products
offline explorer
chart
| MetaProducts Systems | Contact Feedback My Cart |
An offline browser downloads HTML Web pages and extracts links from them. It also changes all links in a page so that they point to other files offline. Without this change, browsing Web sites offline is impossible.
Web pages may contain several areas called "frames," which are areas of a web page that contain other web pages. Frames parsing means extracting the links to each frame's Web page and changing them links to point to the offline copies of these pages.
Forms are used to submit data, enter username/passwords, navigate a web site, etc. Forms exploration means submitting simple Web forms that do not require a user to click buttons or give other kids of input.
Cookies are information transferred between a web server and a browser. They are mainly used on password-protected Web sites to indicate that a client has been successfully authenticated. Some sites store the username and password in cookies so that you are instantly logged on a protected Web site when you visit it the next time.
Cookies support means that an offline browser will have no problem downloading such password-protected Web sites, sites that use session IDs, etc.
Almost all modern Web sites use Java scripts, which are small pieces of programming code that make Web pages more interactive. When script code contains links, it is necessary to detect them, load the linked pages or files and change the links to point to offline locations.
Since there is no standard as to how links in scripts can be represented, all offline browsers behave differently when parsing scripts. Not all links can be successfully detected and changed. Some offline browsers can find more links than others, while some do not look for links inside scripts at all.
It is critical to provide accurate support for scripts because they are a standard part of many web sites. Failure to do so results in broken links while browsing offline and the inability to download complete Web sites on request.
Many Java scripts do not contain full links, but calculate them from different segments. In order to find these links, it is necessary to evaluate all script expressions. Otherwise, these links will point to missing files offline. Offline Explorer is the only offline browser with this feature.
Java applets are separate executable files that are loaded when you browse certain Web pages. They are used to make menus, show pictures, animations, etc., much like Flash files.
An offline browser must be able to download Java applet files and also look inside them to find linked files and other applets.
Flash (.SWF) files are similar to Java applets in that they are separate executable files that are loaded when you browse certain Web pages. They are used to make menus, show pictures, animations, etc. You must have the Flash player or plug-in installed in order to browse pages with Flash.
An offline browser must be able to download Flash files and also look inside them to find linked files, images and other Flash files. It must also be able to change the links inside Flash to offline locations.
Some modern Flash files are compressed and only Offline Explorer can find the links in these files.
XML files are used to display Web pages that use different kinds of data. They are similar to HTML files, but use more complex and less standard methods of linking to other pages, images and files. Extracting and changing links in XML files is a real challenge for offline browsers.
Director files are used to display multimedia movies and presentations on the web, and is another version of Flash technology. These files are compressed to achieve a smaller file size with more rich features.
VRML files are pages that display 3D pictures. They are similar to HTML files, but use other tags to link to files, images and pages.
WAP sites were designed for mobile devices when cell phone networks were slow to transmit data. These files use a subset of HTML tags for linking purposes.
All these formats are used to link to audio/video files on streaming servers (MMS and RTSP.) They describe with special tags how to display different video, audio fragments, texts and images. Supporting these files is necessary, because most Web pages do not link directly to audio/video streams, but use the above files as redirectors.
Offline Explorer can extract links from these files, download streaming audio/video files to your hard disk and make streaming presentations that will run offline without an Internet connection. This allows you to view the highest quality video files even if you have a standard modem connection. Downloading these files will take more time than with a high-speed connection, but you will not experience any quality drawbacks or missing frames when viewing saved files from your hard disk.
PDF files are text files created with Adobe Acrobat software. They are widely used because they can easily be viewed on virtually any computer device under any operating system. They are compressed to save on download time and traffic. These files often contain links to other PDF files, so without parsing and downloading these links, PDF documents may appear to be incomplete.
M3U files are used by WinAmp and other MP3 players to list links to other MP3 music files. Some sites publish them to allow access to music albums. Offline Explorer can load these files and all links from them to achieve automatic download of the whole musical collection.
CSS files define how Web pages look - colors, fonts, etc. These files may contain links to other files, such as background images and sounds. An offline browser has to support links inside these files so that downloaded pages have the same look as their online originals.
Most offline browsers do not allow you to download multiple sites, but require you to open a Project, start downloading and wait until the download completes before starting on the next site. Some programs allow you to start different Projects at the same time, but the sites will be loaded one at a time.
