SurfOffline Professional 2.2

Surfoffline Professional can download complete websites. There are various scenarios in which a tool of this kind may come in handy, like surfing offline and replicating a website to an FTP site or a mirror.

To start a new project, you should provide some parameters and make some decisions. Fortunately, there is a wizard that makes this stage easier for you. Thus, you can tell the program to download all the elements in the website regardless of the server where they are located. On the contrary, you can restrict downloads to include only the files in the start path and subfolders. Likewise, you may specify a depth level starting from the initial page as well as types of files to exclude. However, I didn´t find any preset specifically configured to download sites created with content-management systems, a feature included in similar software.

The downloaded site can be saved in various ways, the simplest one being to store the files in a folder. Besides, you can export sites in CHM and MHT formats, which allow saving the complete site as a single file. The downloaded site can be fully navigated without an active Internet connection as you can ask the program to convert all absolute hyperlinks into relative ones.

In terms of configuring the program’s connection to the Internet, it supports both HTTP and FTP proxies, even when they require passwords. Moreover, it allows setting a given number of simultaneous connections to the server where the data is stored. This can help you control download speed, but you should not use very high numbers because you may cause server overload.

All in all, Surfoffline Professional is a useful utility for professional and home users alike. It has the main advantages of being very easy to use and allowing you to control the download depth. Unfortunately, the program looks old-fashioned: a fresher interface would be appreciated.