Offline Cache Proxy

Here's a random idea from my notebook that I don't see myself implementing any time soon due to a lack of free time and energy, so I'll just throw it out there:

I want a small program that runs on your laptop, that you can then setup as the proxy for your browser, and saves all the web pages you visit when you're online. Each time you visit it while online, it will download it and present it to you, saving the new version.

This proxy wouldn't try and save you any bandwidth, but instead would let you visit all of the websites you've visited online offline. Then when I'm sitting in some lecture hall without wifi or on the train or in a car, I can browser through Wikipedia, assuming I'd visited the page before.

Misc extensions:
  • Visit a special URL to edit the settings - ie proxy.settings
  • You'll probably never access 98% of the cache, so as it is writing pages to disk, it can compress the crap out of them. (Along the lines of Mailinator)
  • Limit the cache size to a preset number (ie 10GB). Phase out older pages based on size, last time visited, and visit frequency.
  • Maybe try and have it save some bandwidth by not redownloading pictures for a day or something. I wouldn't want much more than this, I never want to have to worry about what the proxy is showing me is out-of-date.
  • Prefetch links on certain domains like Wikipedia, so when you're offline you can visit more pages than you did online.

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