Monolith

Right-clicking anywhere on a webpage opens up the context menu, which also includes an option to save the entire page to file. Thus, it is possible to save a complete page or its HTML code locally and access it whenever you need, even without Internet access. However, this browser option does not offer you any control at all: you get to either save the complete page or HTML only. That is where Monolith comes in, providing a console application that allows saving a webpage and its elements offline as a single HTML5 document.

As mentioned before, Monolith only works in the Windows console but, fortunately, its syntax is very easy to understand and work with. Unlike the “Save page as” option, Monolith also embeds images, CSS and JavaScript content into the output. Moreover, all the assets are stored as data URLs, which allows a web browser to load the content exactly as the original saved page, no matter if the Internet connection is active or not.

To use Monolith, you must specify the target URL as the main parameter. There are also flags and options you can use but these are not mandatory. All are described below.

By default, Monolith is configured to save a complete copy of the target page. However, with the right flags, you can configure it to remove CSS, fonts, frames and iframes, images or JavaScript content. It can exclude the metadata information from the HTML document and cut off the document from the Internet.

If a page’s TLS certificate is detected as invalid, the download is blocked but there is an option that allows Monolith to save pages that are considered insecure.   The output can be saved to a file of your choice and Monolith enables you to specify its name and location. Additional options allow you to set the network request timeout and the custom user agent.

Monolith generates single HTML5 documents for any webpage online. It provides an easy method to create your own offline page collection. And, since it works via the command prompt, it can also be used by developers, for instance to create an offline browser.