Q: How can I download an entire web site to read offline in an airplane?

A: There are a number of programs that will download web sites and store them on your local drive so that you can view them offline. These tools are a great way to save content, too, that you don’t want to see lost as web pages get updated.

Backstreet Browser is among the best of the offline web site downloaders and readers. Install this free utility, click the New button on its toolbar, and specify the web site you’d like to download. Pay special attention to the "Maximal link depth" setting, which controls how many levels deep into the web site your download will go. The deeper into the site you go, the longer it will take to download and the more disk space will be required to store the site’s files. You’ll also find settings to control whether to update the web site when you’re reconnected to the web and where to store the files locally. Once you’ve set the utility up, just click the Start button and sit back and wait as the tool copies the site’s files to your drive.

Other free tools that do essentially the same thing as Backstreet Browser include PageNest and HTTrack. You might want to try all three to see which you like best.

The power of a site downloader or offline browser is impressive when you consider the growing number of free e-books available today. Point your site downloader to Project Gutenberg, for example, and you can quickly have enough reading material to last you for many airplane rides. Just be careful: downloading the contents of a large site can consume a lot of disk space.

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