offline web caching on laptop?

[blais]

hi

recently i made a car trip to the USA and used google maps for directions on my laptop. however, the cache in the browser/javascript is limited, and i could not safely zoom in/out and move around. in other circumstances i would use wget for fetching a site for offline browsing, however, this wouldn't apply here because of the nature of the google maps app.

i'm looking for a solution for caching all data from a web browsing session, that i could access again offline.

therefore i tried setting up squid to do that, i did:

- emerged squid
- configured offline_mode to on in /etc/squid/squid.conf
- pointed my browser to use the proxy on localhost
- browsed the web / google maps
- took down my network interfaces
- tried browsing

the proxy seems to work, e.g. i can browse the web with it. however, when i go offline i cannot seem to get the data in my browser. the next step would be to fiddle in the log files and find out why it doesn't work.

however, i was wondering if some of you have done this before and would have any hint about it?
thanks

cheers,

[jecepede]

Aloha !



OK here goes.....

Most browsers have indeed a cache that keeps pics html and other stuff... The Google Maps however are dynamically created pages. That means every single time you ask for a map, a new page is created. This kind of data is not cachable.

The squid pard was starting out as a good idea but as I already told, the data simply isn't cachable... Further more, most things you can cache have an average refresh period of about 14 days. (When I make home pages I usually set it at 7 days !). So if you drive for about three weeks, you squid data is gone too....


BUT ! do not fear.... I still have one option left : The Rand McNalley Road Atlas



Greets


Jessy
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[blais]

jecepede, i was assuming implicitly that the google maps javascript fetches the tiles over http, which would also go through the proxy and therefore would be cached. i need to confirm this though. if the google maps code goes thru the proxy set in the browser, this should work.

i found a few new things about this subject:

- wwwoffle http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle/

- an article that explains that this is indeed broken in squid at the moment, but that there is a patch: http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2001/08/02/offline_squid.html

- slogger http://www.kenschutte.com/firefoxext/
a firefox extension that is supposed to be able to do that

i haven't had time try any of those yet.

cheers,