Any way to load a short list of sites locally from the harddrive?

February 5, 2008 4:03 PM

Is there any way to cache a set list of websites so they load from the hard drive instead of dynamically?

My setup: Satellite "broadband" in which what they really mean to advertise is "Faster than dial up but still slow enough at basic browsing to make you want to pull your hair out." We have a wireless router running DD-WRT.

Obviously I've looked into maximizing what I have for the time being because DSL isn't out here and it doesn't look like it's coming anytime soon. I've got Fasterfox running for whatever little good that might do. I block ads. I've even tried a paid service that would resample images to make the web a little less pretty but load quicker, but found it not worth the $5/mo. So here I am onto my next scheme.

The idea: There are certain sites I go to almost everyday that haven't changed in FOREVER. Google (my homepage), Gmail login page, and a few others to name a few. My biggest lag even when these sites are cached is the amount of time it takes for the computer to say to the site "Anything new? No? Alrighty, I guess I'll load now." I figure if I can localize certain sites so they're running off the hard drive it would speed up those specific page loads.

Am I way off the bat here or am I on to something that will possibly make my non-dynamic browsing a bit less teh suck?

posted by genial to computers & internet (9 comments total)

What you're describing would be called a "local proxy cache." Here is one app that does this, called Squid.

I've never tried anything like this myself, and I get the impression it is not for the faint of heart.
posted by adamrice at 4:17 PM on February 5, 2008

If you run firefox, take a look into the Scrapbook Extension. I use it on my laptop at school for pages that I need to get to even when the school network is being spotty.
posted by toomuchpete at 4:19 PM on February 5, 2008

You could just fetch an entire site using wget, and browse that locally.
posted by me & my monkey at 4:49 PM on February 5, 2008

Easiest way to get Squid running: old computer + ClarkConnect Community Edition (free).
posted by djb at 4:56 PM on February 5, 2008

If you use a Mac and Safari you can make a local copy of those web-pages on your hard-drive via the "Save as..." menu and then make bookmarks (in the bookmark bar for fast retrieval) pointing at those files.
posted by maremare at 4:57 PM on February 5, 2008

I've seen the Gmail login page operate successfully after being saved on the local hard disk using File->Save. Weird but it works.

Something else that's quick and easy to try is setting the Firefox disk cache to stupidly huge (the default size is 50MB; making it 1000MB doesn't seem to cause problems) and selecting File->Work Offline. This will at least make your web history browsable without causing delays.
posted by flabdablet at 5:06 PM on February 5, 2008

By the way, a proxy cache is going to do the same thing to you as Firefox does as far as checking for updates goes. You really do need to tell Firefox itself that the page is supposed to be coming from your disk and you don't want it to look for updates from the Net. Try File->Save Page As... before doing anything more complicated.
posted by flabdablet at 5:09 PM on February 5, 2008

Squid should be configurable enough to not check for an update if you don't want it to.
posted by devilsbrigade at 5:55 PM on February 5, 2008

Squid looks interesting but definitely more of a server-type setup. Since I'm looking for something to do locally on the computer to make a difference and I'm a FF user I think the Scrapbook extension will work as a perfect shortcut to saving a webpage to disk and then bookmarking that page. Tested it on a few pages and it works well! Even set the homepage to the local version of Google and I've got an "instant-on" browser which is nice. It's still a long way from broadband internet but it's definitely a step in that direction. Thanks y'all!
posted by genial at 6:07 PM on February 5, 2008