Windows XP Hacks

Read Web Pages Offline

Take the Web with you wherever you go, and put it into an easily searchable database on your PC.

One of the main problems with doing research on the Web is that there’s no easy way to save all the information you find and no simple way to read web pages when you’re offline. Internet Explorer includes some basic tools for saving web pages and reading through them when you’re not connected to the Internet. If you need to save only occasional pages and don’t need to do searches through those pages, then these tools will work reasonably well for you. But if you want to store pages in categories and folders and need to do full-text searches, then you’ll need a third-party program. This hack shows you how to do both.

Reading Web Pages Offline Using IE

To save your current web page to your hard disk so you can read it again in Internet Explorer when you’re not connected to the Internet, choose File → Save As. You’ll be given several options for how to save it. If you’re not planning to edit the HTML of the file, your best bet is to save it as a Web “Archive, single file” (.mht). That way, you don’t clutter up your hard disk with extra folders and files stored in different locations; everything is saved to a single file. Saving it as a “Web Page, complete” stores the HTML file as well as associated graphics, in a folder structure. Saving it as a “Web Page, HTML only” saves just the HTML file itself, with no associated graphics and no folder structure. You can also ...