OFFLINE EXPLORER PRO
What’s it do?
Allows you to download an unlimited number of your favorite Web and
FTP sites for later viewing, editing, or browsing. Enables editing,
viewing, browsing, or searching downloaded Web pages, with selection of
individual servers, directories, and files using keywords.
Does it do what it promises?
Reviewer 1: Yes. The program did exactly what it said it would do
when it worked (see below).
Reviewer 2: Yes it does, and it does it remarkably well. However,
my initial usage request asked it to download six levels of pages from its
own Website, and that was still in progress an hour or so later using a
2.5 Megabit/sec link. I finally gave up and went to bed and let it
complete overnight -- another good lesson, I guess, in being careful what
you ask for -- you may get it! That aside, my impression was that it was
programmed with efficiency a priority, and that it achieved that to a very
high degree.
Reviewer 3: It does as it promises. What I like about the program
is it allows you to use keywords in your search criteria as well as
selecting specific servers and files. This program not only downloads Web
sites, but it will do the same thing for FTP sites, using one of the
fastest download accelerators I have had the opportunity to explore.
Reviewer 4: Yes, it does. Offline Explorer Pro allows you to
download entire Web pages to your hard drive or to other media and search,
browse and edit to your heart’s content later. I was able to make use of
this on a recent business trip when I knew I’d have limited access to the
Internet. I was trying to do some research from a couple of good sites, so
I downloaded them and read through them at my leisure in the hotel room
later. The program also allows you to automatically update the sites you
download so you always have current information.
Reviewer 5: Yes. The program will download Web sites from the
Internet to your hard drive, where you can then browse them even though
you may not be connected to the Internet. With a built-in scheduler, you
can automate the process so that the download can take place while you are
away from your computer or when the connect rates are less occupied or
cheaper. The downloads are very fast, with dozens of files being processed
simultaneously.
Reviewer 6: Yes.
Was it easy to install?
Reviewer 1: Yes. The installation was quick and painless; however,
it did put an icon in my Start Menu and Desktop by default, a practice I
take exception to as I want to choose which if any or where if any icons
are placed on my computer.
Reviewer 2: Yes, straightforward to install and activate, no
problems
Reviewer 3: It was very easy to install. The serial number is a bit
long, but all you have to do is cut and paste it into the appropriate
field to register the software.
Reviewer 4: Yes, I installed it with no problems and it ran
flawlessly.
Reviewer 5: Yes. I was able to install it into the directory of my
choice without any difficulty.
Reviewer 6: Installation was quick and simple.
Good Points
Reviewer 1: The program has a very user-friendly interface and is
intuitive. It provides support for a vast array of standards currently in
use on the Internet such as FTP, HTTPS, MMS, RTPS. It will even extract
links and convert them for offline browsing from Java/VB scripts, Java
applets, Cascading Style Sheets (.CSS), Macromedia Flash (.SFW), Acrobat
(.PDF) and many more. The program, when it worked (see below), is
extremely fast, and gives a range of configurable options. An additional
strength is that it will allow selectively including or excluding
individual servers, directories, and files using only keywords.
Reviewer 2: I was impressed with the program's performance and
efficiency of operation. It downloaded a really huge quantity of Website
data and used the full capacity of the computer to accomplish this. Six
levels of a predominantly picture-based Website were downloaded over a
50KBit/sec connection in under an hour. Clearly some good thinking and
programming have gone into its development. The program was well designed,
both in terms of its usability and functionality. I felt it completely
fulfilled its stated objectives of being able to capture a Website to a
user-specified depth-of-reference and permit offline inspection and
operation on the captured Webpage code. The Options menu I found
exceptionally well thought out and implemented. I never came across
anything I wanted to do or not do that it failed to cover.
Reviewer 3: It is extremely fast downloading Web sites, individual
directories and files. It is possible to setup monitoring of specific Web
pages for updating. What this means is when the Web sites you have
selected are updated, the updates will be downloaded to your directory the
next time you connect. The updated pages can be saved in a separate folder
or Offline Explorer can overwrite the original pages. The program has
Java, Macromedia Flash and Cascading Style sheets support. No matter how
the Web sites were designed or what kind of animation it has, you will be
able to view it offline. After viewing or editing the Web sites, you have
the ability to share these (updated) files with your friends or colleagues
using the internal HTTP server.
Reviewer 4: It makes the process of searching a Web site, or saving
it for printing or presentation, very easy. It’s nice to be able to save a
very large Web site and browse through it at a much greater speed later,
when you may not have access to the Internet. You can set it to skip
images, sound files, animations, etc to save space, and set limits on size
and depth of links to be downloaded. Just a well-designed program.