Downloading video streams from different sources sometimes takes hours, so parallel downloading is helpful. Only Offline Explorer allows you to start downloading any number of Projects. You can start them simultaneously or consecutively (without having to wait for the previous Project to complete.) Offline Explorer will use all available connections to download files for each of the Projects together.
Organizing your Projects in folders helps to make the Project list short and manageable. You can group Projects by category, and nested folders allow you to create subfolders for better organization.
If your Projects are organized as a tree of folders and Projects, you can select them to start a download, delete, export, etc. Selecting multiple items at once makes it easy to perform these actions on the whole group of Projects, instead of having to perform them separately for each Project.
Offline Explorer users benefit even more from this feature, because the Export feature can take combine several selected Projects into a single compressed HTML Help, MHT or ZIP file.
When you create a new Project, every offline browser assigns certain default settings, which you can change after the fact. Most offline browsers do not allow you to alter the default Project settings.
Project Templates are used to assign certain settings when you create a new Project. For example, you can create a number of templates to load Web sites with or without images, to scan a site for certain kinds of files, to allow loading only from a certain Web site area or from several areas. These templates allow you to quickly create similar Projects for different Web sites in just few clicks, without having to change the settings of each Project individually.
Offline Explorer also allows you to apply a template to a group of Projects. For example, if you need to change a setting of 20 Projects, you can create a template with that setting, select the 20 Projects and apply the template to them. Otherwise you would have to open the Properties dialog of each Project separately to change the desired setting.
A Project Wizard is an easy way to create a new Project. You will be prompted to provide some information, such as the Web site address and whether you want to load images, etc. Wizards usually have less flexibility than adjusting Project settings, but they simplify things when you are not yet familiar with an offline browser.
Most Internet users have Web site URLs stored in as browser Favorites or bookmarks. Some offline browsers offer a quick way to create a new Project using one or more stored URLs. However, only Offline Explorer supports the most popular Web browsers - MS Internet Explorer, Netscape and Opera.
All downloaded pages are searchable by keyword, and will produce a list of search results that you can browse using the Internal browser.
When you have searched for keywords in downloaded pages, Offline Explorer products a list of search results. Each item will be displayed with a line of text surrounding the searched words. When you double-click the file to browse it, the Internal browser will highlight the search terms in color and bold font.
This feature is useful when you want to create a backup copy of a Project and its settings, Map and downloaded files. These files are compressed (ZIP format) and are also useful for transferring Projects to another computer to restore in another copy of Offline Explorer.
Statistics display the details of the last Project download - number of downloaded files, download times, average speed, number of download errors, unchanged files, etc.
This feature allows you to start printing all downloaded Web pages automatically with just two clicks instead of having to browse each page and click the Print button in the Internal browser.
Scheduling allows you to set up an automatic download of Projects at a desired time. It could be to take advantage of off-peak hours or to do an everyday download of a certain Web site, etc. Offline Explorer Pro goes a step further by offering the URL Macros feature, so you can schedule dynamic URLs. For example, if you want to download a page whose URL includes the current date, URL Macros will take care of the change: http://www.server.com/page{:month}-{:day}.htm. When Offline Explorer Pro starts downloading this URL it converts it to http://www.server.com/page11-25.htm on November 25th.
Most Web sites use very long URLs that contain parameters, such as file.asp?param1=value1¶m2=value2...¶mX=valueX. When an offline browser saves such pages, it creates filenames from the URL. These filenames can be very long. The ability to save or export to the Joliet or 8+3 filename formats helps you to prepare downloaded Web sites for CD burning or for browsing on file systems that do not support long filenames.
MHT files are useful when you want to place an entire Web site in a single file. You can browse MHT files on any system with MS Internet Explorer installed. The only disadvantage is that MHT files are not compressed, so they do not save on disk space.
This feature allows you to make downloaded sites available for browsing in MS Internet Explorer's "Offline mode."
CHM files (HTML Help) store downloaded Web sites in an easy-to-browse, compressed file. They can save up to 70 percent of disk space occupied by a non-compressed Web site. They can be browsed on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003 systems without any additional software.
HTML Help format may allow you to write a web site larger than 1 GB on to a standard CD-R/RW disk, thanks to the powerful compression algorithm.
EXE files store downloaded web sites in an easy-to-browse compressed file, saving up to 70 percent of disk space occupied by a non-compressed web site. They can be browsed on any Windows system without any additional software.
