WebWhacker by The ForeFront Group, Inc. is a graphical Windows-based application for retrieving web documents. This commercial application has a crippled shareware release for users to try before they buy.
Web G.R.A.B. by Asbjorn Pettersen is an OS/2 based PM application. It is an early beta release and is provided as freeware. We have evaluated the current release, version 0.22. It should be noted that this application is still an early beta and crashes occasionally. It is also difficult to use.
GetURL by James Burton is a simple HTML retrieval program for use in scripts. The largest drawback with this application is it's inability to retrieve multiple documents.
Supported Operating Systems | WebWhacker(1) | GetURL | Web G.R.A.B. | Templeton |
OS/2 | Win-OS/2 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Windows 3.1 | Yes | No | No | No |
Windows95 | Yes | No | No | No |
Linux | No | No | No | Soon |
SunOS/Solaris | No | No | No | Yes |
Other Unix Variances | No | No | No | Yes |
Retrieval | WebWhacker | GetURL | Web G.R.A.B. | Templeton |
Link rewriting | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Automatic Retrieval | Yes | No | Yes(2) | Yes |
Image Retrieval | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
ImageMap Retrieval | No | No | No | CERN and NCSA formats only |
Long file name support | Win95 only | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Converts to FAT if required | No | No | No | Yes |
Run other applications on the retrieved files | No | No | No | Yes |
Restrictions | WebWhacker | GetURL | Web G.R.A.B. | Templeton |
Depth restriction | Yes | No | Depth of 0 or 1 only | Yes |
Host restriction | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Path restriction | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Domain restriction | No | No | No | Yes |
Robot exclusion | No | No | No | Yes |
Logging | WebWhacker | GetURL | Web G.R.A.B. | Templeton |
Log files | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Remote server mapping | No | No | No | Yes |
Server identification | No | No | No | Yes |
Log errors | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Other features | WebWhacker | GetURL | Web G.R.A.B. | Templeton |
Generate mailing lists | No | No | No | Yes |
Variable sleep durations | No | Yes | No | Yes |
User additions while retrieving | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
HTML corrections | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Spoofing | No | No | No | Yes |
Proxy support | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Usable from scripts | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Graphical interface | Yes | No | Yes | No |
Password support | No | No | No | No |
Supported protocols | HTTP | HTTP, Gopher, NNTP, FTP | HTTP | HTTP |
(1) Comparison based on documentation only.
(2) Although the documentation says it supports this option, we could not get it to work.