Firefox – Simple way for browsing offline in Firefox

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My favorite browser is Firefox, and during browsing I visited some webpages that I would like to see again offline. But when I'm disconnected I can't reach those webpages from history, because whenever I click to see them, I get a message saying it's necessary to connect. (I make Firefox offline by selecting File -> Work Offline.)

Saving them (from the File menu and choosing Save Page As) is not a good idea either, because there are a lot and sometimes they don't save properly.

Is there any technique or option in Firefox or tools that make it possible to browse again to a visited webpage when you are offline?

Best Answer

Using File -> Work Offline option you should be able to view pages only if you've visited them before.

Selecting that option forces Firefox to read from the cache. However your cache should have enough space allocated. Check it from Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network -> Offline Storage and make sure it is at least 50 MB. Also make sure that you or any other application haven't cleared it because you can't reading anything from an empty cache.

For me the simplest way is the good old CTRL + S which is the shortcut for saving the page. It's quick and reliable, just remember to select Web page, complete (not HTML only). But if you insist not using that then you can use an add-on such as ScrapBook or ReadItLater as suggested before.

Related Solutions

Firefox – Force Firefox to remember passwords for the sites that don’t let users save them

OK so here is another answer I think is more convenient that the Javascript one.

First go to your Firefox components folder, by default in my case it's "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components"

Now open the file nsLoginManager.js

Go to the function at around line 804 (varies with version of Firefox), that reads:

/*
 * _isAutoCompleteDisabled
 *
 * Returns true if the page requests autocomplete be disabled for the
 * specified form input.
 */
_isAutocompleteDisabled :  function (element) {
    if (element && element.hasAttribute("autocomplete") &&
        element.getAttribute("autocomplete").toLowerCase() == "off")
        return true;

    return false;
},

Now comment out the first 3 lines, so it ends up like this:

/*
 * _isAutoCompleteDisabled
 *
 * Returns true if the page requests autocomplete be disabled for the
 * specified form input.
 */
_isAutocompleteDisabled :  function (element) {
    /*if (element && element.hasAttribute("autocomplete") &&
        element.getAttribute("autocomplete").toLowerCase() == "off")
        return true;*/

    return false;
},

Save it, restart Firefox and you should be good to go...

Firefox – Does Mozilla Firefox automatically delete old history entries

AFAIK there is only one setting in about:config that seems to control this: places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages. On my machine it's set to 104858 (it says 'user set', but i have never and seem to be unable to change it's value). Interestingly in practice, that amounts to less than 6 months!!! according to this blog entry it's supposedly all my machine can handle (sure skylake, 32gb ram & 1tb ssd can't handle more ;-))...

Assuming each history entry takes about 100 bytes (average page title + url + visited timestamp + visit counter (in my case)) that caps history at about 10MB, but i'd rather it taking 10GB and retaining more than 5 years...

real shame as this essentially makes firefox much worse than i ever thought it was...

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Firefox – Force Firefox to remember passwords for the sites that don’t let users save them

Firefox – Does Mozilla Firefox automatically delete old history entries

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