Hello!
I want an offline copy of Learning Web Development (at least HTML, CSS and Javascript) for learning (ofcourse 
). It may sound weird, learning “web-offline”, but I got no other way. I tried Zeal, but it gives me only Reference Manuals of MDN, not the Learning Web Development.
Please suggest me a way 
1 Like
Hi there!
We would really love to provide a version of MDN, and parts of it, that you can use offline. But we’ve not gotten round to implementing this yet. For the moment, the only option really is to just save the webpage offline.
I will ask the MDN devs if there is a simple option we could implement to make it available offline. A service worker for example that just saves every page you’ve looked at offline…?
3 Likes
Sorry for late reply. May be yes. I will also have a look at source of these docs and see if I can make an indepent copy of things I need from it
I will download every page and upload it to GitHub for you. Then I will put a link to the repo here in the forum for you. Give me a bit.
1 Like
@j.arunmani (or anyone else interested), I have been using Zeal just recently, the learning tutorials are actually available in the offline documents.
In Zeal, the homepage for HTML, CSS, and Javascript are for the references, but you can navigate back in the breadcrumb nav at the top of the page.
For CSS, looks somethings like this:
Web technology for developers > CSS: Cascading Style Sheets>CSS reference.
(Click on the bolded part when in Zeal)
This will bring you to the main CSS page and the links for learning tutorials will be available there. Note that you can only use the CSS tutorials within the CSS docset. If you want to use the learning tutorials for HTML or Javascript you will have to switch to that docset.
Also, if you are having trouble with the “Content Rendering Error” in Zeal,
GitHub offers a solution here.
For Linux users, you will need to change those filepaths to use / instead of \.
Then remove listed file.
1 Like
I already have Devhelp, is it possible to use that instead of Zeal?
@j.arunmani
I haven’t used DevHelp yet, so not sure if it will allow you to search the docsets like Zeal does. You should be able to open them up in DevHelp but it may not work with the quick search features.
If you decide to use Zeal again, I need to mention that the Javascript docset does not have a landing page like HTML and CSS. So you can’t access the Learning Section normally.
If you are using Linux, here are two options you might try.
You can use a modified landing page that contains links to the learning modules and other useful pages. I provide instructions here on how to do that.
A second option, you can go to this folder in the Zeal docsets on your computer. It contains the files for the Learning Section.
/home/<yourcomputernamehere>/.local/share/Zeal/Zeal/docsets/JavaScript.docset/Contents/Resources/Documents/developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/JavaScript/
(Note where it says <yourcomputernamehere> , that is where you should put your computer name.)
Another option is to use a website downloader to get everything at this url here. When using whichever downloader you choose, there should be some kind of option to keep that link as the root of download, meaning that it shouldn’t download the whole MDN site, only subpaths of .../Learn such as .../Learn/CSS or .../Learn/Javascript.
I typically bookmark the index page of a downloaded website. You can use your browser like this with the Zeal docsets as well. When using Zeal, you can right click and open that page in the your browser, then bookmark it in the browser.
1 Like
Mozilla intends to delete their excellent legacy documentation off of MDN by Christmas. This information has proved a gold mine for developing Add-ons for Toolkit-preserving forks such as Pale Moon.
I would love to see [the topic of this thread] solved before that time, so we [XUL-based Add-on developers] don’t get shafted by the deletion and end up trying to put a maintainable copy of these docs together from The Internet Archive and a bunch of crusty “wget --recursive” scrapes.
Is the technology you’re using not conducive to just plain allowing “git-like” fork-able access to the source for the whole docs?
i appreciate your endless efforts.
1 Like
To be clear, we aren’t intending to delete such documentation. Instead it will be archived in a separate repo, so available to folks that need it.
1 Like
it will be archived in a separate repo, so available to folks that need it
@chrisdavidmills, it’s already in the “Archive of of obsolete content”, and, while in there, it’s been branded with the following message:
As there is no supported version of Firefox enabling these technologies, this page will be removed by December 2020.
Is there a second-level “archive” it’s going to be sent to? If so, where is that located?
1 Like
My apologies; I didn’t realize those notes had been added to the docs. If they are still useful to people, then there is no reason to delete them completely. I’ll explore why these notes were added, and talk to the extensions folk.
1 Like
Alas, the link got killed just 15 months after that message was sent. I guess the talk with the extensions folk failed?
