I frequently find myself wanting to look at a few web pages while I’m w/o Net access, for example, when I’m on a plane. I’m heading out on a three-day trip tomorrow and so I quickly hacked together a tool I can use in situations like this using wget and ActiveWords.

I designated a folder where web site downloads will go. I wrote a simple batch command to invoke wget with the right parameter to download a URL and the pages immediately associated with it into that folder. Then I created a simple ActiveWord command to launch the batch file and pass it a URL parameter.

The batch file is called wget_page.bat.

cd "C:\Documents and Settings\ssimeonov\My Documents\spider_downloads"
c:\dev\bin\wget\wget --recursive --level=1 --page-requisites --convert-links --html-extension %1

I called my ActiveWords command wget. Create a new script command and add the code below to it.

<WORKPAD><LT>"c:\dev\bin\wget_page.bat" <INPUTBOX><GT><CTRL>s</CTRL>

Instead of ActiveWords, you can use Launchy to kick off the batch file. You will also have to tweak the code to add your own paths, etc.