An offline browser for forums and forum-based content.

Pros: The Forum Offline Explorer saves a particular forum and all its associated content locally so that it can be browsed later on when the user is offline. After configuration the actual downloading of the forum is surprisingly fast. It downloads images and text comfortably and any other content (though such content are usually not uploaded in to forums). It has an aggregate view so that an entire forum can be viewed together and presumably in a short time. The parser and configuration enable the user to customize what content is downloaded, and a knowledgeable user (or one with practice) can make this tool function more powerfully.

Cons: The interface is really poorly designed. It seems like there are too many functions and it is not apparent what each of those functions are for. Also, frequent scrolling is required to manage with a fixed size window. Publisher’s description says simple setting but this includes a configuration text file and parser which is anything but simple for an average user. Forum content will download fast but for many forums it requires the user to be a member to be able to access (and download) all available content (you have to be logged in at the time – there doesn’t seem to be a way of saving the password so that the authentication is done by the program itself). As it stands, it is for a small group of users who frequent forums, and the question is whether or not these users really require an offline forum browser.

Overall: 2 stars. As such it is not for everyone and the poorly designed interface makes it a real drag to use. Power users can make it work better by utilizing all the parsing and configuration capabilities.