

Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection - theycallmeg
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gashawmola.offline

======
jarcane
Anyone else remember when this was a standard feature in a lot of desktop
browsers? Or am I crazy.

~~~
przemoc
You are not. I hate how browsers nowadays, especially browsers on smartphones,
are unusable without access to Internet. Sure, there is Pocket for instance,
but IMHO there shouldn't be need for such app. And while I'm ranting at Pocket
- there is still no automated login for LWN.net. (I know I can go with manual
way, but still...)

P.S. I'm thinking about making nice dedicated cross-platform LWN.net articles
& comments reader one day (well, maybe more), but it's hard to squeeze out
enough time for that kind of fiddling (unless it's really a gravely matter,
but it isn't here).

~~~
Sprint
Opera Mobile (the "classic" one before they threw it all away) let you save
pages for offline reading. Not perfect but better than nothing. Sadly it did
not cache content through restarts which is annoying on mobile where apps get
killed a lot. But if I recall correctly at least the navigation back and
forward was instant, like on desktop, with no network traffic.

------
joshstrange
I would love to be able to cache websites to my server and access them in the
event the site goes offline. I've tried a number of things like wget to
"offline" a website and had mixed success. Does anyone know of a proven way to
do something like this? (I'd even settle for no images a la google
archive/cache but pulling images and scripts would be a huge win)

I'm younger but I can already see link-rot destroying my bookmarks. I now use
(and pay) for pinboard.in however I'd like a way to do it myself. I've
considered writing a chrome plugin to send url's I visit over to a process
running on my server to archive it (with the ability to black/whitelist
domains) but haven't found a way to do it yet the works reliably (I'd also
probably need to send a copy of my cookies for auth sites).

~~~
theycallmeg
How often a descent website goes offline?

~~~
joshstrange
What we consider "decent" today is not always "decent" tomorrow and things
like personal blogs go down all the time or change their URL structure. Also
not everyone has a community/family that will keep their work online after
they are gone and I don't want to lose content because someone's hosting
lapsed after their death.

Looking back I wish I had archived some of the forums that I used as a kid as
a number of them are just gone, no wayback machine, no cache, no archive, just
gone.

Sidenote: I'd love to work or just use on a service that can will allow for
community funding of both hosting/domain reg so that you could add a widget on
your site and have it stay online even after your death as long as people
donate, maybe even make the site static if no one can pay and use proceeds
from other sites to float the cost. There is a chance that you could die and
your close friends/relative would either not have the access (password/key) or
technical know-how to keep your site online even if they had the funds to do
so

------
theycallmeg
Started as a weekend project but took me almost two weeks. Please share any
feedback.

~~~
appenin
Thank you, it's pretty sad that we've had to wait years for something that was
available in nineties versions of Internet Explorer.

~~~
icebraining
We didn't, I've been using Offline Browser[1] for quite a while now. This does
seem more polished, though.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.nikodroid.o...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.nikodroid.offline)

------
rcthompson
One nice feature would be a "follow the next page button" mode for following
serials like web comics. Instead of starting from a home page and following
all links to a given depth, you would give it the URLs for page 1 and page 2.
It would search page 1 for the button that leads to page 2, and then it would
find that same button on page 2 to get page 3, and so on. In other words, it
would simulate starting at page one and repeatedly pressing the "next" button
to read the whole serial.

~~~
theycallmeg
Good idea, I'll consider adding it in next versions.

------
rikkus
When I used to access the Internet via dial-up modem, and pay for every second
online, I'd always browse via WWWOFFLE[1] and then be able to just return to
where I had been after going offline. I think I remember putting something in
a CHAP script to tell WWWOFFLE I was on/offline.

[1]
[http://www.gedanken.org.uk/software/wwwoffle/](http://www.gedanken.org.uk/software/wwwoffle/)

------
jkot
How does it compare to existing stuff such as HTTrack ?

~~~
dimitar
Offline seems to be like HTTrack for Android (Which is a greatly idea,
actually).

------
akileos
Seems like it doesn't handle non responding links/webservers. Crash report
sent.

~~~
theycallmeg
Thanks for reporting, does it work for other links?

~~~
akileos
Seems to be fine so far, doesn't seem to be resuming download upon
stop/restart, might be only me :)

Thanks for the dev so far, looks pretty good.

------
benbristow
Microsoft's Spartan is meant to have something similar to this. Will
apparently sync to your Windows 10 Mobile 'reading list' as well.

Sounds interesting.

~~~
jfreax
Do you have any source

I hope this idea will catch on and other browser vendors will implement this
feature as well.

------
72deluxe
Doesn't the stock Android browser do this? At least I know it offers me a
"save for offline reading" option

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Can't find that option in _my_ stock Android browser - what menu is it under?

~~~
72deluxe
Jut the normal "menu" menu (presented when you press the menu button). I am
running 4.1.1 so nothing recent.

------
rhino369
Does anyone have a rec for similar software on iOs. Unfortunately my firm
won't let me use android.

------
tyrion
Is this Free Software? In case it is I encourage you to make it available on
F-droid!

------
bvinicius
Very useful and simple to use :). +1 for the material design usage.

