Frequently Asked Questions

Contents

What kinds of web pages that can be clipped with MaoXian and what can’t be clipped?

Generally, web pages that contains only text and pictures can be clipped with MaoXian, like: blog posts, news, and forum posts etc.

If web pages contain big media content (big audios, big videos), you better not clip them with MaoXian. Although MaoXian can save audios and videos if they are relatively small size. For these big media content, you better find professional tools like: youtubedl, youget. MaoXian also can’t clip web pages that contains live stream or radio.

By the way, If you want to clip a batch of article automatically or entire static website, MaoXian is not the right tool. you need to find professional tools like: wget.

What kinds of content will be saved

MaoXian clip the current state of web page, Mostly text and pictures. There are other staffs like web fonts, stylesheets, icons, audio etc. All these files will be saved depends on what format you’re saving and the configuration that you configured.

If the save format is HTML

the belowing types of content can be saved

the belowing types of content won’t be saved

If the save format is Markdown

the belowing types of content can be saved

the belowing types of content won’t be saved

Same as HTML plus won’t save stylesheets.

Keyboard shortcuts

You could configure keyboard shortcuts on browser’s extension/add-ons manage page:

Why the browser prompt so many download windows

By default, MaoXian use the download function that provide by the browser to save the clipped files. Generally there are multiple files that needs to be saved when you clip a web page. So if you enable “Ask where to save each file before downloading” then you will get multiple prompt windows.

Turn off Chrome’s Save As dialog so that you won’t be asked where to save file for every download. This can be done by clearing the checkbox before
chrome://settings/downloads > Downloads > Ask where to save each file before downloading

Turn off Firefox’s Save As dialog so that you won’t be asked where to save fille for every download. This can be done by clearing the radio-button before
about:preferences > Downloads > Always ask you where to save files

Why the pictures of clipped web pages become white blank areas.

To reduce the cost of bandwidth, some websites use a technology called “lazy load images” which will display a placeholder white image and delay the loading of the real image untill the image scroll into viewport.

Because what MaoXian clip is the current state of the web page. So if you didn’t browser the web page from top to bottom before clip it, you will clip these placeholder white images rather than the real images.

To correctly clip these web pages, browsing them from top to bottom, waitting until all images are loaded, then start your clipping.

Some images are failed to download

This is normally occured when the network is really really bad. Please go to the “failed tasks” page to retry download these images. If you still can’t download these images after trying several times, please report the problem to the developer.

Why it requires so many permissions?

Please see privacy policy

Not response after click clip

Please check situation below:

  1. Are you clip a page before your installation? Try refresh your page if you are.
  2. Try refresh the web page anyway (sometimes browsers have problem to load some resources)
  3. Currently, It only support firefox and chrome/chromium, If you install it to other browser, we don’t guarantee it will work.

Stuck on “Clipping…”

MaoXian will stuck on “clipping…” if the network environment is really bad.

You can goto Settings > Advanced and increase the timeout of web requests or fuck the GFW if you are Chinese users.

Stuck on “Saving…”

reason A: network problems

You can goto Settings > Advanced and increase the timeout of web requests or fuck the GFW if you are Chinese users.

reason B: conflict with other browser extensions

If you are using browser to download clipped files, this could happen. You can goto the Settings > Browser page, and click the “Test” button to test it.

Stop on clipping-hint every clipping

It’s probably because you had installed some extension(e.g. chrone) to manage your downloads. Download manage extension will intercept your download request, MaoXian use download API to save your clipping information. MaoXian can’t finish its clipping because of that interception.

You can identify this by disabled other extensions and try again, if it works then it’s a confliction. Try enable other extensions one by one to find out the conflicted one.

We have also found some user install MaoXian on other browser(like: vivaldi) which is base on chromium project, that means MaoXian may work fine on these browser. but these browser(e.g. vivaldi) have developed their own download manage function which will intercept download request too.

To solve this confliction, we had developed a native application which can receive download request that was sent by MaoXian.

See: Native App

Change default download path.

Method A: configurate NativeApp

If you choose Native App as your clipping handler. You can edit the config.yaml to configure download path, don’t forget to restart your browser to apply new configuration.

Note that: If you just want to change the default download path and don’t need any functions that provided by the MaoXian Native App, then you totally don’t need to install Native App (use Method B).

If you choose browser as your clipping handler(default handler). Browser extensions can’t modify your download path, due to secure reason.

But you can create a symbolic link to achieve this. A symbolic is like a transfer door, you put files inside this transfer door and they get transfered to another location (directory) that you specified.

