gHacks technology news » wikipedia download http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:11:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Download Wikipedia With Okawix To Access The Data Locally http://www.ghacks.net/2009/08/22/download-wikipedia-with-okawix-to-access-the-data-locally/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/08/22/download-wikipedia-with-okawix-to-access-the-data-locally/#comments Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:58:25 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=15621 wikipediaWikipedia is a popular online encyclopedia that is used by most users to get a quick overview on a certain topic. Wikipedia and its sister websites like Wikimedia or Wikiquotes can not only be accessed from desktop computers and web browsers but also from smartphones and other electronic devices. All have in common that an online connection is required to access the contents.

Okawix now offers a solution to download the full Wikipedia archive (and the archives of all sister sites) to the local computer system. The software offers its own web browser that can be used to navigate the websites normally once they have been downloaded to the local hard drive. This is an excellent solution for situations where no online connection is available.

The software program displays all supported languages in its interface on the first startup. The user can then select one or multiple languages to download contents in these languages. Okawix will then display the available Wiki websites and their size. Included are Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity and Wiktionary. The size of each download ranges from a few Megabytes to astronomical 6 Gigabytes for the English Wikipedia website.

A click on the download link beneath each entry will initiate the download of that database to the local computer system.

wikipedia

Okawix will ask the user to select a path for the download which can be saved so that it will be automatically picked for additional downloads. Images can be downloaded optionally. This will increase the size of the download.

The main interface of Okawix will then display the downloaded Wiki websites in the left sidebar offering a search engine and web browser. There are also options to print a page and find words in the page.

Okawix provides an easy way to download Wiki websites to a local computer system. The integrated web browser is responsive enough to offer a great offline working experience. It would be nice if the developers would add an option to automatically update the downloaded contents with new content that has been added to Wiki websites. Okawix is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

via Instant Fundas

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/08/22/download-wikipedia-with-okawix-to-access-the-data-locally/feed/ 11 Download And Use Wikipedia Offline With Firefox http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/06/download-and-use-wikipedia-offline-with-firefox/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/06/download-and-use-wikipedia-offline-with-firefox/#comments Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:20:00 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=5898 Zipedia (via Instant Fundas) is actually the second (Wikipedia Taxi was the first) application that downloads Wikipedia and provides offline access to it’s contents. The main difference between Wikipedia Taxi and Zipedia is that the latter is a Firefox add-on which adds the Wikipedia offline search right into Firefox. The contents of Wikipedia can then be accessed by typing in wikipedia://wiki/ into the address bar. A keyword could probably help to reduce the address further.

The main benefit of this approach is that you can search Wikipedia while being offline. Other uses could be due to slow Internet connections or if Wikipedia is banned in the network.

The first step is the usual download of the Wikipedia articles. You can select any language version you like from the Wikipedia Dump. The import is started in the options of the add-on which also contains a download link to a recommended Wikipedia backup which has a size of more than 7 Gigabytes. Yes, the download can take a while unless you pick a different article backup. It’s also important to have enough space on the hard drive for the download.

Zipedia imports the Wikipedia download after downloading it which puts some strain on the system and takes a while as well. After that Wikipedia can be browsed by entering the address mentioned above in the Firefox address bar.

Images can’t be browsed and the search is only searching the titles of the articles and not the articles themselves which is a bit disappointing.

Tags: , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/06/download-and-use-wikipedia-offline-with-firefox/feed/ 10