Forum Offline Explorer

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET Staff on February 27, 2009

The application appears abandoned by the publisher, but users of a specific online photography forum might appreciate this forum download utility. Forum Offline Explorer's interface has so many fields, buttons, and tabs that you might be tempted to give up. Testers complained the help file was anything but helpful. While the application appears to work with many PHP-based forums, the publisher includes required parsing information only for a single forum. Also, users must be members of the forum for this application to perform all functions.

Operation first stumbles over the simple fact that users must fill in the Config File field. It's a simple text file which fills in the only needed program fields. The key to application is the Parser, the file that contains the rules to properly navigate the forum and download images and text. This app includes a Parser for a Canon digital photography forum. Links to additional parsers appears dead.

As soon as users select the included configuration file, the forum title, ID, page span, and parser fields are automatically populated. Downloading text and images from that forum is a mere matter of hitting the Play button at the bottom of the Operation screen. The Browser tab presented fewer problems because there aren't any controls at all. The screen merely displays the last forum-information downloaded. Just as with a forum online, clicking a post's headline brings up the full post. However, some items are available only to logged-in members. You can't resize the window, though, and may get frustrated scrolling up and down and back and forth to see post information.

The Setting tab contains a few options to choose the interface language and add new parsers. Unfortunately, the link to add new parsers failed to bring up any, and the publisher has removed this application from their Web site. If you belong to the specific forum, or have the expertise to create proper parser information, then download and enjoy this freeware. All others should continue searching for a flexible forum download tool.