This format may allow you to store a web site larger than 700 MB on a standard CD-R/RW disk, thanks to the powerful compression algorithm.
Most Web sites do not store files in a single directory. When an offline browser downloads a site, it recreates the directory and file structure. Export, or the ability to save files to a plain directory, suppresses the creation of subdirectories. All files are stored in the specified directory on your hard disk. If file share the same name, the program assigns them unique filenames.
For example, you may want to download a collection of images from various Web sites and store them in one place.
This feature allows to delete downloaded Project files and Offline Explorer Enterprise will still be able to download only new or modified files from the Web site.
The information about the files you remove is stored in a compact database and you save space by preventing storage of duplicate files.
For example, if you downloaded a collection of large PDF files that were burned on a CD, you can delete the files from your hard disk using the File | Delete | Only Project Files command. When you start downloading the Project the next time, Offline Explorer Enterprise will determine if any of the deleted files have changed and download only new and updated files.
Most offline browsers allow you to assign only one starting URL to a Project. But it is often necessary for a Project to download several Web sites at once. It is easier to manage a single Project than a group of similar Projects.
Many Web sites use very long URLs with various parameters, etc. URL syntax highlight uses different colors to make reading long links easier in the Project URLs field. Also, if you are using URL macros, they will be more visible with bold blue and black fonts.
Project description allows you to write notes and comments in Projects. Offline Explorer Pro allows you to use various fonts and colors for your text.
When you update a downloaded site, you need to download only the files that have changed since the last download. This saves time and traffic. However not all Web sites and not all files support file modification checks. So, it is necessary to provide optional ways to update Web sites. Offline Explorer can check file modifications by size and CRC, and can skip checking images, because they are not changed on most Web sites.
Also, Offline Explorer can check files only up to a specified level and then simply skip checking all existing files. This works great for news sites where only the articles index page is being changed, while the article pages are not altered at all. Offline Explorer will download the index page with links to articles and then get only new pages.
Filtering URLs means specifying the links you want to download and the links you want to skip. Keywords help you to specify a group of links by finding only common segments.
For example, all thumbnail images on a certain site have the suffix "_tn" in the filename, such as "photo101_tn.jpg." In this case you may exclude all files that contain "_tn."
Offline Explorer allows you to use more complex keywords, as below:
^ad - all servers that begin with ads., such as ads.server.com, advertisement.media.net,
etc.
.net$ - all sites that are located on a .net domain.
serv*.com - server.com, www.service.com, images.server.com.au
fore[lx].com - forex.com and forel.com
images[1-5].srv.com - images1.srv.com, images2.srv.com, ... images5.srv.com
You can also use keywords like this in Offline Explorer:
http://*.srv.com/path*/[1-8]/*_tn.jpg
Filter downloaded pages by keywords in contents
You can define which pages should be by searching for words in the page contents. For example, you may set an offline browser that supports this feature to save only pages that contain the word "Sport."
Offline Explorer Pro allows you to choose from a number of options when a word or phrase is found in a page.
You may be loading a site that uses sessions that expire after a certain time. In most situations an offline browser will continue loading expired Web pages that contain nothing but error message. But Offline Explorer Pro can be set to stop downloading a Project when a message is found inside the downloaded pages.
These settings allow you to stop the Project download when it loads more than the specified number of files, or the total loaded file size is more than several megabytes, or when a certain time period elapses since the download started.
This helps you to limit some files by size. You can set a minimum and maximum file size that allowed for downloading.
For example, you may want to load only full-size images and exclude thumbnails and other small files. You can set the minimum images file size to 20 kilobytes. All images that are smaller will be skipped.
Download manager programs provide you with more features than an offline browser when downloading large files. They can load files much faster because they load several parts of the same file at once, they can resume downloads if the connection fails, etc. Offline Explorer Pro can pass links to Mass Downloader when it sees that a file is over a specified limit, like 10 megabytes.
This is helpful when you want to get images that are larger or smaller than a certain number of pixels in width and/or height. For example, if you know that thumbnails are always 60x70 you can specify to only load images over that size.
Also, this feature allows you to filter out banners, because they have standard sizes in most cases, such as 468x60, etc.
When you download a web site at high speed or on an unreliable connection, some files may be damaged. To detect and replace an incomplete file, the program should support integrity checking of multiple file formats.
