Teleport Pro 1.62 : Offline Browser

By Author: Aaron Webber
Total Articles: 26
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Handling today`s most complex websites flawlessly, Teleport Pro is the most fully-featured and robust webspider available. Capable of reading HTML 4.0, CSS 2.0, and DHTML, Teleport is the only webspider that really finds all of the files on all of the sites. And with side image map exploration, automatic dial-up connecting, Java applet support, variable exploration depths, project scheduling, and relinking abilities, Teleport Pro is quite simply the best there is.

This software not only downloads entire Web sites to your hard drive, it also can download parts of any site and search a site by keyword or filename. Teleport Pro copies an entire site to a location you specify, and the software is highly configurable. During download, the program constantly displays how many files it has found, how many are downloaded, and how many remain.

Browsing the downloaded pages works well. If you try to view something that wasn't downloaded, the program will display a message saying that it wasn't copied to the hard disk. The performance of the program matches the quality of its organization. If you're looking for an offline ...
... browser, give Teleport Pro a try.T

Working offline
Little did I search when I've found Teleport Pro, a small utility that does all the offline browsing I need. This webspider is simple in design, and straight to the point in functionality. You have the option of manually configuring your download settings for the websites that you want to browse offline, or you can use the featured wizard, that will do almost all the work for you. All you have to know is the address of the website. There are many options and limitations to choose from, making this a good tool for your browsing needs.

When you first run the program, the built-in wizard pops up to help you, providing several options. You can choose from creating a browseable offline copy of the website, duplicating the website (including the structure), search for a certain file type on the page, explore every site that's linked from a specific central site, retrieve one or more files from an address that you specify, or, you can just search a website for keywords. When trying to make an offline copy of the page so that you can check it out later, you have the option of not downloading images, sounds and so on. Of course, you are free to choose to download everything the page contains. You can adjust the deepness of your search, by increasing/decreasing the number of links you want Teleport to explore, from the starting address. If you're not satisfied with just the site that's located at the address you've mentioned, you can have Teleport download all external pages that are linked from that central page, so you can get a more panoramic view. And, if that's not enough, you can download a whole website, including directory structure. This can take up more time, but once you're finished, the page surfing is a lot faster than your 56k connection.

A useful feature, created for the ones that don't have the time and connection resources, is to search a site for certain file types. You have a list to choose from, divided into categories: graphics, text, executable, archive, video, audio. If you want to search for a file type that's not on the list, there's the option of defining your own. You can add as many file types to your search as you want, so that you get a whole collection as a result. If you can't get to a result using this method, you can search the site for a keyword (who needs search engines anymore?)

The wizard is not your only option, and as you use the program more and more, you'll know exactly what you want it to do, and can configure the projects manually. Nevertheless, you can create a project using the wizard, and then add some fine tuning from the preferences panel. Presently spam takes a lot of the Internet, and it would be ironical to get it when you're browsing offline too. There's no need to worry, because you have the option of excluding certain web pages or file types to be downloaded onto your hard drive.

There is no resume option, but to make up for it, you get a warning alert if you try to close the program while a project is still running. You do, however have the option of scheduling projects to be downloaded: just once (by specifying the scheduled date and time), at startup, or on a regular basis (hourly, daily, monthly) depending on how up to date you want to be. Also, should hard disk space be an issue, you can have the program stop running once the available space drops below a certain amount. Even though it can turn out to be a nagging issue with some programs, you can add and remove the program to the IE context menu really easy, from the main File menu.

Pros: It is easy to use and fast. Does not use a lot of memory, there are no adds or other disturbing features. Will download large websites with no problem. In despite of the simple user interface there are many options, which makes it verry flexible. For example you can use this spider to download all the images from an website or to search for zip files or anything else you may want. You can stop the job and resume it later. I also use this program for downloading websites in order to see what's inside (css files, java scripts etc). There is an option into Teleport you can use it to duplicate the website structure from the server. For a webdesigner this may be a usefull tool.

Cons: Speed. Teleport does not use mirrors. Do not use it as a download manager for big files.

1. Download all or part of a website to your computer, enabling you to browse the site directly from your hard disk at much greater speeds than if you were to browse the site online
2. Create an exact duplicate, or mirror of a website, complete with subdirectory structure and all required files
3. Search a website for files of a certain type and size
4. Download a list of files at known addresses
5. Explore every website linked from a central website
6. Search a website for keywords
7. Make a list of all pages and files on a website
8. No more waiting for slow pages to download.
9. No more clicking on links for hours, only to find garbage at the end of your trail. Read more Software Review & Guide