Simple way for browsing offline in Firefox

Question

My favorite browser is Firefox, and during browsing I visited some webpages that I would like to see again offline. But when I'm disconnected I can't reach those webpages from history, because whenever I click to see them, I get a message saying it's necessary to connect. (I make Firefox offline by selecting File -> Work Offline.)

Saving them (from the File menu and choosing Save Page As) is not a good idea either, because there are a lot and sometimes they don't save properly.

Is there any technique or option in Firefox or tools that make it possible to browse again to a visited webpage when you are offline?

Answer 1

Using File -> Work Offline option you should be able to view pages only if you've visited them before.

Selecting that option forces Firefox to read from the cache. However your cache should have enough space allocated. Check it from Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network -> Offline Storage and make sure it is at least 50 MB. Also make sure that you or any other application haven't cleared it because you can't reading anything from an empty cache.

For me the simplest way is the good old CTRL + S which is the shortcut for saving the page. It's quick and reliable, just remember to select Web page, complete (not HTML only). But if you insist not using that then you can use an add-on such as ScrapBook or ReadItLater as suggested before.

Answer 2

You want a cache browser that'll save your browsing history in a manner a little differently than how it's currently used- specialized for browsing again later.

There are a few extensions that do this, but not quite how you're explaining you want, if I'm not mistaken.

There's WinHTTTrack, which is a standalone offline browser, but it takes manually saving each site you want a mirror of- and is kindof involved. Not at all automatic.

Unitl someone else answers with something better, try & Google a cache browser & see what you find.

Answer 3

Two extensions that may help you:

• Read It Later - which is a bookmarking utility, but has a side-option to save a page locally
• [ScrapBook] - this is what I use. Very configurable (content type, depth level) and it even rewrites the links for offline browsing. (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/427/)

Answer 4

I found NCollector Studio to be the best tool for making fully offline browsable copies of websites (or parts of them). Most sites renders perfectly, but some special sites using ajax look a little strange.

http://calluna-software.com/NCollector.aspx

Answer 5

I tried to solve the same problem many times, last time here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2735591 .

One solution that actually works is combining the suggested ScrapBook (Plus) with the sdkfk 'addon addon', which saves every page you visit (with the option to black-list-filter them) to your ScrapBook archive. (It upgrades the ScrapBook Plus, that's why I called it 'addon addon'.) In the end I've found it too disturbing showing me the page got saved and generating too much data by saving the whole pages not compressed (file-by-file).

What on the other site doesn't really work (for me) is the top solution here "Work offline", because the cache doesn't persist during the browser restart. (It looks like a bug but quitting FF in the "Work offline" mode does start it back without it and with all the previously loaded pages lost from FF'es memory.)

(Now ideally I'd like to start a server on my desktop, browse through it a get all the visited pages saved and deleted automatically. Like a saver-proxy, you know...I'll play with that idea - or ask new question later;).)