Professional BoatBuilder Back Issue Download Utility

Useful links

PBB Subject Index at https://www.proboat.com/subject-index is a searchable PDF file, you can open or download to search by subject or author for articles.
PBB Back Issue Archive at https://pbbackissues.advanced-pub.com.

How to use

1. Visit https://pbbackissues.advanced-pub.com.
2. Navigate to Professional BoatBuilder back issue and article of your liking.
3. Make a mental note of the start and end page number of article.
4. Enter page numbers in PBB Download Utility and press button.
5. Nothing more. That's it. Your zip file should be ready to download in a few moments.

File naming

Zip archive file name has a format:

• PBB issue_number - issue_title.zip

If optional article title is supplied, the format is:

• PBB issue_number - article_title.zip

Whereby:

• issue_number is a three digit leading zero padded issue number. Zero padding ensures that alphabetical order is same as chronological.
• issue_title is a string denoting issue in human readable form i.e. Apr-May 2014.
• article_title is a optional text appended to archive filename. Example usage might be "How to build a super yacht in three easy steps" or "Whole issue from front to back cover".

Page filenames inside zip archive have a format:

• PBB issue_number - issue_title - ordinal_number page page_number.jpg

Whereby:

• issue_number as above.
• issue_title as above.
• ordinal_number is a three digit leading zero padded ordinal page number as it appears in an issue. Front cover has a ordinal_number 000, inner front page 001 and all other pages have a page_number + 2. This ensures that all files have the same alphabetical order as corresponding pages in actual PBB magazine.
• page_number is a two digit leading zero padded actual page number.

FAQ

What is it?

A simple utility to download a range of pages from Professional BoatBuilder Back Issue Archive in a best resolution possible.

Why?

PBB Back Issue Archive is a great service, but there just are some situations, where you wish to have an article on your own computer. Offline reading, storing for future reference, sharing etc... Sadly, the "Download PDF" link on page is broken. Yes, there is a possibility to print a range of page and use "Save as PDF" optin, but this saves pages in a low reolution only (besides adding date stamp). So, for your own use (and mine) I made this.

Why is there no option to download a whole issue or even a whole year?

Well... it is not impossible, man has landed on the moon after all, but is hard to do so. Doing so would require complex parsing of page source which is very very very cumbersome to do in JavaScript. I have tried very hard to make this utility as simple and as portable as possible. Everything is implemented in JavaScript on client side (browser).

But I still want a PDF. Could you do that?

No. Well, I could, but there are so many things to do and so little time. You can do it yourself though. There are many online PDF generators out in the wild.

Which browsers are supported?

All modern browsers should do. But bare in mind that no steps were made to ensure cross browser compatibility. Development and testing was done in Chrome.

What do I want for it?

Nothing. And it will remain so. For now I host it on my server. Great care has been taken not to use any server side processing so this utility comprises only of staticaly served content. Therefore it can be hosted on any web server. But, if you like it you can do me a favour... See next section.

Help me

If you find this archive or the utility useful, please consider doing me a favour. You can do that if you own an adroid device by:

1. Visit Google Play Store https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=si.nakupnik.nakupnik
2. Download the application
3. If you are a really nice person you can give me a 5 star rating.