Handpicked Software

Webstractor is an innovative Web browser that lets you automatically archive pages as you browse, and then select them for editing. It preserves the layout of the pages and, like a word processor, lets you modify them without knowing HTML.

As you surf in the Browser, pages are added to an Entry List in the top pane (a Links Inspector also lets you quickly save or edit linked files, pages, images, or other media). There’s a search field for Google and you can mark any page for SnapBack, just like Safari. You can display bookmarks from Safari, Internet Explorer, or OmniWeb in the Bookmarks menu (but when I selected Safari, only the bookmarks from my Bookmarks Bar were listed). I’d like to be able to add bookmarks to Webstractor and have them synchronize with my default browser.

Thumbnails of visited pages are displayed in a drawer and clicking one navigates to that page. They extend vertically to show the entire page, not just what’s visible in the browser window without scrolling. It’s fun to see how far some pages extend, but I’d also like an option to condense them for easier navigation. You can also search the history and it will highlight the search term in all matching pages.

If you navigate to a site with pop-ups, Webstractor gives you the option of opening the window in the current document, opening it in a new document, or ignoring it completely. The dialog sheet will save your selection, but you have to make a decision each time a link wants to open a new window. Managing pop-ups would be easier if you could set a default option in the preferences and have a shortcut key for overriding the default setting.

If you prefer not to surf in Webstractor, you can access a contextual menu from Safari or OmniWeb, which allows you to open the page in a new Webstractor document or add it to an existing one (although when I tried this, both options opened the page in a new document).

To edit a page, select it from the Entry List. Once a page is converted for editing (which can take several seconds), you can modify it by cropping selected text and graphics, editing text, changing font attributes (style, color, or highlighting), or changing paragraph formatting. You can zoom in or out with a zoom slider to get a better view of your page, but I’d like to see automatic zooming like Word’s Page Width view.

Four selection modes make it easy to select just the content you want for editing. Marquee Hybrid is the default and, while the other modes offer an unusual degree of flexibility, you probably won’t need them. Moving a selected object requires cutting and pasting; you can’t select an item and drag it around the document as you can in a page layout program.

You can also insert empty pages, then add your own text, drag and drop content from your hard drive into Webstractor, or even have Webstractor generate a table of contents. You can hide backgrounds. Find and replace lists all instances of a search term in a drawer. To replace a term, highlight one or more instances, then click replace.

Webstractor is an intuitive program so you’ll probably find your way with a little exploration. There’s a Quick Start guide (accessed from the Help menu) to get you up to speed…quickly. If you need more help, the Help file is clearly written, thorough, and well illustrated.

Bottom Line: Webstractor is a unique application, the ideal tool for researching, archiving, editing, compiling, and sharing information from the Web. All browsers let you open the source to a page and it’s easy to open any page for editing in an HTML editor. So why aren’t all browsers built like Webstractor?
From: Softchaos
Price: $79