Reviewer 5: This program came along at an appropriate time for me, as
I have recently being having problems with my Internet connections. With
the Offline Explorer Pro, I was able to download several sites that I am
using at the present time. Once they were on my hard disk, I was able to
work through them without having to depend on the wobbly connections I am
currently struggling with. When you start up the program, you are shown an
opening page which includes Common Tasks (Download or Browse) and Help
Center (Tutorials and Troubleshooting.). A “Tip of the Day” pops up, and
there is a small “Did you Know” in the corner. These may be turned off if
you wish. The individual items under these main headings give help on some
of the special features of the program (for example: how to download
Streaming Audio or Video, how to transfer the site to a USB key or to
another computer, etc.) The New Project Wizard appears, so that you can
define another Web Site that you wish to copy onto your hard drive. When
you are beginning, this is useful. As you become familiar with the
program, you may wish to turn this off, as the Wizard is available from a
button on the toolbar. You may also choose to use the Offline internal
browser, or your own default browser. A number of the functions are
available through keyboard shortcuts, a feature that I really like in
programs that I use. The downloads are very fast indeed. Some Web pages
took only a few minutes, and I was able to begin working with them
quickly. When I reached a “level” that had not downloaded, I was able to
choose to connect directly with that particular link, or to have it
downloaded and added to the “Project” (an unique name you assign each Web
site that you want to browse offline.) If you wish to add links or pages
that were not included on your first pass, you can redefine your
parameters, and reconnect to the site. The additional pages will be added.
Reviewer 6: Very powerful software, it can automatically capture
large amounts of data from the Web . Entire Websites can be captured and
viewed/edited offline. Files on other Websites/servers pointed to by links
can optionally be saved as well. It can also be very selective about which
information is captured. Filters can be used effectively to control
downloads to specific file types or characteristics (such as having a
certain name and/or residing within a domain or URL). These files can be
archived and/or viewed offline. Once I figured out how to adjust the
download parameters (from Properties of the project,) the downloads became
more controllable.The built-in offline browser displays pages consistent
with how Internet Explorer does in my experience. Technical support via
e-mail was reasonably fast, understandable, and complete.
Weak Points
Reviewer 1: The program continually kept freezing and would not
respond. On three occasions, it locked up the rest of my system so that I
could not even kill it using ctrl-alt-delete. This problem persisted even
when being used on my primary computer using Windows XP Home—a rather
powerful machine with a Pentium IV 3.4 processor, 1GB RAM, 100GB Hard
drive. I could find no conflicts with other programs, and tried
reinstalling it twice. As a further test, I installed the program on my
office computer, a different make and configuration, and experienced the
same difficulties. As a result, I can only conclude that this is a problem
with the software. In addition to the above—as if that is not enough—there
is no uninstall program in the start menu, which really bothers me.
Metaproducts offered to do their best to fix the
problems this reviewer was experiencing, and the reviewer was asked to
contact the company for their assistance.
Reviewer 2: The documentation, entirely in the form of Help Files, is
rather spartan but adequate. I would have appreciated a printable User's
Guide and Program Description manual. Technical Support is provided only
via email, and no turnaround time is specified. I had no problems with the
program that occasioned a pragmatic test of the service. I'd appreciate a
response from MetaProducts about what their measured statistics are in
this area, as well as seeing them state their response-time objectives for
the user. The price of $70 strikes me as high, but probably within the
envelope of acceptability that will not impact sales. Their half-price
version-upgrade policy I think is right on!) The User License reads "A
registered copy of the software allows the user to use the software on a
single computer or network and only by a single user at a time." The
present-day computing world has progressed to the stage that most users
have both a deskside and a laptop machine and need any program to be
usable serially on each of the machines. The above licensing verbiage
suggests a practice that would prevent serial single-user usage
interchangeably on both computers. If so, that would be a significant
problem for me, and I expect for most potential customers. I'd like to
hear MetaProduct's position and practice on this usage scenario. I did
find placement of the Options menu under the View pull down unusual. In my
experience, it normally falls under either Edit or Tools pull downs. Also,
I found the Speed Option nonintuitive and wondered from its explanation
what circumstances one might need to limit the download speed.
Metaproducts responded: We have a turnaround
time of 24 hours specified on our site,
http://www.metaproducts.com/mp/mpSupport_Email.asp
. We will fix the licensing formula on our site to make licenses per-user,
not per-computer. The reason one might need to limit download speed is
that we choose to have Offline Explorer Pro download Web sites and still
allow other Internet programs to access Web pages, receive emails, etc.
