capturing web pages for offline use

[kuntzmaj at york.uchsc.edu]

Stacey Pober wrote:

>I want to save web pages so we can use them for demos to classes when 
>our network is down.  I was looking in the Web4lib archives and the
>threads dealing with this were at least two years old - some of the
>software recommended is no longer available. 

<snip>

I've used teleport pro to good effect, but these days I
just recommend folks use the latest version of Internet Explorer.
Even if you know your live connection is reliable, having to demo 
a busy web site during the lunch hour is a time when it 
often pays to have an offline copy to speed your presentation.

The "work offline" feature of IE has improved steadily over
the years, and now allows you to archive several levels deep
in addition to scheduling regular downloads if you wish.
In IE 5 when you go to "Favorites", it should offer the
"make available offline" option. If it isn't there for some
reason, I'd recommend upgrading your IE.
 
One caveat: I just tried it with a sample record from our OPAC
and it did a fine job. However, I sent it to archive
our current library web and noticed it had trouble
in going out to vendor sites--it was getting robots.txt files,
which indicates IE was classified by those sites in this instance
as a robot, which meant it was denied access.

Offline web browsers can put a heavier load on busy sites,
so it's probably best to schedule an archive session for later 
on at night. They're not perfect either, they will have trouble with 
javascript or anything coming out of a database. Though as I said, 
IE did fine in capturing a sample record from our webpac.

(And does doing this violate copyright; probably so. Anyone
care to comment?)
Jeff Kuntzman/Internet Librarian
Univ. Colorado Health Sciences Center

PS: Roger Trobridge (web4lib member?) has a website 
that talks a little about offline web browsing with good general info: 
http://internet-gopher.com/toolkit/download.htm