1. Background Information

Projects and Tasks

Offline Commander is a software application capable of creating and reading Offline Commander project files. Offline Commander project files are stored on disk with .ocp extension.

A project file may contain multiple Tasks. Offline Commander task is an automated process for downloading a Web site.

Download Depths and Filters

Offline Commander can automatically download a Web page, all pages linked to the Web page, all pages linked to those Web pages and so on. You should tell Offline Commander when to stop. You do this by setting the Download Depth and Filters.

Download Depth is the minimum number of clicks you have to make to reach the last Web page that Offline Commander should download. If you set the Depth to 0 Offline Commander will download only the starting Web page. If you set the Depth to 1 Offline Commander will download the page and all the pages linked to the page. You can set the Depth to any value up to 99. The program downloads Web sites by levels so you can stop a task when a site is downloaded down to a level you think is sufficient.

If you want to download an entire Web site you should set the Depth to the maximum value. If at least one Web page on the site will have a link to another Web site Offline Commander will download that site too. To avoid this you should always specify filters. Filters tell Offline Commander what it should download and what it shouldn't. You don't have to know much about filters because if you set the Depth to 0 Offline Commander will not set the filter and if you set the Depth to anything higher than 0 Offline Commander will suggest a default filter that will limit the download to main site only.

To learn more about filters, click the Help button on the Filters tab of the New Task dialog window.

2. Steps to Download a Web Site

When you first launch Offline Commander it prompts you for the name of a new project file. Specify a name for the new project and press Ok.

Initially the new project will be empty. To create a new task, type the address of the Web site into the Address bar, set the Depth, and click Get.

Offline Commander can be in two modes: Offline or Online. In Offlile mode every task you create will be queued for download but the actual download will start only after you press the Go Online button. When you create a task in Offline mode Offline Commander will suggest you to switch to online mode. If you switch to online mode without connecting to the Internet the task will download with error "The server could not be reached". You can switch to online mode and back to offline mode by clicking the Go Online/Go Offline button on the main toolbar (which is on the left in the default docking configuration).

Address bar will let you specify only the most common parameters: starting page address and download depth. Other options are available in the New Task dialog or Task Properties dialog (which are essentially the same window with different titles).

After you switch to online mode the download will start and you will see the files being downloaded in the Progress window. After everything will be downloaded (the task will be marked as downloaded and there will be no files being downloaded in the progress window) you should switch back to offline mode. You can pause the download by switching to offline mode at any time. You can later resume the download by pressing the Go Online button. You can change all properties of a task (including the Depth and filters) before, during, or after the download.

You can disconnect from the Internet after switching to offline mode. Double click the task to view the downloaded pages in the built-in browser.

3. Exporting

The downloaded Web site will be stored inside the project file. You can browse the site with the built-in browser but if you want to create a browsable copy of a Web site on disk so that it could be viewed by the external Internet Explorer, Natscape Navigator, Opera or any other browser you should export the task or entire project file to the file system. To export the entire project, press the Export button on the main toolbar (on the left), specify the folder where the copy should be saved, and press Ok.

4. Common Problems and Resolutions

Problems with Downloading

If you have problems downloading a Web site (e.g. some pages were not downloaded) try browsing the pages in the built-in browser while the program is in Online mode. This will solve the problem.

Click the Search button on the main toolbar. Uncheck the Success and Queued check boxes. Click Ok. This will list all files downloaded with errors. Some of these errors may be transient. To try to download these files again. To do this, select all files (Ctrl-A) and click the Refresh button on the toolbar at the top. Then go online and they will be automatically downloaded.

If you have problems with particular pages make sure the same pages can be viewed in Internet Explorer.

To see a list of files downloaded by a task, select the Task and click the List button on the Task toolbar. If the list contains too many files and you have difficulties locating the file by URL, click on the URL column to sort the files by URL or search for this file by URL using the search feature.

Problems with Exporting

First make sure the pages browse without problems in the built-in browser. If the exported site has any JavaScript links, it may make it impossible to export the Web site correctly without modifying the JavaScript code.