MarkDownload - Markdown Web Clipper

[GreenFlux]

This is an excellent tool!

Thank you for all of your work, and for making it free/open-source.

Feature Request
If a portion of the page is selected/highlighted, download only that portion (plus any front/back matter in your settings).

I noticed you can edit the raw text in the extension popup and trim it there before saving. But if the part you want is in the middle it can be a lot harder to find in the plain text and tiny popup of the extension.

Would it be possible to check for selected text before the extension grabs the page content?

[death.au]

Thanks for the suggestion, @GreenFlux, and this is something I do want to eventually tackle.
In fact, it looks like I already made a GitHub issue for it: https://github.com/deathau/markdown-clipper/issues/2

I had a bit of a look into it just now, and it seems simple enough to implement, but I have a few questions for you (and anyone else who wants to chime in):

• Would you want the front/back templates to apply to selected text the same way as a whole page grab?
• Should there be some sort of UI indicating that the extension only grabbed selected text? Is that an issue?
• Should there be a button to switch to the whole article text, in case the selection was accidental? Or is it easy enough to just click to deselect and click the extension button again?

[GreenFlux]

Hi @death.au. Thanks for taking user input on this!

Ideally, I would like to have all options available in the download window, as opposed to having to open the settings and adjust defaults first.

• Should there be some sort of UI indicating that the extension only grabbed selected text? Is that an issue?

I think if you display the buttons in the download window instead of in settings, then you can just highlight the “Selected Text” button to alert the user.

[death.au]

Thanks for the input. That makes sense.
In the meantime, I’ve also implemented something similar via context menus (not released yet), however it turns out a background script can’t activate the popup, so I’ve implemented them as copy to clipboard, rather than download, which I’m kinda torn about (I mean, “download” is in the name, after all).

When I get some time later, I’ll whip up something like your screenshot. I think that works pretty well

[death.au]

Good news everyone! A new update is here:
Added:

• Clip selected text
• Toggle in popup to clip selected or full page
• Toggle in popup to include front/back templates
• Option for title templates
• Option to always show Save As dialog
• Context menus for downloading or copying text as markdown
• Context menus for downloading a tab or all tabs in window as markdown
• Keyboard shortcut (Alt+Shift+M be default) for showing popup

This resolves quite a few of the pending requests. Let me know if you have any feedback!

The Firefox version is already updated, but Chrome and Edge are both pending review due to needing “all sites” permission for the new “download all tabs” option.

[icebear]

Awesome, I’ll try this out at work tomorrow!

[GreenFlux]

Awesome! Thanks for the update. I can’t wait for the Chrome version!

[gdigesu]

@death.au Fantastic! Thanks for the tip.

[icebear]

Feedback on the “Download all tabs as Markdown”: this feature doesn’t use the preferences for front and back matter (e.g. title, author, #tags, etc). Can these options be integrated into that usage?

[icebear]

Correction: “Download all tabs as Markdown” is working, but to use the front/back matter preferences you need to first do a single page download and tick the box for “Include front/back template”. After that is done it saves the preference for future batch downloads. Hope that helps anyone else that was similarly confused.

And, thanks to @death.au - this is a really awesome tool.

[death.au]

I did foresee something like this and added the front/back template option to the page context menu, but I guess I should add it to the tab context menu in Firefox also.

[jacklaing]

Would it be possible to get this on Safari too now that Apple are providing tools to easily convert extensions from other browsers?

Safari to add support for more web extensions in macOS Big Sur - AppleMagazine

Apple Developer Documentation

[death.au]

I did start playing around with this locally, but there are a few hurdles to overcome, not least of which is I need to pay for an apple developer account in order to be able to distribute the extension

I also had some issues with the download api not being available, but I found a workaround for that, and I was having some issues with the context menu options not quite working, which I need to have another look at.

I want to make it work, but having to fork out AUD$149 (per year) just to supply a completely free extension I make for fun in my spare time seems a bit steep to me, and is a big roadblock.

[jacklaing]

I would encourage you to consider listing it as a paid extension.

Having paid for a couple of safari extensions myself, I know that I’d be willing to pay at least £5-10 for MarkDownload Safari. The time I’d save in my research workflow along with not having to use Chrome would be well worth it to me. And I’d be surprised if there’s not a strong contingent of markdown Safari users who’d be able to cover the cost.

If you decide not to do that, would there be a way that you can share the finished code so that I can run the extension locally on my end?

[death.au]

I hadn’t really considered making it a paid extension (because it’s free on other browsers), but that’s something I might look into.
I still need to put aside some time to work on it a bit more and fix the outstanding issues, but I might be able to send you a copy once I’ve done that. It requires a bit of fiddling (and XCode installed) to run it at the moment, but I might be able to distribute it via a mac app. I’ll do some more digging.

[Dor]

Not sure why the dislike for Chrome.
Love for Safari, dislike Chromium, dislike Google?
Chrome extensions work in all Chromium browsers (Vivaldi, Brave, Opera, Edge) as well as Chrome.

[death.au]

Not sure who you are replying to? I don’t see any dislike of Chrome in this thread, just a preference toward Safari for some particular users — which is fine.

[mrnotch]

I saw it on your github page. Great Job

[Dor]

Sorry it was jacklaing

@jacklaing

with not having to use Chrome

I don’t have a problem with people disliking Chrome or liking Safari, but when the reason is Google or Chrome itself then there’s a possibility other browsers might solve the issue.
Having to collect $215 every year for an app that’s free on any chromium browser seems quite a lot. Maybe the current legal action will change it.