Comments on: Offline Blog Reader?

Question: Offline Blog Reader?

tesseract420 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:04:46 -0800

Offline blog reader? I've backed up my blog into an XML file. I'd like to read it offline. Open Office has XML support but this is not an efficient solution. There are online solutions--importing the xml file into a new blog, for example--but I'd just like to read while offline from the xml file. Is there a program that will permit this?

By: Happy Dave

Happy Dave — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:05:58 -0800

Have you tried opening it in a browser. From memory, Google Chrome opens and displays XML files quite nicely.

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:20:15 -0800

wget is your friend:

wget -r -l 1 -k -p -np websitename

This will download a local copy of a site (1 link deep) and localize all of the links.

By: tesseract420

tesseract420 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:51:16 -0800

wget won't work because I've taken the blog offline and I need to read from the xml file.
I'm on a Mac and I don't have Chrome handy, but I used Stainless and it opened the file without any problems, and except for the posts made with Windows Live Writer, the blog is easy to read. I'll try to get to a Windows machine and try Chrome, but your suggestion is a great one; thanks Happy Dave!

By: gensubuser

gensubuser — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:32:49 -0800

I was about to ask a very similar question. [I'd like to make my own, offline RSS feed, using images resident on my computer].

One solution seems to be to make a quick server and direct all the links to localhost. I can imagine perhaps as little find and replace will do the trick, but I'd rather have a solution that doesn't involve IIS or Apache, which are headache's in the long term if not the short.

By: Good Brain

Good Brain — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:01:05 -0800

Firefox applies a default stylesheet when opening RSS from the web. But not, apparently, if you just open the saved file in Firefox. There is probably a way of working around that, if only by running a very lightweight http server on your desktop.

By: DrtyBlvd

DrtyBlvd — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:19:08 -0800

Yes, using Feed Demon. Or am I missing some complexity to the question I wonder?