Web Dumper for Mac

User Reviews

• Don't waste your money!!

  webbwebsAugust 10, 2010

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  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />This application may work for very simple sites, but does NOT work properly on any sites I've tried to download. I had an earlier version (2.4) that worked OK in most situations. With newer development techniques in use today, however, it did NOT work and I removed it from my system. Having been given the impression that the new release fixed these problems, I purchased again. Shame on me. As the previous version, the new release failed to work properly with various aspects of CSS settings and specified images, as well as ANY images that are loaded or preloaded via JavaScript. What current site does NOT use these methods today? Actually, the older version worked better than the new one. After being confronted, the vendor admitted that the application doesn't work properly in "these situations" and that he had no intention of fixing it. I'd probably have let it go, had he not been such an absolute pain in the rear about providing a refund. Don't throw your time or money away!

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• DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY!!!

  webbwebsSeptember 1, 2008

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  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Take a close look at pages you download and you'll find that they break off in the middle of the download and insert various numeric entries throughout the pages, rendering it useless. When I reviewed pages that had been extracted over time, I realized that every page of every download had the same symptoms. The developers are aware of the problem, but have no intention of doing anything about it. Their response was <i>"This is the 'chunked' transfer encoding. This is an old transfer encoding still rarely used on pages served by old server software. Web Dumper still doesn't fully support it. You will get exactly the same results with all Web Dumper copies. We need to give support to this."</i> Unfortunately, it is <b>NOT</b> just limited to "old transfer encoding", as it appears in EVERY page I've ever downloaded, from ANY source. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY!!!

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• Does what it says on the tin

  funkymothersOctober 4, 2007

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  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />This app worked great for me although I have not used it much and never tried to download complicated websites with lots of plug-in use etc. Definitely recommended.

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• some more info to help you decide for yourself......

  brandonzylstraNovember 12, 2003

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  ...and \"comparison with free alternative\"<br />This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I don't think I mentioned before that WD allows sucking down multiple sites at once, while SimpleWget doesn't. (It has a New... command, which would imply that it does support this, but it's not working in my version, which I downloaded a few days ago.) <p><br> WD also gives you stats at the bottom of the window (if you enlarge it to show details), but VERY ANNOYINGLY resets these to zero as soon as it's done. If the developer is reading this: THIS IS LAME! When else do you want to read the stats other than when they actually tell you something--when everything is done!? <p><br> Of course, SimpleWGet doesn't show anything like this (in the UI anyway), so that's still a point for WD. <p><p><br> Another problem with WD is that the only time to authenticate is before beginning the dump. In fact, any given site could have multiple areas requiring different authentication, and you may not know/remember that a site has a part that requires authentication. It would be better if, as soon as WD hit a page requiring authentication, it would prompt you for it (and continue sucking down pages in the background that didn't require authentication). <p><br> Also, the list of items downloaded has column headings that pretend to be sortable, but at least the Status column is NOT sortable. THIS IS REALLY BAD! if you have a huge site you sucked down and you want to see all the items that failed, you have to laboriously scroll up or down through thousands of entries. <p><br> Also, several times WD has gotten hung up on a single page (like overnight) even though I have it's timeout set to about 90 seconds. It just keeps trying and trying and trying.... This is unacceptable... <p><br> The Commandline wget is looking better all the time... <p><br> I'm downgrading my rating to three... (from five) <hr> Here's my previous (now deleted) review:<br><br> Many have written bad reviews of this software based on the supposed fact that equivalent software is available free. I have several clients who needed their sites sucked down off the web, and it's critical they get everything. So I need something that works and is reliable and complete and painless. Using the commandline program curl does not seem to be an option (as far as I can tell you have to specify all URIs for it) and wget is not as simple and painless as I'd hope. I don't have time to futz with learning it and risk that I screw something up. So WebDumper and SimpleWget were the only options I could find. I've compared Web Dumper with SimpleWget (if there are others I don't know about them), and here's what I've found: <p><br> When I used both to get the same site, SimpleWget got 23.x MB of files and Web Dumper got 28.x MB of data. Either WD is duplicating things (which would be forgivable) or SimpleWget is missing things (which would be unforgivable). <p><br> SimpleWget doesn't have an available option to spider to infinite depth. Web Dumper does have this option. (I've read in its VT reviews that you can set the depth to 0, and that serves as infinite, but there's nothing in the interface to make that evident. So the capability may be there, but it's not exposed in the interface.) <p><br> SimpleWget has an option to read URIs from a file (presumably a text file). I tried this and it did not work. I put one URI to a line, and the first time I did it, it only read the first line. I removed that line and tried again after saving the file. It did nothing at all. Since it didn't work, I thought I'd look in Help to see if there's some specific and non-intuitive syntax I need to follow. Help opened up the OS X Help Viewer, but it was blank. <p><br> Web Dumper shows you what it's doing as its doing it, which is not critical but I find it helpful feedback when you're getting large sites (as I'm getting). Simple Wget just shows a spinning 'fan' to let you know it's busy. Not a biggie, but a difference worth noting. <p><br> SimpleWget is nice in that it's free, and it could help one learn to use the commandline wget (if you mouse over the options it tells you the commandline switches that they translate to). Therefore you could gradually get used to the syntax of wget, and do scripted things that you can't do with Web Dumper. (Well, maybe you can use AppleScript for WebDumper, but that's harder to write in my opinion, although much easier to read than than shell scripts.) <p><br> But if you just need to get work done now, especially anything important or anything you're getting paid to do, Web Dumper has many advantages over Simple Wget. They are absolutely NOT equivalent and should not be presumed so. If you're getting paid and you can't pony up &#36;20 (add in Kagi fee and round up) then you're crazy. <p><br> The only thing that makes me uncomfortable with WebDumper is that the company that sells it makes several products that are suspiciously well suited to the needs of spammers. If there were a good alternative to Web Dumper I would have chosen it. And if SimpleWget is ever as good, I'd recommend avoiding buying anything from these people, who are profiting indirectly from the spam in your inbox.

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• lupeSeptember 14, 2002

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  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />this program is very cool. It supports multiple download windows, advises you when the "dump" is complete, allows you to specify the target drive for

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• HiramMay 29, 2002

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  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />A freeware alternative is wgetCocoa (find it here on VersionTracker).

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• Paul WharffDecember 14, 2001

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  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />This is an excelent utility! It's quick and easy. count0, why is this better than Internet Explorer's "Save As Web Archive" feature? First of all

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• almsDecember 11, 2001

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  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />How is this superior to Internet Explorer's "Save As Web Archive" feature? In the following very important ways: (1) it downloads individual files in their

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