Web Clipper is now available (BETA feature)

News
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A web clipper is now available in the latest desktop release. To use it, go to Option > Web Clipper Options and follow the instructions. You can:

  • Clip a complete page
  • Clip a simplified version of the page (based on Firefox’s Reader View feature)
  • Clip a screenshot of the page

Communication between the Joplin app and the extension is done via a mini HTTP server, so you might need to allow that port on your firewall (you should be prompted automatically on Windows).

image

This is still a beta release so expect some glitches here and there. Feedback is welcome!

Known issues:

  • It should be possible to specify the default notebook where the created notes go (currently it will go in the last created notebook)
  • Sometimes the preview content goes over the Submit button in the extension popup
  • It works in Firefox too but it’s not released yet
  • Only tested on Windows so far so not sure if it works on macOS and Linux yet
4 Likes
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Thank you very much for that.

Tested on Google Chrome on Linux.

I tried with this blog post

I dont know if it is the expected behavior, but there is no specific CSS applied on the grabbed article, I think it’s normal and the clipper is just focus on the content.

I tried to clip a snapshot, when I select “chip screenshot” the popup closes immeditaly without waiting a click on “confirm” buttoin and nothing is added to joplin desktop

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Ok nice to know it's at least partially working on Linux.

I dont know if it is the expected behavior, but there is no specific CSS applied on the grabbed article, I think it’s normal and the clipper is just focus on the content.

Yes that's normal as the content is converted to HTML although there's some effort to preserve as much formatting as possible, such as bold, italic, tables, etc. I will also try to add something to import images at the right size (currently icons for example might end up looking too big).

I tried to clip a snapshot, when I select “chip screenshot” the popup closes immeditaly without waiting a click on “confirm” buttoin and nothing is added to joplin desktop

Could you have a look in log-clipper.txt (in the profile directory) to see if you have any error or warning when clipping a screenshot?

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there is no error ; just “ping” each time i press clip screenshot. May be something related to linux.

2018-05-25 16:14:02: "Request (1527257642451): GET /ping"
2018-05-25 16:14:10: "Request (1527257650527): GET /ping"
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Does it show something in Chrome if you open the console (Ctrl+Shift+I) ?

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no nothing except “jopext: Loading content script”

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I've just tried in Ubuntu and it's working for me, but I think I know what the issue is. In order to clip a screenshot, you need to click and drag inside the window to specify the part that you want to copy. Could you give that a try?

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ok I could do a "clip screenshot".

I could do it twice and now that does not work :smiley: log-clipper.log is not very verbose
and the console shows

jopext: Loading content script
index.js:233 jopext: Got command: {name: "completePageHtml"}
index.js:75 Got command: completePageHtml

I try again and can make a screenshot once for ~5 tries
may be there is a number of request per second the HTTP server can handle at a time ?

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No there's no special limit on the number of requests. Which URL are you doing the tests on? And what part of the screen do you select? (I guess it shouldn't make a difference, but just to be sure)

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i tried this one and this one and I can’t select a part of any screen, the grey screen with the message “drag and release” is not available displayed at all.

just right now I had to repeat the process 10times

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Looking forward to trying the bookmarklet, but I guess it's not worth starting Chrome because of it. :smiley:

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I see, so when you click on “clip screenshot” nothing happen basically, you’re not seeing the screen becoming darker, is that right? Just want to confirm what happens exactly as i can’t replicate it

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exactly that is that behavior. If that can help I have “uBlock”, “Vue Devtools” and “Modify Headers” as plugins

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This is so awesome. Linux user here. I had ditched Evernote in favour of Joplin even when their Web clipper was a killer feature for me, so having the same functionality on Joplin is a dream come true!

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It would do that if for some reason it cannot connect to the clipper service. Could you try to enable developer mode in chrome://extensions/ and then right-click on the Joplin extension icon, and select "Inspect popup"?

When doing so it should open the popup console - could you post the content of it here?

Edit: Actually ignore the above message - I found what the issue is and it should be fixed in the next release.

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The latest version should have a fix for this, but let me know if it happens again.

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Now it’s working on Chrome and Firefox without any problem !

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Just tested Web clipper under Fedora + Firefox. I am concerned about security issues of this plugin. There is no authentication between plugin and joplin app, and the port that joplin opens, is listening to all interfaces instead of the loopback one.

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I have to admit that it is not false :slight_smile: (before you noticed it, I thought the same, the service ran on loopback)

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What the service can do for now is quite restricted - for example, it’s not possible to read, modify or delete notes so it won’t expose much information.

I agree though that additional security would be preferable however I don’t know yet what’s the best way to achieve this. Some kind of authentication would help, however it means users will have to enter a password or some unique key, which I’d rather avoid. Any suggestion is welcome in any case.