What exactly is "off-line browsing?" It's viewing your favorite websites
without being on-line. Using WebSnake, you download a website's graphics, text, movies,
sound, etc. to view at your leisure through your default browser (e.g. Microsoft's
Internet Explorer or Netscape).
Benefits of Off-line Browsing
Some of the benefits that off-line browsing include:
- Since your favorite websites are on your computer, you don't have to wait for them to
download.
- If you're on the road or away from your office, you don't have to hassle with connecting
to your favorite website.
- You cut your costs on connection fees because you're not on-line. Also, if you schedule
your download to occur late at night, there is less Internet traffic, which makes for a
more reliable connection.
To show you a live example of snaking a website, let's use Websnake's Website
(www.websnake.com).
1. Open WebSnake through the Start Menu. By
default, the program opens with the Project Wizard (a Windows feature that leads you
step-by-step through the process). If you're already in the program, click on the Add
button on the main screen or select the Add Project Wizard command in the File menu.
2. Select the top radio button "Snake a copy
of a website for off-line browsing," then click on the Next button.
3. Type in www.websnake.com in the Starting
Address/URL field. Also, give the project a name. Call our project "Websnake."
So, type the word " Websnake" in the Project Name field, then click on the Next
button.
4. The next wizard screen asks if you need a
password to access the website. For our example, just click on the Next button to
go to the following screen.
5. You must tell WebSnake how deep you want it to
snake as well as tell it when to stop in the event that you're snaking a large website.
For expediency, use the arrow buttons to reduce the number of levels from " 3"
(which is the default) to "1" in the " How many levels do you wish to
snake? " field, then click on the Next button. You"re not going to be
snaking that much so the "Stop project if space left on local drive is less
than" field doesn't come into play.
6. On the next wizard screen, click on the Finish
button to conclude the project setup.
7. Name your session. Think of a session as a
category of projects, like Entertainment-related or Sports-related. For our example, type
in "browsers" in the file name field, the click on the Save button to
initiate the snaking process.
8. WebSnake will snake www.websnake.com for
off-line browsing.