In belowing examples:

example A: create transfer door on Windows

Assume:

step 1: Get your destination path prepared, create the directory if you hasn’t.

step 2: Check the download path of your browser, If there contains a directory that has the same name as the root folder of MaoXian, move it to somewhere else or delete it. Because we will create our transfer door here with the same name.

step 3: Create a transfer door that with the same name as the root folder of MaoXian inside the download path of your browser，in this example, the name is “mx-wc”

On Windows, the command to create symbolic link is:

mklink /D C:\Users\jack\Browser\Downloads\mx-wc C:\Users\jack\OneDrive\web-clippings

Crate a batch file, like: create_transfer_door_of_maoxian.bat (name whatever you want), copy the above command to the batch file (edit the last two path according to your case)，after you save it, right click this file and run it as Administrator. After the execution, the transfer door is created.

Now, you can see a new directory called “mx-wc” inside your download path of browser. try create a text file and go to the destination folder to see if it’s transfered. If it is, you have learned how to create transfer door on Windows and at the same time you have changed the default download path of MaoXian.

Example B: create transfer door on Linux/MacOs

Assume:

step 1: Get your destination path prepared, create the directory if you hasn’t.

step 2: Check the download path of your browser, If there contains a directory that has the same name as the root folder of MaoXian, move it to somewhere else or delete it. Because we will create our transfer door here with the same name.

step 3: Create a transfer door that with the same name as the root folder of MaoXian inside the download path of your browser，in this example, the name is “mx-wc”

running belowing Command to create:

ln -s /home/jack/Dropbox/web-clippings /home/jack/Browser/Downloads/mx-wc

I don’t want to save information files

Information files (or meta files) are very important for MaoXian. MaoXian use it to identify each clipping result. Functions like Clipping History and Resetting History dependent on information files. So we hightly recommend you save these files.

WARNING: If you do not save these information files, MaoXian will not recognize them anymore, it usually means that you want to use another software to browser and manager the clipped files.

Here’s how to configure it:

Go to settings > Reset / Backup, ensure the “Setting page’s configuration” item is checked, after click “Backup to file” button you will get a JSON file. Use a text editor to open it and search saveInfoFile. change the value from true to false.

Click “Restore from file” button, select the file you just editted. After the restoration, the change will be applied.

Can’t open clipping on history page

Some user had found that the clipping on history page can open after clipping, But couldn’t open it another day.

This is because MaoXian will try to open clipping file through download history if it can’t access file URLs. If you clear that history, then it can’t open it.

allow it to access file URLs, can avoid this situation.

Allow access file URLs

Web browser don’t allow extension to access file URLs(file://). MaoXian can’t open clipping file(opening file URL) directly because of it.

We suggest you to allow MaoXian to access file URLs. So you can open clipping file more convenient.

Section below describes how to allow MaoXian to access file URLs(file://).

1. Getting “extension identifier”

You can get it from MaoXian’s setting page setting > General.

It looks like this:

2. configure browser settings

This step is different between each browser.

Chrome/Chromium

Take extension identifier above as an example, input chrome://extensions/?id=612ab18c-c29e-4211-bd50-3f208d227db7 to browser’s address bar, Enter.

Enable Allow access to file URLs option.

Firefox

Firefox hasn’t provide a page to setting this option by default, but we can change firefox’s preference settings.

I: input about:config to address bar and enter, you will get a configuration page.

II: configure these item below

Item Name Item Value Note
capability.policy.policynames localfilelinks -
capability.policy.localfilelinks.sites moz-extension://612ab18c-c29e-4211-bd50-3f208d227db7 change this to extension identifier you got
capability.policy.localfilelinks.checkloaduri.enabled allAccess -

Copy item name, paste to search.

If you can find it. Change it’s value by double click.

If you can’t find it. Do: right click > new > String > paste item name > paste item value

3. configure extension settings

Back to MaoXian’s setting page，check “I enabled ‘allow file scheme access’”.

Browser prompt: script of MaoXian is busy, do you want to abort it

On some large web pages (which may contains thousands of element), may cause this to happen. please choose wait (you may need to confirm it multiple times)

Can MaoXian clip a web page as single file? like: mhtml, zip or a picture

MaoXian can’t do this, and won’t do this in the future.

MaoXian supports HTML and Markdown format both are simple text file. Text files are a simple format without special encoding which make it very eazy to edit and search. Image you want to edit or search a picture, a zip file or a mhtml file, you need special software to do that.

If you still want to save a webpage as single file, you may try these browser extensions: webscrapbook, savepagewe or singleFile.

Does this software harm my privacy?

Please check out the privacy policy page.

Report new issue

If answers above can’t resolve your problem. Check out the feedback page.

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