Offline browsing doesn't work as advertised???

[bob]

I recently discovered offlline browsing but I am having difficulty. First
the help sections hardly talk about it, second, the pages I download are
there and then suddenly a few days I am in the car trying to view them and
they are no longer available even though they show in the sync area!!!!

Does anybody have any help on this, are there special ways to find the pages
that have beeen synced for offline or do they just auto clear after a few
days

also , any source that you guys could point me to so that I could read would
be great!!!!!

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

Offline browsing is an anachronism created for IE4 and gradually
left unsupported by successive versions of IE. The main problem
is that many content providers intentionally code much of their content
to be non-cacheable and IE5 and later respect this request by not saving
such files in the TIF. Even if the content is cacheable the TIF still
respects any expiry dates and deletes such files when the expiry time
comes. This may be great for a content provider's concerns about
copyright issues or their desire to force you to see new ads but
offline usability suffers. Also because the offline files share the TIF
they may be subject to some kind of replacement rule in order to make
room for new content. (I haven't checked recently what the default
actions are regarding cacheable, non-expiring, content saved for offline
use but I know that that the normal replacement rule is still haphazard
and that is why I use CacheSentry, which itself doesn't give offline
files any special retention but which at least effects (mostly) a strict LRU
rule; so I could theoretically indefinitely preserve all my offline content
by periodically "revisiting" those pages often enough.)

If you really want to save a page for offline viewing without being
concerned about cacheability and expiry issues you can use
the File, Save As... dialog or a third-party program which ignores
such concerns for a content provider's rights and allows you
to save web pages independently of the the TIF's operation.


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle