03 March, 2012

Looking for offline browser for iOS

Unless you have Internet coverage everywhere you use your phone, I think offline browsers are quite useful. I wonder why they aren't more popular. I've been thinking about the features I want in one:
  1. 1 click updates. I should have a list of all pages saved, and be able to click on each to update, not click edit, click on each page, then update.
  2. Update all or better still update groups. Like update all pages tagged "news".
  3. Automatic, scheduled updates.
  4. Able to see all dates updated on one page. Better still, have read/unread status.
  5. Choose how many next pages to save - for each saved page
  6. Choose to follow all links, links on the same domain, folder, etc.
  7. Specify next page URL format. Some sites use .../page/3 some use ...page=3 and it should work with all types.
  8. Organise saved pages with at least folders, maybe tags.
  9. Update in background.
The sad thing is most browsers I've tried are designed NOT to be updated. They look like they mean for you to visit a page once, save it, and keep referring to that saved page. This might be useful for Wikipedia, but is useless for news.

I bought "Offline Pages" http://offlinepag.es/, which works, but its main problem is when updating sites with multiple saved pages, it only updates the first page. It also has a problem with not working with some sites (7), saving too many or too few pages (5), and having to update each page manually (2). It's also quite expensive.

No comments:

Post a Comment