideas? Can't find anything at apple.com.

OS 10.4.11 Safari 3.1.2

Oh, and Safari adds the extensions even though I've got the box ticked to hide the extension (so 'webarchive' gets added to every file name ).

On the first point, IIRC for each page you save there's also a folder with the images - you haven't been deleting those, have you?

On the second, I suspect that if you turned the extensions on you'd see them being called "...webarchive.html" - adding to the filename doesn't always constitute an "extension"...

>>On the first point, IIRC for each page you save there's also a folder with the images - you haven't been deleting those, have you?<<

Are you sure? I know Firefox does something like that, but I've never seen it in Safari. Basically I save pages as webarchives, and the usually have the images, but then something gets corrupted and they won't load. There is a solution by fiddling with safari files but I can't remember what it is.

'webarchive' is the extension. Eg if I save this page, "BBC - h2g2 - Post to a Conversation" is the file name without the extension, and "BBC - h2g2 - Post to a Conversation.webarchive" is the file name with the extension. What Safari is doing is calling the file the second if if I tick 'hide extension'. It shouldn't be doing that.

"BBC - h2g2 - Post to a Conversation.html" would be the file name if I was saving it as text source only.

Oh, and last time I fixed this, all the images returned even on old files, so I think it's about how Safari is operating on my mac (not how it's downloading).

OK, I slouch corrected. I haven't used Safari "in anger" for a long time.

When your images reappeared, were you connected to the web? It's possible you were looking at archived text content but it was loading fresh copies of the images from the original URLs.

I often save pages to read when I am not online, so I notice then that the images are missing.

I've just realised that the pages have converted to html files, or what Safari calls 'page source'. That's even though I am selecting 'webarchive'. But it's using the extension webarchive instead of html.

And there is some sort of delay in the conversion because pages I save now are ok (albeit still with the extension visible when it shouldn't be), but later when I open them they've turned into html pages.

yeah, that's what I thought.

Hi kea

I'm not at home on the Mac but at W**k on a confounded PC running XP so forgive me if I get this wrong.

When you save the page is there an option to save as Web Page complete rather that Web Archive? I ask because it might make a difference.

t.

Hi turvey,

It's just Page Source or Web Archive (the default). Is there meant to be another option? That sounds familiar.

I'll have a look when I get in tonight.

Shouldn't you be asleep??

t.

I believe 3 1/2 hours did it

I downloaded a new safari. Didn't seem to make any difference Maybe I missed some files. I replaced the Safari folder in the Home Library folder, and the plist file. Didn't do anything with the cache though.

Two things:

1. The button to hide the extension doesn't do what one would expect. It simply hides the extension *while typing* the file name in the "Save..." dialog. Once the icon is saved to a folder, you'll see the extension again - the Finder has it's own preference for hiding file names in folders and on the desktop.

2. Webarchives are supposed to have all of the image data stored within them, and they're sensitive to having the name changed. So if you removed the ".webarchive" from the name, that would mess things up. Try putting the ".webarchive" back at the end of the name if that's what happened.

#1 sorted, thanks. Don't know how that got turned on

I'm not sure the second one applies though, as we're talking about hundreds of files most of which I haven't touched in ages.

Still haven't sorted this. It's also affecting images in Mail, and I.E. too sometimes. It's all rather inconsistent. Not to mention bloody annoying.

Any ideas?

I've just installed the new Safari 4 beta and I got my pictures back!

Kewl!