Otherwise, Offline Explorer Pro will load files at its full speed and
other programs will have painfully-slow access.
Reviewer 3: The program has no undelete feature. You have to go
through the control panel or use a third-party removal program such as Add
Remove Plus.
Reviewer 4: I had no problems with Offline Explorer Pro. It was
easy to use, powerful, and extremely useful.
Reviewer 5: I really do not have much to say here. The only quibble
that I have to make is the reference (and the Menu item) to using Offline
Explorer to “mine” the downloaded data. However, it seems that to do so
requires “TextPipe Web”, which is produced by another company entirely,
and would be an additional purchase. However, the fact that it integrates
with this other software is probably an advantage for those who do manage
Web sites.
Reviewer 6: The program starts quickly, using its default settings.
While this is a strength in respect to ease of use, it is a weakness in
respect to control. This program can save quite a bit of data from a
single command. By default, it saves to a folder on drive C with the
option to prevent download directory from overloading unchecked. In my
system, I have drive C as a partition to contain my operating system only,
keeping programs and data on other drives/partitions. Leaving this setting
unaltered could easily overflow this partition and interfere with the
operation of my entire system. A simple prompt at setup asking where the
user would like to save data would have addressed this issue. By default,
the program also opens a port for a http server function to allow files to
be shared by other computers. This seems like a security risk which users
should be made aware of and which should be turned off by default instead
of enabled. Downloading relatively simple Websites is quick and
straightforward by following the Wizard or by starting the Project and
adjusting its properties. However, I was unable to successfully download a
complex, password-protected site which I subscribe to, despite multiple
attempts and tweaking different parameters.
Metaproducts offered to do their best to fix the
problems this reviewer was experiencing, and the reviewer was asked to
contact the company for their assistance.
Other Comments
Reviewer 1: In fairness to the publisher, MetaProducts, I did not
even attempt to contact support to try to resolve this issue. Quite
frankly, when software begins to wreak havoc on my system and locks it up,
it is too late for support as far as I am concerned. This is not a product
that I can recommend and if you choose to do so I can only say do so at
your own risk!
Reviewer 2: None.
Reviewer 3. Each project can have its own directory. This makes it
easy to find and search through specific downloaded Web sites.
Reviewer 4: Anyone who spends a lot of time searching through
particular sites or doing research will probably get a lot of use from
this program.
Reviewer 5: There are functions in the program that I am unable to
comment on, as I do not manage any Web sites. However, there are editing
features available, so that you can make changes in your Web site and
upload them back to the Internet. Again, you can either use the internal
editor, or specify one of your own choice. The interface can be viewed in
20 different languages; however, beware of leaping into languages that you
cannot read before noting the position of the menu item which would allow
you to get back into one that you can read. I am also happy to see that
their own Web site maintains a users forum, where people can ask questions
and have either the support staff or other interested users help them out.
This, combined with a “New Features Request Form” is always a good sign of
product support.
Reviewer 6: The first thing I saw when I went to run this program is a
ZoneAlarm Alert that Offline Explorer was “trying to act as server”. This
is a powerful privilege which I don’t give easily. Considering what this
software needs to do, it seems to be understandable.
Metaproducts responded: We have fixed several
issues that were noticed by the reviewers. The Uninstall icon is now
created along with the program icons in the Start Menu – Programs. The
internal server will now accept only local accesses from address 127.0.0.1
for better security. The Options menu item was moved to the Tools menu.
The speed limit setting in the Options dialog was better described in the
Help file. The updated version of Offline Explorer Pro 3.3 SR1 can be
downloaded at:
http://www.metaproducts.com/download/betas/opsetup.exe
Will you continue to use it?
Reviewer 1: No. It has already been removed from my system.
Reviewer 2: If I ever have a need to capture a Website and massage
it offline, I'd certainly appreciate having this program; but,to date,
I've rarely had such a need. Maybe in the future..
Reviewer 3. As I travel and use my laptop during these trips, I do
not always have the opportunity to connect to the Internet. With Offline
Explorer I can download the web sites I am interested in, burn them to a
CD and bring them with me for later viewing and/or editing. If the
information is required for my job, I can share the edited information by
connecting to the Internet and uploading the data using an internal HTTP
server. To view a history of changes, new updates can be saved in a folder
other than the original.
Reviewer 4: Yes.
Reviewer 5: Oh yes. It is an excellent tool, which I am finding to
be very useful
Reviewer 6: Yes
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