Software developers must eye competitors’ products

A few weeks ago, I tested an “off-line browsing” program. Such programs download pages from the Web unattended.

They provide a way to gather information from the Web without spending a lot of time; the program does the work for you. Then you can view the pages very quickly when it’s finished.

I’ve tested quite a few of these programs, and I’m not impressed with many. They seem to be overly complicated and don’t work too well in general. But this one was different; it worked quickly, did what it was supposed to do, and was easy to understand. There was just…