From the above example, you might wonder what WebGrabber has to offer that is not available either with your current Web browser or with a Web site copier.
If you use your Web browser for importing hundreds of web pages, you will have to go through this tedious, repetitive and error-prone sequence of commands:
The above sequence becomes tiring if you want to import hundreds of pages. For a non-Web page, you use the Save Target As command mentioned above. In addition, the hyperlinks of the imported web pages will operate only through the Internet. If the file associated to the hyperlink is now located in your computer, it will not be displayed through the hyperlink but only its version located at the Web site -- this is not a time saver. On the other hand, WebGrabber accelerates this process and provides a more integrated collection of imported web files.
Web site copiers are excellent if you intend to import the whole set of web files contained under a sub-directory of the Web site. This is great, under many circumstances but not if you want to select some web files. There are Web-site copiers that display the content of a web site in a list format and you can select the files from that list. This solves some of the problems, but what about such cases where the web page content comes from a database or from other forms of queries? WebGrabber provides a better control of the result and offers a larger variety of strategies for importing web files.
I have found that WebGrabber fills the needs that are not fulfilled with these products. In addition, WebGrabber is FREE and is implemented in Java; this means that it works in many platforms. Personally, I use all the available tools: my Web browser, a Web site copier and the WebGrabber -- the proper tool for the specific need.