WWWOFFLE - World Wide Web Offline Explorer - Version 2.7a
=========================================================
The WWWOFFLE programs simplify World Wide Web browsing from computers that use
intermittent (dial-up) connections to the internet.
Description
-----------
The WWWOFFLE server is a proxy web server with special features for use with
dial-up internet links. This means that it is possible to browse web pages and
read them without having to remain connected.
Basic Features
- Caching of HTTP, FTP and finger protocols.
- Allows the 'GET', 'HEAD', 'POST' and 'PUT' HTTP methods.
- Interactive or command line control of online/offline/autodial status.
- Highly configurable.
- Low maintenance, start/stop and online/offline status can be automated.
While Online
- Caching of pages that are viewed for later review.
- Conditional fetching to only get pages that have changed.
- Based on expiration date, time since last fetched or once per session.
- Non cached support for SSL (Secure Socket Layer e.g. https).
- Can be used with one or more external proxies based on web page.
- Control which pages cannot be accessed.
- Allow replacement of blocked pages.
- Control which pages are not to be stored in the cache.
- Requests compressed pages from web servers (compile time option).
While Offline
- Can be configured to use dial-on-demand for pages that are not cached.
- Selection of pages to download next time online
- Using normal browser to follow links.
- Command line interface to select pages for downloading.
- Control which pages can be requested when offline.
- Provides non-cached access to intranet servers.
Automated Download
- Downloading of specified pages non-interactively.
- Options to automatically fetch objects in requested pages
- Understands various types of pages
- HTML 4.0, Java classes, VRML (partial), XML (partial).
- Options to fetch different classes of objects
- Images, Stylesheets, Frames, Scripts, Java or other objects.
- Option to not fetch webbug images (images of 1 pixel square).
- Automatically follows links for pages that have been moved.
- Can monitor pages at regular intervals to fetch those that have changed.
- Recursive fetching
- To specified depth.
- On any host or limited to same server or same directory.
- Chosen from command line or from browser.
- Control over which links can be fetched recursively.
Convenience
- Optional information footer on HTML pages showing date cached and options.
- Options to modify HTML pages
- Remove scripts.
- Remove Java applets.
- Remove stylesheets.
- Remove shockwave flash animations.
- Indicate cached and uncached links.
- Remove the blink tag.
- Remove refresh tags.
- Remove links to pages that are in the DontGet list.
- Remove inline frames (iframes) that are in the DontGet list.
- Replace images that are in the DontGet list.
- Replace webbug images (images of 1 pixel square).
- Demoronise HTML character sets.
- Stop animated GIFs.
- Automatic proxy configuration for Netscape.
- Searchable cache with the addition of the ht://Dig, mnoGoSearch
(UdmSearch) or Namazu programs.
- Built in simple web-server for local pages.
- Timeouts to stop proxy lockups
- DNS name lookups.
- Remote server connection.
- Data transfer.
- Continue or stop downloads interrupted by client.
- Based on file size of fraction downloaded.
- Purging of pages from cache
- Based on URL matching.
- To keep the cache size below a specified limit.
- To keep the free disk space above a specified limit.
- Interactive or command line control.
- Compression of cached pages based on age.
- Provides compressed pages to web browser (compile time option).
Indexes
- Multiple indexes of pages stored in cache
- Servers for each protocol (http, ftp ...).
- Pages on each server.
- Pages waiting to be fetched.
- Pages requested last time offline.
- Pages fetched last time online.
- Pages monitored on a regular basis.
- Configurable indexes
- Sorted by name, date, server domain name, type of file.
- Options to delete, refresh or monitor pages.
- Selection of complete list of pages or hide un-interesting pages.
Security
- Works with pages that require basic username/password authentication.
- Automates proxy authentication for external proxies that require it.
- Control over access to the proxy
- Defaults to local host access only.
- Host access configured by hostname or IP address.
- Optional proxy authentication for user level access control.
- Optional password control for proxy management functions.
- Can censor incoming and outgoing HTTP headers to maintain user privacy.
Configuration
- All options controlled using a configuration file.
- Interactive web page to allow editing of the configuration file.
- User customisable error and information pages.
Changes
-------
Since version 2.7:
Bug Fixes:
Ensure that the -put or -post options to wwwoffle have one URL. Fix IPv6
checking (configure fails if IPv6 not available). Fix conditional request
problem (304 reply for non-conditional requests). Make the socket binding
errors less confusing. Fix requesting of compressed data. Handle NULL strings
in FTP code and parsing requests. Speed up wildcard matching of '/*' paths.
When search script fails give an error not a blank page. The content-length
header is not removed unless compression is being used. Fix core dump with
configuration page adding first item to DontGet/DontCache section. Preserve
cache file timestamps when compressing them. Handle relative URLs that start
with '//'. Fix Solaris compilation problem with statfs/statvfs. Bug fix for
failure to censor some headers. Remove the 'alt' attribute from disabled
images when modifying HTML.
New Features:
Re-instate the old configuration editing web pages due to user demand.
Allow wildcards to have more than two '*' in them.
The upgrade-config.pl script warns about URL-SPECs with path='/' not '/*'.
Availability
------------
Version 2.7a uploaded, but may not be available yet
FTP server: ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/apps/www/servers/wwwoffle-2.7a.tgz
FTP server: ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/unix/httpd/wwwoffle-2.7a.tgz
Web page: http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle/
Author & Copyright
------------------
This program is copyright Andrew M. Bishop 1996,97,98,99,2000,01,02
(amb@gedanken.demon.co.uk) and distributed under GPL.
email: amb@gedanken.demon.co.uk
[Please put wwwoffle in the subject line]