Many web sites mark all their pages with errors. Most offline browsers do not load or process such pages, making the download impossible. Offline Explorer can ignore such errors to download web sites completely.
Some web sites do not have direct links to all files. If they support directory listing, this feature will allow you to download the complete site contents.
By default all links in downloaded web sites are local for offline browsing. But if some links were not downloaded because of project settings, they may need to point to online content for browsing.
Most web pages are updated frequently. This feature helps you to keep older copies of updated web pages, renaming files in a sequence. Offline Explorer allows you to specify how many old copies you want to keep and how to rename older files.
This feature allows you to record and download HTML form submission results, such as search requests, logon, etc.
This is useful for sites that require sessions to be stored.
Many web pages cannot be downloaded directly, but must be linked from other pages. Custom referers allow you to work around this problem.
This feature allows you to convert downloaded web sites to various formats (HTML Help, ZIP, MHT, CD-compatible, etc.) automatically when the project download completes.
Most offline browsers allow you to specify proxy server settings. However, if a corporate network uses different proxy servers to access different sites, this feature will help you to setup a project that will use its own proxy server.
This feature will collect all e-mail addresses found during a web site download and store them in a text file.
Macros are useful for scheduled automatic downloads of files with URLs that change regularly.
For example, a weather site has an image that updates daily. Its URL has a day number inside. Thus, http://www.weather.com/image5.png corresponds to the 5th day of the current month, while http://www.weather.com/image12.png corresponds to the 12th day of the current month.
In this case, the following URL macro is useful:
http://www.weather.com/image{:day}.png
When Offline Explorer starts downloading the Project, it substitutes macros with their values. Macro should start with the {: symbol and end with the } symbol.
Macros also allow you to download sequences of URLs. For example:
http://www.weather.com/image{:1..100}.png
This results in the following URLs download:
http://www.weather.com/image1.png
http://www.weather.com/image2.png
...
http://www.weather.com/image99.png
http://www.weather.com/image100.png
Some images contain clickable areas, each leading to its own link. This feature scans such images for all possible links and downloads them.
This setting allows an unlimited download from the starting web site including a limited number of links on external sites.
This feature allows you to prevent projects from being accessed by other people.
You can change the default toolbar layout by removing rarely used buttons and adding menu shortcuts frequently used features.
This allows you to browse web sites in the same program where you download web sites. You don't have to switch between applications.
Offline Explorer users can also record web form submissions in the internal browser to download the results of search and logon forms, quiz results, etc.
The internal editor allows you to easily edit downloaded web pages with a single click on the corresponding Toolbar button. Syntax highlighting colors HTML tags and parameters for easy navigation and editing.
The internal editor in Offline Explorer fully supports HTML, XML, JavaScript and CSS file syntax.
This browser enhancement allows you to open more than one web page in the same application. You can switch between pages by clicking the corresponding tab. You can also select several projects to display at the same time in different tabs.
This is an easy-to-use graphical tool to schedule downloads at a desired time. Offline Explorer allows you to simply drag a project and drop it on a timescale.
Sequencer allows you to download projects sequentially. When one project download completes, the program starts the next one automatically. You can loop the sequence, schedule the sequence start time, etc.
The project map is a graphical representation of all files of a downloaded web site, which you can use to access any file to browse, edit, remove, etc.
Queue Manager shows the list of all files that are to be downloaded. Offline Explorer allows you to stop any file in the queue, search for certain files by mask, see file referers, filter out all files on unwanted servers or directories, etc.
The log window displays detailed information on what occurs during the download process, including errors, rejected links, etc.
This shows all menus, user interface elements and messages in your own language.
This feature helps you to use various external tools to browse downloaded web pages and edit or view files from within a program.
This option displays the program icon in the system tray area (near the clock.) Clicking the icon shows the main program window.
Drop Box is a small floating window that simplifies integration with browsers. You can drag and drop a link to the Drop Box to create a new project and download it.
While downloading a web site, not every link will be downloaded because of project settings (level limit, filters, etc.) This feature allows you to see the exact reason why a link was not loaded and adjust the project settings if necessary.
This feature allows you to set a download speed limit in kilobytes per second, which is useful when you want to browse other web sites and receive e-mail while downloading. If a limit is not set, it will use all available bandwidth and other Internet programs will work very slowly.
