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What does "offline" mean?

Offline refers to work you carry out on your local drives, as opposed to the time you might spend doing the same thing whilst connected to the internet.

Offline Browsers

An Offline browser is software which allows you to view web pages residing on your machine rather than on the internet. Authors TitleViewer is an offline browser which has been optimised for the automated viewing of large and organised collections of HTML files.

What is an Offline Web?

The term "web" usually describes a collection of HTML pages. The term "World Wide Web" referring to the multitude of HTML (web pages) on the internet. An offline web is therefore a collection of web pages on a local drive.

A Hierarchical Offline Web

We use this term to refer to a collection of files which have been placed in a series of sub-folders. Rather than a "flat" collection of web pages ( which is what you usually find at a web site ), a hierarchical web is highly organised with access to the individual files nested according to the layering of the sub-folders.

Authors TitleViewer uses hierarchical offline webs to produce the e-texts it displays.

See for yourself. If you locate the TitleViewer executable on your hard drive using Windows Explorer, you will find the folder structure around it looks much like the following screenshot

This is what we call a hierarchical offline web. Simply a collection of HTML files arranged within a series of sub-folders.

What use is a hierarchical local web?

You might be wondering what the benefits of arranging web files hierarchically are. The benefits are subtle to appreciate, but immensely useful.

By arranging your files hierarchically into folders like this, you quickly organise your information in a way which makes sense to you, and your readership - whoever that may be.

Clearly, if you have information to present to anyone you can now:

  • Organise the information in a way which is accessible to others
  • Control the order and the prominence of information they see
  • Distribute the work with a compact, portable, powerful static HTML browser

An entire offline web can be compressed into a single file for distribution or download.

The implications of this are subtle and far-ranging. Other categories of this web will sketch the commercial and professional benefits of publishing with offline webs but you might wish to consider the demo you are viewing first.

If its persuading you to get published, maybe it can prove an equally persuasive medium for your product, service or information?