We might not have a stable internet connection all the time. This issue arises, especially while traveling in low network connection areas.
Thus, it would be useful if we had a tool that can download a web page for Chrome offline viewing on a chrome computer browser.
Web developers, students, or even professionals, often want to view chrome offline pages and download several images, pdfs, and web pages from different websites.
But downloading each item individually from the webpages and saving them as chrome offline pages is cumbersome.
Inspired by DownThemAll Firefox extension, Simple Mass Downloader is a helpful browser extension offered by Google Chrome that allows users to download several links, images, pdf, etc., from the open tabs at once and view the item or downloaded page as an offline page.
Quick Guide for Simple Mass Downloader (SMD)
Now that you know this helpful extension let’s help you download a web page and view offline pages on a Chrome browser.
Downloading and Installing
You can easily download SMD from Google Web Store using a stable internet connection for obtaining offline access to downloaded pages.
Steps:
- Go to Google Web Store.
- Search for “Simple Mass Downloader” and download and install it.
Note: Before starting to use this tool, you must verify that the option “Ask where to save each file before downloading” is unchecked in the Chrome Download Settings.
This should be done so that you don’t get prompted by a Save As dialog each time an item from a web page gets downloaded from the download queue for offline viewing.
To understand its seriousness, let’s take an example.
Let’s say you are downloading 200+ files to gain offline access for a single web page or multiple web pages. Now, if this box is checked, you will be prompted 200+ times with the Save As dialog box every time to select a location to download those offline pages.
So, to not get stuck with this cumbersome task, keep the “Ask where to save each file before downloading” option unchecked before downloading items from any website page.
Introduction
After the Simple Mass Downloader is successfully installed and added as an extension in your Google Chrome, you can start using it for viewing sites offline at a later time.
All you need is internet access to access the many links or website files and website data and download it in your device storage.
When you click to open the SMD icon on the Chrome toolbar, you will see an introductory page recommending users turn off the save prompts in Chrome as specified in the previous Note.
There are two panels in SMD: Resource list panel and Download list panel.
Resource List panel
In the SMD interface, the buttons “load page links” and “collect links from open tabs” are displayed to allow viewing sites offline.
The previous button loads all the links from the active page online to save, and the latter collects links from other open Chrome tabs to view the offline webpage later.
In the “collect links from open tabs” button, you can customize the tab and link selection to save a webpage for offline reading.
This can be done using the configuration options that include collecting links from selected tabs, tabs on the left, or all tabs, and filter links by images, origin, text, or origin.
Download List Panel
This panel allows you to perform normal download management processes such as start (individually or in groups), pause, cancel, resume, remove items, etc., in Chrome to read the website offline.
Any downloaded item will be available to read offline like in your local drive, which you can also move to your android phone or tablet.
You can edit the inactive items from the queue before starting to download webpage items. It can be done either in a group or individually.
SMD also allows you to move selected items up or down the list using “Ctrl + up/down” keys.
The download can be started once you click the “Start selected” button.
You can easily access any item or page offline by searching in the downloaded items and opening the desired saved page or HTML file.
Some points to remember:
- You need not download the same items or page from Chrome again as the extension remembers which items were previously downloaded and represents them using green color. All of these are stored locally on your hard drive. Using the “remove already downloaded” option fmr the hamburger menu, you can delete the save websites.
- If you right click on any item in the resource list panel, all the related attributes and information for the individual item will be visible.
- Some keyboard hotkeys available in the extension are:
- Ctrl + V – used on both resource and download list panels for pasting or importing from the clipboard
- Ctrl + A – used on download list panel to select all items.
- Ctrl + S – used on the download list panel to start the download for the selected item.
The download process for website offline viewing later
It is effortless and straightforward to use Simple Mass Downloader to download the links on any website to access the webpage offline.
After installing the extension, search the desired website online in the address bar and right-click on any webpage that you wish to download.
From the contextual menu, select the “Add page links to list” option with the SMD icon on its left side.
A quick download dialog will appear, having links to all files and media assets available on the complete web site such as PNG, HTM, GIF, PDF, JSP, etc.
Feel free to select the checkboxes next to the files you wish to download, and then you can either press the “Add items to list” button or “Download now” button. This will choose the save page and automatically download them in the specified folder.
The files will be downloaded in the folder specified by you.
With this tool’s help, if you select some text section on the webpage and right-click for the context menu, you can see the “Add selection-links list option” in it.
The Simple Mass downloader links can be for png, mp3, jpg, etc., which are listed in the file and can be selected using checkboxes.
For example, if you want to download all the jpg files, you can use the filter option by typing in the jpg extension.
This will display a list of thumbnails of images on the page and their dimensions, filtered using height and width.
There are two queues available: passive and active.
- Passive queue: Files in this queue are not downloaded immediately. You can rename these files, either separately or combined.
- Active queue: Files in this queue are downloaded immediately.
Various options such as a list of favorite download locations, changing download thresholds, setting up automatic folders, or backup settings can be used to customize the extension as per your preference.
Example of downloading images from Google home page
Now that you understand the working of this tool let us provide you with an example.
You can also use this example to access items on other websites and even download them.
Suppose you wish to download images from the google homepage.
Step 1: Go to the Google homepage and click on the Google Chrome toolbar’s SMD extension icon.
Step2: Click the Load page links button to fill the list will all the available links, including images, HTML pages, etc.
Step 3: You can filter this list using extensions by typing jpg in the extensions field present at the bottom. In case you wish to filter using a particular keyword, you can type that in the Text filter next to the extensions filter.
Step 4: It is essential to set up a directory where all the images will be downloaded into your system. Although you cannot save the files anywhere other than the Downloads folder (it is a web-extension limitation), you can create subfolders inside it for simplicity.
Step 5: The default file name can sometimes be confusing; thus, it is best to rename the file as per your convenience. You can do this using the name mask: {text} . {ext}. For this, click on the {} button and create a custom name mask.
Step 6: Click on the “Download Now” icon in the bottom right corner to immediately download selected items. Alternatively, you can also click on the icon with the “+” sign next to the download icon. This button will add the items in a queue, and you can later select them for downloading.
Final Words
Google chrome and firefox are two of the recommended web browsers with which you can use SMD to download pages and have an effective way to get easy access to them.
If you want to save the page to read later on the chrome browser and also download the whole website in offline mode, SMD is the best choice.
As a suggestion, it would be best you make sure that your default browser is Chrome ahead of time before accessing SMD.
Such tools save a page or entire website with the click of a button and allow users for their offline download.
Thus, the bottom line is that using SMD you can download websites and save webpages to read webpages later offline on the chrome android browser of your mobile phone or the laptop web browser.