An offline browser should be able to change the number of files it loads simultaneously. A lower number of connections is good for servers that cannot handle many requests, blocking your IP address if you overload them. On high-speed servers, increasing the number of connections will increase downloading speed.
If you are behind a firewall or on a corporate Intranet, proxy server support is required. The more types of proxy servers the program supports, the more chances you have to download web sites successfully.
Many web sites contain links to files on FTP servers, which are widely used for file storage. If an offline browser supports FTP protocol, you will also be able to download whole FTP sites.
This is good if you have collections of links to download in local HTML files.
Many servers use encrypted connections for your security. Without HTTPS support, a program cannot access and download these sites.
There are lots of audio and video streams available, but you can`t save them to your disk within your browser, Media Player or Real Player. Offline Explorer Pro can do this for you. Simply give it RTSP:// or MMS:// URL and watch the file from your hard disk. You can also download the file with the highest possible quality even on a slow modem Internet connection. Enjoying downloaded files offline is much better, because you will never experience delays, stalled video, etc.
If an offline browser supports downloading of multiple projects at once, this feature allows you to have truly parallel access to different servers. Otherwise it is possible that one project will load faster than others.
There are many different ways to authenticate a user on a web site. The more authentication methods a program supports, the more chances you have to download protected web sites.
Some sites contain special tags to disallow automated programs to download certain areas on a web site. If a program doesn't support these tags, then it will be able to download whole web sites according to your settings and ignore the limitations.
This feature allows you to balance downloads between different servers and limit the number of simultaneous connections to one site.
This limit shows how many files you can download from the Internet per project. A higher value is better.
This feature is very useful when you want to pause downloading of a big web site. You can fine-tune project settings to avoid downloading unwanted files, review download queue, etc.
When you are downloading a big web site you cannot stop the download and continue it easily the next time. With this feature you can record the download queue state in a file and quit the offline browser. You can continue from exactly the same point at any time or day later.
Many sites do not like automated accesses, because they may overload the server. If they detect such activity, the user may be blocked from accessing the site. To decrease the load, random pause works like as you are browsing the site manually without loading it too much.
This is helpful when you don't want to monitor the download progress, but want to be notified about its completion. Offline Explorer can inform you even if you are out of office, sending you an E-mail or SMS (via E-mail-to-SMS gate of your cell phones operator).
This is useful when you want to preview the web site, mark only the pages you want and download them. This preview will be created by downloading only HTML pages without images and media files.
Most offline browsers keep downloaded files on your disk as-is. This allows you to use other programs to view and manipulate them even without the offline browser running. Proprietary storage formats have their own advantages, such as consuming less disk space, but they are less flexible.
This is useful for modem users - you don't have to call your Internet Service Provider manually when you start downloading a web site. Also, you can schedule downloads to run at night or while the computer is unattended and the program will connect, download and disconnect automatically.
This feature is good when you want to leave your computer unattended while it is downloading web sites and you want to disconnect from the Internet automatically when all downloads are complete.
This feature is good when you want to leave your computer unattended while it is downloading web sites and you want to disconnect from the Internet and turn off your computer automatically when all downloads are complete.
There are some web sites that were not designed for offline browsing from a disk. They may appear different from their online versions, stop working or issue errors. The internal web server emulates the online environment to allow these sites to be browsed offline.
This feature prevents your settings and changes from being lost if your computer fails or there is a power outage.
Many sites contain thousands of files per directory. Without this feature, only a portion of the files will be saved, because Windows has limits on the number of files per directory.
When you remove projects, some downloaded files or web sites may be left on your hard disk. This feature shows which files do not have projects so you can remove them.
This is a fast way to add links to an offline browser. Clipboard monitoring creates a new project when a new Internet link gets copied to the clipboard. Depending on the integration settings, the new project can be started automatically.
This is another way to add a link to an offline browser - just drag it to the program screen to create a new project and start downloading it.
This feature is useful when you need to extract pieces of information from downloaded web sites to use them in a database or a text file.
OLE Automation opens Offline Explorer Enterprise to solution developers. It is now possible to write a program using Visual C++, Visual Basic, Delphi or other COM-compatible development environment to start new downloads, manage projects and process downloaded web sites via Offline Explorer.
Offline Explorer Enterprise provides full access to its folders, projects and downloads.