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Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection

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Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection

#31

Post by [deleted] »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #29
jarcane wrote: post #9

Anyone 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.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection

#32

Post by shmapf »

theycallmeg wrote: post #2

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

Just 2 weeks! I am very impressed. Great work.

First URL I typed in was news.ycombinator.com, which wasn't valid until I added the http://. I don't think most users would know to do that. Could you default to https / http when it isn't specified?

Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection

#33

Post by arthurfm »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #29
jarcane wrote: post #9

Anyone 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.

Google added offline browsing to Chrome late last year. To enable it go to:

    chrome://flags/#enable-offline-load-stale-cache
"When a page fails to load, if a stale copy of the page exists in the browser, a button will be presented to allow the user to load that stale copy."

Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection

#34

Post by btown »

arthurfm wrote: post #33
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google added offline browsing to Chrome late last year. To enable it go to: chrome://flags/#enable-offline-load-stale-cache "When a page fails to load, if a stale copy of the page exists in the browser, a button will be presented to allow the user to load that stale copy."

It's still very difficult to verify or ensure that the sites you know you'll need will actually be cached when you need them. For instance, you may not need page XYZ of the documentation now, but you might later when you're coding on the beach, and there's no way to force Chrome to crawl it besides preemptively visiting the page - and even then it might be evicted for any number of reasons!

Batch Save Pocket [1] is my stopgap solution, but Pocket's not at all optimized for documentation.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/batch-save-pocket/...

Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection

#35

Post by jfreax »

benbristow wrote: post #25

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.

Do you have any source

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

Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection

#38

Post by mmahemoff »

72deluxe wrote: post #20

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

Chrome for Android has a new, hidden, "Reading Mode" feature.

It only makes the page cleaner to read, it doesn't (yet) sync offline as far as I know.

http://lifehacker.com/enable-the-new-hidden-reader-mode-in-c...

Re: Show HN: Offline – Access your favorite websites without a network connection

#39

Post by 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.
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