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View Full Version : Mobile Favorites stinks - or - How to copy web pages


Robb Bates
02-18-2004, 07:05 PM
I have several links set up in Mobile Favorites and they are usually cached onto my PPC. But sometimes when I want to access them offline from my PPC, they won't come up and I end up having to connect to the internet. While this isn't a big deal, it kinda defeats the purpose of having Mobile Favorites. I've tried to locate the cached web pages on my PPC and save them to my SD Card, but no luck.

Is there a simple way to pull certain pages from web sites and store them as HTML files on my SD Card? I used to use a fantastic PalmOS program called plucker (http://www.plkr.org/). I could specify in a very detailed way which pages I wanted to pull off the internet and store on my Palm.

Is there was an equivalent program for the PPC?

I want to be able to say:

"Get pages from www.xyz.com but don't go outside the domain and only get 2 links deep and only those pages that have www.xyz.com/coolstuff in the address, and compress the images unless they are smaller than 20k."

Or something like that. Plucker could do that. IE can sort of do that. What I don't want to happen is to get all the extra fluff from ads or extraneous links located on the pages.

Any ideas?

Robb

pdauser
02-18-2004, 07:20 PM
I've used this before...

http://www.isilo.com/

Robb Bates
02-18-2004, 07:26 PM
Well, that's one option. But I'd rather have the raw HTML files. I don't need yet another program on my PPC that would duplicate capabilities.

The program doesn't even have to be PPC related. Just something that would selectively strip web pages from the internet and save them to disk.

Robb

pdauser
02-18-2004, 07:48 PM
You could start here...

http://download.com.com/3150-2377-0-1-1.html?legacy=cnet

I used to use one for my Mac years ago called Web Devil (http://www.chaoticsoftware.com/ProductPages/WebDevil.html).

dmacburry2003
02-18-2004, 07:50 PM
The "Create Mobile Favorite" button in Internet Explorer sort of does what you are looking for. It downloads the page and the syncs it to the device via ActiveSync.

Jason Dunn
02-18-2004, 07:50 PM
Mobile Favourites are completely, utterly, and totally broken. Rather than invensting time in fixing them, Microsoft has decided to focus on the wireless scenarios instead of offline scenarios. Sad, yes, but a reality of having limited resources. :? (and, yes, the Mobile Devices Division at Microsoft does have limited resources)

pdauser
02-18-2004, 07:53 PM
On a whim, I searched google and found this...

Vade Mecum - A Plucker document reader for the Pocket PC (http://vade-mecum.sourceforge.net/)

Not sure if it even works, but....


Seems support for HTML is lacking, but maybe a little PPCT love might help!

pdauser
02-18-2004, 07:58 PM
At the risk of spamming this thread, looks like you could use this Java Plucker Document creator to convert RSS and HTML in to plucker documents. Then you could use the Plucker PPC Reader.

http://jpluck.sourceforge.net/

Robb Bates
02-18-2004, 08:07 PM
pdauser, all good ideas, but I just meant that I liked how plucker pulled off web pages, not that I wanted to use it. All I'm looking for is something to strip web pages and save them as HTML files.

I'm perfectly content with PIE as an HTML reader. I just want it to be able to view the web pages that were saved before hand. To give you an idea of what I want, I downloaded the Forward Pass development program and want to be able to access the HTML user manual. But rather than getting online every time, I want to save the manual to my SD Card and then pull it up in PIE when I need to.

I think I'll try looking for offline browsers like you suggested.

As an alternative, does Mobile Favorites actually save the web pages as HTML files somewhere on the PPC or even the desktop? Maybe I could just copy them by hand. That would be good enough. I think, however, that they just get cached in the Temporary Internet Files directory. :(

Robb

dmacburry2003
02-18-2004, 08:09 PM
Mobile Favorites saves pages for viewing at a later time. Create one, set ActiveSync to sync Mobile Favorites, and it will save and update each time you sync. I don't think it saves them in the actual cache, though.

Robb Bates
02-18-2004, 08:34 PM
Mobile Favorites saves pages for viewing at a later time. Create one, set ActiveSync to sync Mobile Favorites, and it will save and update each time you sync. I don't think it saves them in the actual cache, though.

Well, yeah, sure, that's what it's SUPPOSED to do, but for some reason, it doesn't work all the time. Or when I want to pull up a cached page, it always tries to connect and I constantly have to tap Cancel twice and then it will pull up the page. It does it when I try to pull up every page. It gets very annoying.

Robb

Jason Dunn
02-18-2004, 11:07 PM
Well, yeah, sure, that's what it's SUPPOSED to do, but for some reason, it doesn't work all the time. Or when I want to pull up a cached page, it always tries to connect and I constantly have to tap Cancel twice and then it will pull up the page. It does it when I try to pull up every page. It gets very annoying.

It's broken and it sucks. There is no solution, no fix, no patch. In other words, start looking for a new tool - trust me, I fought with Microsoft for a year to fix this EXACT issue, and they never did.

dmacburry2003
02-18-2004, 11:12 PM
Well, yeah, sure, that's what it's SUPPOSED to do, but for some reason, it doesn't work all the time. Or when I want to pull up a cached page, it always tries to connect and I constantly have to tap Cancel twice and then it will pull up the page. It does it when I try to pull up every page. It gets very annoying.

It's broken and it sucks. There is no solution, no fix, no patch. In other words, start looking for a new tool - trust me, I fought with Microsoft for a year to fix this EXACT issue, and they never did.

Jason, I sort of don't get what you are exactly talking about. First, are you talking about the MFs on the device or the MFs button in IE 6? Second, what exactly do you mean is wrong with it? Is it errored? I use it all the time and find it to be quite reliable :?

