CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascripthtml
mark
mark

Reputation: 62896

Is it possible to convert a dynamic HTML page with a lot of javascript to a page without javascript?

I have a page with a lots of javascript. However, the page once rendered remains static, there are no moving things or special effects, etc... It should be possible to render the same HTML without any javascript at all using only the plain HTML and CSS. This is exactly what I want - I would like to get a no javascript version of the particular page. Surely, I do not expect any dynamic behavior, so I am OK if buttons are dead, for example. I just want them rendered.

Now, I do not want an image. It needs to be an HTML with CSS, may be embedded with the HTML, which is fine too.

How can I do it?

EDIT

I am sorry, but I must have not been clear. My web site works with javascript and will not work without it. I do not want to check if it works without, I know it will not and I really do not care about it. This is not what I am asking. I am asking about a specific page, which I want to grab as pure HTML + CSS. The fact that its dynamic nature is lost is of no importance.

EDIT2

There is a suggestion to gram the HTML from the DOM inspector. This is what I did the first thing - in Chrome development utils copied as HTML the root html element and saved it to a file. Of course, this does not work, because it continues to reference the CSS files on the web. I guess I should have mentioned that I want it to work from the file system.

Next was to save the page as complete with all the environment using some kind of the Save menu (browser dependent). It saves the page and all the related files forming a closure, which can be open from the file system. But the html has to be manually cleaned up of all the javascript - tedious and error prone.

EDIT3

I seem to keep forgetting things. Images should be preserved, of course.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 3875

Answers (1)

Dave
Dave

Reputation: 46359

I have to do a similar task on a semi-regular basis. As yet I haven't found an automated method, but here's my workflow:

  1. Open the page in Google Chrome (I imagine FireFox also has the relevant tools);
  2. "Save Page As" (complete page), rename the html page to something nicer, delete any .js scripts which got downloaded, move everything into a single folder;
  3. On the original page, open the Elements tab (DOM inspector), find and delete any tags which I know cause problems (Facebook "like" buttons for example) (I also try to delete script tags at this stage because it's easier) and copy as HTML (right-click the <html> tag. Paste this into (replace) the downloaded HTML file (remember to keep the DOCTYPE which doesn't get copied;
  4. Search all HTML files for any remaining script sections and delete (also delete any noscript content), and search for on (that's with a space at the start but StackOverflow won't render it) to remove handlers (onload, onclick, etc);
  5. Search for images (src=, url(), find common patterns in image filenames and use regular expressions to replace them globally. So for example src="/images/myimage.png" => |/images/||. This needs to be applied to all HTML and CSS files. Also make sure the CSS files have the correct path (href). While doing this I usually replace all href (links) with #;
  6. Finally open the converted page in a browser (actually I tend to do this early on so that I can see if any change I make causes it to break), use the Console tab to check for 404 errors (images that didn't get downloaded or had a different name) and the Network tab to check if anything is still being loaded from the online version;
  7. For any files which didn't get downloaded I go back to the original page and use the Resources tab to find them and download manually;
  8. (Optional) Cull any content which isn't needed (tracker images/iframes, unused CSS, etc).

It's a big job. I'd love a tool which automated all that, but so far I haven't found one. The pages I download are quite badly made (shops) which have a lot of unusual code, so that's why there are so many steps. You might not need to follow every step.

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions