> A PDF document can be dated and versioned So can an HTML page. > you download ...

mijamo · on July 16, 2018

If it's not in archive, you will NOT find the old HTML at all, whereas old PDFs are usually easy to find because someone will have it.

In addition saving web pages is a huge pain with all the scripts and CSS to save as well, so then you need to compress that.

At last, saving and browsing saved HTML is a pain on mobile and similar devices without a specialized tool.

laurent123456 · on July 16, 2018

Why not print to PDF in that case? HTML can be converted to many other formats, while PDF cannot.

throwaway37585 · on July 16, 2018

> If it's not in archive, you will NOT find the old HTML at all, whereas old PDFs are usually easy to find because someone will have it.

I don’t understand this argument at all. The exact same thing can be said for HTML pages.

> In addition saving web pages is a huge pain with all the scripts and CSS to save as well, so then you need to compress that.

That’s what the webarchive format is for.

slavik81 · on July 17, 2018

The GDS themselves state that users are more likely to archive their own copies of PDF documents than HTML documents: "users are more likely to download a PDF and continue to refer to it and share it offline"

Part of the reason may be that some browsers download PDFs for display in the user's native reader. Though, even in-browser PDF readers like Firefox on desktop have a toolbar with a prominent save button. The use of PDF is a signal to the user that the document can be saved.

_carl_jung · on July 16, 2018

> Right click, save page as... Am I missing something?

The success of this depends on how the page is written. If it fetches some content dynamically you may not get a full and accurate picture of the contents of the page as viewed at the time the article was available live.