Web-Based Message Boards with Offline Reader?

Biedermann asks: "I have been looking for web based messageboard for ages. The Problem is: the users should be able to log in, get the new messages, log out and read/write offline. Not everybody has low-cost-always-on-broadband access to the net. All the programs I could find were either not keeping promises or fell unmaintained years ago in beta. Is there any such beast? Or would it be possible to do such a thing with Slashcode or Squishdot? (I'm not a coder, so I don't know what it takes)" I've been thinking about writing something like this for Slashcode but haven't yet had the time. Do you all think this would be a worthwhile application?

Comments

USE NNTP!

[Alan Shutko]

If you do this, use NNTP or some sort of gateway. There are a plethora of offline readers for them, they are more featureful than just spewing the messages out over email or some web-specific client.

This will require that people learn to configure a newsreader, but those who are concerned about their online time are more often to have one already.

Depends

[Anonymous Coward]

on what boards you're trying to surf. If you're focused on investing-related stuff, this works quite well:

http://www.diligentdingo.com/

It surfs Yahoo, Motley Fool, Silicon Investor, and Raging Bull, prefetching messages for you.

Very useful outside US/Canada!

[Cato]

Anyone who lives in Europe, Asia, or other places outside US/Canada is very likely to be paying for Internet access by the minute (local calls are not free). Although some countries are moving towards special internet access deals for flat fees, at least in the UK these ISPs are massively oversubscribed.

Travellers outside US/Canada can also make use of this feature; global roaming services such as gric.net also charge by the minute for the convenience of using any ISP in their scheme.

Gnus

[vsync64]

Gnus lets you do this for Slashdot...