Offline Explorer is a website downloader for Windows that saves web pages and their related files for browsing without an Internet connection. It organizes captures as projects, with rules for selecting web addresses and controls for running downloads again. The saved site can stay on a hard drive or be copied to external storage.
Projects and URL filters
A project defines the website to download and the rules used to select its content. The New Project Wizard helps create that setup, while project templates provide settings that can be reused for another capture. Browser bookmarks can also be imported as a source of website addresses.
Offline Explorer uses keyword-based URL filters to include or exclude addresses. These rules act on the address itself, allowing a capture to concentrate on matching areas of a site or skip unwanted paths.
Link extraction
The downloader retrieves content through HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. Its link processing extends beyond ordinary HTML links to references in JavaScript, style sheets, XML and PDF files. Cookie support and Basic or FTP authentication are available when the source requires those forms of access.
Saved sites
The internal browser opens the downloaded content within Offline Explorer. Users can choose a Chromium or Internet Explorer engine, and an internal HTTP server is available to serve the saved site locally.
Relative links let the downloaded files be moved to another directory or storage device without tying every reference to the original folder location. A copy on a flash drive or disc can therefore retain links between the saved pages and resources.
For a large collection, Offline Explorer can search filenames or the text inside downloaded HTML pages. Search terms can be highlighted while browsing a page, connecting the result list with the matching passages in the saved content.
How Offline Explorer runs downloads
Projects can be scheduled for a later time, arranged in a sequence or started from the command line. Saved projects also have update modes for subsequent downloads, so a website capture can be maintained through repeat runs instead of creating a new project for each visit.
Several projects can download at once. Connection settings allow between one and 500 simultaneous connections, while download speed controls limit transfer activity. File-type priorities determine which kinds of files receive attention first.
Background downloads can finish with a sound or email notification. When a file has not loaded, the download log provides a place to examine the reason. The standard edition has a limit of 300,000 files in a download session.
Project backups
Built-in backup and restore functions preserve projects for later use. The Migration Wizard transfers projects and settings to another computer, carrying over the download configuration as well as the project organization.
Offline Explorer editions
Offline Explorer is the standard edition in a paid product family. Pro adds controls such as multiple starting URLs in one project, nested project folders, filtering by page content and filtering images by pixel dimensions. It also adds exports to CHM, MHT, MAFF, plain text and a compressed EXE viewer.
Enterprise extends that family with OLE Automation for controlling the application from other software and reports in WARC format. The standard edition’s password-protected downloads use Basic or FTP authentication; Pro and Enterprise also support NTLM authentication.
