Options for archiving a website

Integrity / Scrutiny

Integrity (and Integrity Plus, Pro and Scrutiny) has long had an 'archive' option. It can save the html as it scans, originally with no frills at all. Recently I+, Pro and Scrutiny have received enhancement which mean that they can process the information a little to create a browsable archive.

It stops short of being a full 'Sitesucker' - it doesn't save images, for example, or download the style sheets etc. (It makes sure that all links and references are absolute, so that the site still appears as it should.) It was always intended as a snapshot of the site, automatically collected as you link-check, for the purposes of reference or evidence.

WebScraper

WebScraper for mac has loads of options and therefore it's not just 'enter a homepage url and press Go' like the other apps mentioned here. So it does allow you to do much more. You have much more control over what information you want in your output file, what format you want that in, and whether you want the content converted to plain text / markdown / html.

HTMLtoMD 

HTMLtoMD was a side project built using various functionality we'd developed in other apps. It scans a whole site and archives the content as Markdown. Once working, we released it for free and put it on the back burner.

Recently it's received more development. It's now up-to-date with the Integrity v8 engine, and has received some improvements to the markdown conversion via WebScraper. It can now save images and has more options for saving the information.

Again, it's not a Sitesucker. If you need to download a website for saving or browsing offline then use SiteSucker ($4.99), it's pointless us trying to reinvent that wheel.

But markdown has its advantages. It's a much more efficient way to store your content. It's just text with a little bit of markup (headings, lists etc). That also means that it's very transportable.

You may also find it a very readable format. See the shots below.

2018 begins with a meltdown

We have started the year with the kind of story that TV and radio love. "Nearly all computers worldwide - and many other devices - have been exposed to security flaws which leave them vulnerable to attacks by hackers" (direct quote from BBC News).

Tech correspondents were in their element, "The CPU is the 'brain' of the computer, if you like, and if someone can read everything in your brain, then they can read all of your sensitive information.." (I paraphrase only slightly).

The culprits are fiendishly-named Meltdown and Spectre.

Intel's response was the amusing classic, "It's not a bug it's a feature". The detail of it sounds much like a small boy caught red-handed, "I didn't do anything. Anyway, the others did it too."

In a nutshell, meltdown is easy to fix and has been. If your High Sierra system is up to date then you should be ok. Spectre is hard to patch and hasn't been so far but it's hard to exploit. (see Further Reading for more details.)

Install updates when available. And don't have nightmares.

Further reading:
Opinion on Intel's response:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/intel_meltdown_spectre_bugs_the_registers_annotations/
Thorough and understandable rundown of the problems:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/intel_amd_arm_cpu_vulnerability/
The BBC (who should know better) sensationalising and enjoying the chance to have a dig at Apple users:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42575033
XKCD:
https://xkcd.com/1938/

Effects Designer for LIFX and Hue bulbs

Here is the first look at a new drag and drop lighting effects designer for our Hue-topia and LIFXstyle light controllers.



You'll be able to create more sophisticated versions of the false dawn / dusk or go the whole hog and create a 24hr daylight simulator (blue hour / golden hour etc)

And you'll be able to get creative and design mood effects such as flickering fire, colour cycling for party effects or mood.

I think all bases are covered, you can set the length of the whole cycle from 1s to 24hrs, whether it's 'one shot' or loops, the length of the transitions.

You can apply effects to a single bulb, groups or rooms, manually or on schedule.

This feature is now in version 2.0 (beta) of  LIFXstyle and Hue-topia