I wish I was that close to Microsoft :wink:

Edit: Your posts on the subject are funny. Lol, you sound like you despise the MFs! Hahaha :D

Robb Bates
02-18-2004, 11:42 PM
First, are you talking about the MFs on the device or the MFs button in IE 6?

I think he means both. The MF button on IE6 saves the links and caches the pages to the PPC. But it doesn't always work quite right.

Robb

Eraserhead
02-18-2004, 11:53 PM
You can call me amish but I just made an folder on my PPC Documents, then if I see an artcle that I want to read offlin I just click "save as" and save it to that folder. The save process takes the same time, you just click file/save as and then you rename the file( if you want to) and click save, the only down side is that you have to use a file explorer to find the files, but its not that big of a deal.

The biggest plus about this for me is that I can just pop my PPC CF Card in my Psion Series 7 and then I can reed it with the bigger screen and all, with mobile favorits its much more of a problem.

Robb Bates
02-19-2004, 12:06 AM
That's great for one page, but what if you want to download a 200 page, 4-level hyperlinked user manual?

Robb

dmacburry2003
02-19-2004, 12:11 AM
That's great for one page, but what if you want to download a 200 page, 4-level hyperlinked user manual?

Robb

Whew, just use a Palm :lol: I would never make my Pocket PC bear that burden.

Eraserhead
02-19-2004, 12:13 AM
I can see that as a problem, but like I said I'm just saving articles, reviews and that kind of stuff. For stuff longar than one page their offten a print version that has all pages in one long article so that helps, but often I just save all the pages one at a time, but I dont bother exept if it's somthing really intresting.

ppcsurfr
02-19-2004, 04:58 AM
Ummm. Mobile links are meant to be synched with your desktop's Internet Explorer...

You will have to set it up for that...

But if you want to view sites stored on the SD card... you can simply copy them and save them...

Mabuhay!!!

Carlo

pdauser
02-19-2004, 05:02 AM
Ummm. Mobile links are meant to be synched with your desktop's Internet Explorer...
But they don't work the way they are supposed to. As Robb has said, many times you are viewing them on your PPC and you end up having to connect to the internet to finish reading a site. I've sworn off them due to the fact they don't work (or at least they don't work for me :lol: ).

ppcsurfr
02-19-2004, 05:05 AM
Ummm. Mobile links are meant to be synched with your desktop's Internet Explorer...
But they don't work the way they are supposed to. As Robb has said, many times you are viewing them on your PPC and you end up having to connect to the internet to finish reading a site. I've sworn off them due to the fact they don't work (or at least they don't work for me :lol: ).

This will depend on how many levels you are intending to read... And if there are stuff that are triggered to be downloaded...

You will also have to set this too...

If there is a mobile site that can be synched... it normally solves the problem.

And yes... it's not as easy as it's supposed to be...

And sometimes simply copying the pages would even be better.

Mabuhay!!!

Carlo

pdauser
02-19-2004, 06:05 AM
Oh it works the way I expect it, sometimes well, other times poorly. I don't expect a fix from MS though, we'll all have realtime web access in a year or two so "clipping" web pages isn't high on my list.

Actually a working bluetooth phone would be. :twisted:

Stephen Beesley
02-19-2004, 11:05 AM
You can call me amish but I just made an folder on my PPC Documents, then if I see an artcle that I want to read offlin I just click "save as" and save it to that folder. The save process takes the same time, you just click file/save as and then you rename the file( if you want to) and click save, the only down side is that you have to use a file explorer to find the files, but its not that big of a deal.


I know this is not really what Robb is after, but sometimes I take Eraserhead's solution one step further and convert the html document to a .lit file using the MsReader plugin in word and then read the file on my PPC using Reader. This is excellent for long reviews etc that I want to read at later.

Robb Bates
02-19-2004, 03:24 PM
Ugh! I'm going crazy! 8O

Forgive me! :cry: These are all solutions, but they are too much work.

OK, maybe here's a different solution. I think the main problem is there must be some object that doesn't get cached when I save the web page. And when the page gets loaded, that object needs to be downloaded, so the PPC tries to connect to the internet.

So, I think this problem would be solved if there was a way to tell the PPC once and for all, DON'T CONNECT UNTIL I TELL YOU TO!! Very much like telling your desktop PC to "Work Offline". When you do that, it never connects unless you ask it to refresh the page. Is there a way to do this on the PPC?

Or maybe like the desktop PC setting that determines when to dial up. You can set it to dial up automatically or only when you say. I wouldn't mind that.

Robb

PR.
02-19-2004, 05:15 PM
Are you sure that the reason that the PPC wants to connect is because the page has adverts and other elements which are hosted on a different site and so they aren't cached?

Robb Bates
02-19-2004, 05:20 PM
No, I'm not, but I can't think of any other reason why it would want to connect every time I open the page. If it was all cached, there should be no reason to connect, should there?

Robb

wing
02-20-2004, 10:42 PM
Hey dudes & dudettes,

right click & click "MAKE AVAIL OFFLINE"

on each of your mobile favorite links.

I have NEVER had a problem keeping a www site, including hyperlinks and levels that I need.

The synch happens at the specified time that you program on your computer to update the data.

When you ActiveSynch, it exchanges the info from your computer (NOT internet) to your PPC.

SIMPLE, eh?

<cheers>

MLO
02-20-2004, 11:43 PM
You may want to keep an eye on this (http://www.freewareppc.com/docs/ftxpbrowserforwindowsmobile2003.shtml)...it seems as though they are attempting to do something along the lines of what you are thinking.