Anyone else remember when this was a standard feature in a lot of desktop browsers? Or am I crazy.
I remember this being a massive deal in the marketing for MSIE 4, alongside the Active Desktop, also an idea more than a decade ahead of its time.
Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection
21–30 of 51 posts
Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection
#22Anyone else remember when this was a standard feature in a lot of desktop browsers? Or am I crazy.
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…
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.
Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection
#23How does it compare to existing stuff such as HTTrack ?
Offline seems to be like HTTrack for Android (Which is a greatly idea, actually).
Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection
#24Started as a weekend project but took me almost two weeks. Please share any feedback.
Nice, thanks!
Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection
#25Microsoft's Spartan is meant to have something similar to this. Will apparently sync to your Windows 10 Mobile 'reading list' as well.
Sounds interesting.
Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection
#26Doesn't the stock Android browser do this? At least I know it offers me a "save for offline reading" option
I believe that's just one page. This is whole (or some specified subsets of) sites.
Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection
#27Anyone else remember when this was a standard feature in a lot of desktop browsers? Or am I crazy.
doesn't HTML5 AppCache allow for some offline features now? But I agree, this should absolutely already be a feature that everyone plans for when they're making websites. Even when users have a connections plenty of people are one slow mobile connections and caching will prevent unnecessary page load times.
Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection
#28Anyone else remember when this was a standard feature in a lot of desktop browsers? Or am I crazy.
I haven't tried the app yet, but I think there's a difference.
With the browser, you browse a page, and it caches it. But you have to browse it first.
With an app, you could specify that you want the latest homepage? x-page(s)? and let the app poll for you.
So there's definitely place for innovation, I guess.
Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection
#29Anyone else remember when this was a standard feature in a lot of desktop browsers? Or am I crazy.
It infuriates me that my browser keeps this big cache of web content, but refuses to show it to me when I don't have an Internet connection! This is the main reason people keep asking for an app, when all they really want is offline access.
Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection
#30Doesn't the stock Android browser do this? At least I know it offers me a "save for offline reading" option
Can't find that option in my stock Android browser - what menu is it under?