Sunday, November 24, 2013

Chrome to mobile device with offline storage and search

I am reading the Walking Dead comics and need help keeping the character names straight in my head. They are listed nicely on this page with pictures and names, which is great: http://www.comicvine.com/profile/avenger693/lists/the-walking-dead-tv-series-characters/39542.

So I figured there are plenty of mechanisms available to help me out here. What I want is:

  1. A way to save the page from Chrome on my PC.
  2. A way to view the page on my iOS or Android device.
  3. Offline storage of this page on my iOS and Android device.
  4. The ability to search the stored page to find the character name I am looking for and view the picture.

In the last three six frustrating hours, this is what I have found..

Get Pocket (was Read It Later)

  1. Has Chrome extension, iOS and Android client.
  2. Allows offline access on mobile devices.
  3. No full text search (or here).

Evernote

  1. Has Chrome extension, iOS and Android client.
  2. Offline access on mobile devices needs paid account. $5.50 per month is too much for a Premium account considering I have no other use-cases for this at all.
  3. Even when I do clip my page, it displays badly, with text being hidden behind the images.
  4. The Android client doesn't seem to offer full text search that shows matched text within a clipped page.

Readability

  1. Has Chrome extension, iOS and Android client.
  2. Can't see my articles on Android or iOS.. so don't know anything more (have been refreshing the collection frequently, nothing showing at all). Edit: they showed up hours later.
  3. There is no full text search.

Instapaper

  1. Has Chrome extension, iOS and Android client.
  2. It ripped out all the text from my page, leaving this article useless!
  3. No full text search.

Wikipanion Plus for iPad

Use it save a different page (that is on the Walking Dead Wiki): http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Comic_Series_Characters.

  1. No Chrome extension, or Android client. Open the app on an iPad, add the Walking Dead Wiki and then search for the page within Wikipanion plus.
  2. You can mark the page to be saved in the client.
  3. On other pages I have seen it save images, but for this page it didn't save the images (viewing it with Airplane mode showed this up.. images are gone).

Chrome to Mobile - Works!

(Thanks to David for pointing this one out.)

  1. Fixed now (Sunday 12 January 2014, 10:54:52 AM). Chrome to Mobile doesn't seem to work anymore. I installed it, but it fails to authorise against a phone, and the most recent reviews show that I am not alone: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-to-mobile/idknbmbdnapjicclomlijcgfpikmndhd/reviews?hl=en
  2. The Chrome to Mobile extension uses Chrome Cloud Print to "print" a page from your desktop to your mobile device, and it also has an option to send an offline copy.
  3. When you send an offline copy, you can view your history in Chrome mobile, and if you are offline, it will present an option to view the offline version instead (because it won't load the online version).

Stock Galaxy Browser: Save for Offline Reading

  1. Getting more desperate, the stock Galaxy S3 browser lets you save pages for offline reading. But I don't see that option in Samsung Galaxy Note 3.
  2. Found it - it works, but only saves as an image, so doesn't fit my use case
    1. Tap the address bar.
    2. Tap the green reader icon at the beginning of the URL.
    3. Tap Menu > Save as image.

Opera Mini Browser on Android

Opera Mini Browser for Android has an option to save pages for offline viewing.

Worked! It save my target page for offline browsing and lets me search within its contents. Doesn't exactly fit the scenario I was after, but the most important functions are there (offline access, search within page, it keeps the images).

Though I note that when I tried to load the Walking Dead Wiki page of comic book characters, it didn't even load all of the images.

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