SoftByte Labs BlackWidow Offline Browser First Impressions Are Lasting Ones Douglas Smith
We truly loved working with BlackWidow. Without using any of the help files that come with the program we were soon checking out sites and saving images and files of all types. The interface is relatively easy to use. You will find a toolbar with the following selections:
Open: Open a WEB file containing a site's structure.
Save: Saves the structure of a site as a WEB file.
Browser/List: Switch between the Browser view and the list (structure) view.
Back/Next: Browser navigation buttons.
Logon: Toggles user name and password for protected site.
Explore: Start building the structure of a web site.
Mark: Select files using extensions, wildcards and min/max file size.
D/L: Download the selected files as is or for off-line browsing.
Links: Load a document (text/html) containing custom links to explore.
Stop: Stop the current action while exploring and/or browsing.
BlackWidow is simple enough for most novice users and has the power that the advance user will love. BlackWidow provides many ways to select files, from manual file selection to advanced wildcards. There is a list that shows you all available file types existing on the web site, so you won't have to guess. You can filter out thumbnails, for example, by specifying a minimum file size. If you want to download files for off-line browsing, you can specify a maximum file size to filter out those big ZIP files and images not really needed for off-line browsing. Or you can do both. File selection applies to either the current folder, all folders, or current folder, including subfolders. There is also a link window that will allow you to define your own HTML tags. You can customize which files to pull new links from, or enable and disable any of them depending on your requirements. You might find a web site producing an XYZ file containing HTML tags and wish to pull those links from this particular file type. Just enter a new Link Extension of XYZ to the list and BlackWidow will automatically extract links from this kind of file. This is a feature for more advanced users. Entering file types not containing any links (like a JPG file) will simply slow down BlackWidow and will not perform as intended. There is also a download window that will show you the progress of each file downloaded. It shows the percent downloaded as well as the speed at which they are downloaded. Totals of the remaining files left to download and the average throughput are also displayed. You can run more than one download window for either the same file set or a different set. BlackWidow will not download the same files twice if they already exist. If a file already exists, but its size is less then the original, BlackWidow simply resumes the download. When loading BlackWidow you have two choices, with or without browser. If you elect to use the with browser option, BlackWidow opens a neat little browser, very similar to that of Explorer.
