Offline web reading

Does anyone know a simple way to tell Safari not to try and reload web pages? In preparation for a flight today, I downloaded several articles that I wanted to read. I put them in "Reading List". Later, when I had no internet connection, I wanted to read them and -- I got the message that I was offline. Note that I hadn't logged off, shut down, or closed any Safari tabs. The content should have been just there.

And while we're on the subject, what exactly is the point of the Reading list?

How EXACTLY did you put them in Reading List? This could make a difference. Also, do you have iCloud syncing of Reading List turned on?

I just put both my iPhone (4) and iPad (third-gen) in Airplane Mode with no Wi-Fi or 3G and successfully read several articles in Reading List (though when opening Safari I did of course get a message that I needed to turn on Wi-Fi or cellular to browse).

Exactly ONE article in the reading list had a message saying it was not available for offline reading. I don't know why, but that may have something to do with the site itself.

Thanks for the reply. Actually, although I guess I didn't make this clear, I was talking about the mac (Macbook Pro in this case) and Mountain Lion.

However, I opened up my iPhone just to see if I could have done it that way and checked the settings: iCloud is enabled for Safari and also Safari has "Use Cellular Data" for reading list enabled. Those were the only two controls I could find.

Then I went to try your experiment. But it was unnecessary to add the items again to my reading list - they were already there from having done it on the mac. I switched to airplane mode and was still able to read them (well most of them)!

Still, going back to my original post, I was disappointed that reading list didn't work as (I) expected on the mac. Do you know if this is going to be "fixed" in Maverick?

I believe (though I could be wrong) that this is controlled by the sites, not by Apple. IOW, most sites allow you to download the page and its contents (Instapaper, Read It Later/Pocket, Reading List and so forth) and some sites (like the Financial Times, I would think) don't allow this.

If I'm correct, it's not a bug. It's up to the sites.

chas_m said:

I believe (though I could be wrong) that this is controlled by the sites, not by Apple.

Click to expand...

You may be right about this, although I'm not aware of any HTTP tags that would prevent it. In any case, the documents I was trying to read were all from the same site. Some were available, others were not.

If you want to get around this issue, simply save the sites before you go offline and then delete them when you're done.

vansmith said:

... simply save the sites before you go offline and then delete them when you're done.

Click to expand...

Huh? what mechanism do you propose for this? Save as? In any event, it seems like it would probably be a complex solution for a simple use case.

Yes, just save the page through the file menu (the wording is different for each browser). If you save it somewhere on your machine, it'll be stored offline for you when you go.

It's probably the simplest browser-independent solution to the problem. It takes a little more time if you have a lot of tabs/windows to save but it works, it's builtin and easy.