Summary: Web Document capturing software

Jen McLeod mcleod at maine.maine.edu
Mon Jun 3 12:11:53 EDT 1996


Hello folks!  I was overwhelmed with responses to my question on web page
capturing tools and techniques.  Below please find a summary of the
responses I received.  Some of the responses were semi-duplicates.  I
included those that seemed to give slightly different or additional
information on the software being discussed.  Thanks to everyone - I think
the presentation will go splendidly now!   (She says, knocking on wood....) 

Jen
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Try Paint Shop Pro for screen capture and Power Point for the presentation.
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Try Browser Buddy from http://www.softbots.com/
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You might try Netscape Gold,  It appears to have some excellent conversion
routines.  From the edit mode just point your browser to a particular page
and it will download all of the html files and graphics at a single time.
In addition it adjusts links for your local machine.  At least that is what
happened when I tried the 3.0 Beta copy for Mac and Win95.
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Grab-a-Site works great, just don't ask for too many levels deep or you will
see why it is called the World Wide Web, and quickly eat up your disk space.
http://www.bluesquirrel.com/gas.html
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You can actually create "local" web pages, which would reside on your hard
drive, without any special software. (Although software like "HTML
Assistant" makes creating Web Pages easier in general.) To get
Netscape to read Web pages that you either saved to your hard drive or
created from scratch:  Choose "File" --> "Open File" and then Netscape (or
whatever browser) reads the file locally.
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In answer to your query, I've had a similar problem and the best way round
it for me was to use a utility called unmozify. For presentations you visit
the site in advance and get all the pages you wish to show into your cache,
then run unmozify which recreates the pages locally on your hard disc and
maintains all the integrity of the links and any media you brought into your
cache. I've found it to be extremely effective and its free for thirty days!

You can pick it up from http://www.evolve.co.uk/unmozify/
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I like WebFetch, a little Windows utility.  You can download from:
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win3/inet/webf10k.zip
http://www.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win3/inet/webf10h.zip
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win3/inet/webf10h.zip
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There are several programs that work really well for
downloading entire web sites.  I have been using WebWhacker
(as it was one of the first available).  I understand now
that there are a couple more of these programs, some of
which offer even more features. Milktruck, however, requires
Win 95 or Windows NT. I don't know too much about
Freeloader.
In most cases, you can download the software for a free
30-day trial.
Milktruck  http://www.milktruck.com
WebWhacker  http://ffg.com/whacker.html
Freeloader  http://freeloader.net/index.htm
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one thing that works for us (if you can use a laptop on the net and then take
that machine to the demo): just increase the size of your Netscape cache and
set the cache to never refresh; the pages you search on the net will stay in
cache memory and by replayable at your demo...
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There have been recent discussions in the EdTech list (see the archive at:
http://h-net.msu.edu/~edweb/) about Webwhacker (also spelled Webwacker--I
don't know which spelling is correct?), and other utilities that CAN
download and archive a site's html and graphics.  This thread includes a big
debate about weather you MAY do this, according to copyright law.
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NCSA Mosaic has an "Autosurf" feature that will capture an entire site. It
can be found at:

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/NCSAHome.html
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Try the web site http://www.bluesquirrel.com

    It has two programs: GrabNet and WebWhacker.  I haven't really had a
    chance to use these programs but somebody else suggested them to me.
  Good Luck!
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I'm very impressed by WebFetch (Windows only).
It not only works, and is simple, but it's also FREE! The
file you're looking for is webf10k.zip, which is in
most SimTel archives. More info from......

http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/%7Exniu/winsock/list.htm

......in the "URL checker" section, or for a very useful site
on the whole "off-line" question......

http://www.magpage.com/~cwagner/offline.html
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You might want to try Secret Agent < http://www.ariel.co.uk/sagent >

I have only played with it w/o real application so far. I believe it will do
what you need.

Download it from < support at ariel.co.uk >
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We have had great success with Web Whacker.  There is a free trial period
and is quite cheap when you decide to purchase.  The website is located at
http://www.ffg.com/whacker.html.
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Webfetch referred to in earlier messages on this topic is very good for
capturing Web sites for PC/Windows  - find it at
http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/%7Exniu/winsock/list.htm
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***************************************
Jennifer E. McLeod
University of Maine Fogler Library

http://libinfo.ume.maine.edu/Staff/mcleod.html <---  Staff page
http://libinfo.ume.maine.edu/~mcleodj/  <--- Personal page

"Risk!  Risk anything!  Care no more for the opinions of others, for those
voices.  Do the hardest thing on earth for you.  Act for yourself.  Face
the truth."  -- Katherine Mansfield



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