Current Release

TOA Lite is a self-contained copy of the public static pages in the current TalkOrigins modernization candidate. It includes an offline browser search index and excludes live feedback submission, the editorial workbench, private queue state, and restricted source material.

Download latest TOA Lite zip Checksum

Current timestamped release: toa-lite-poc3-20260528T1905Z.zip (approx. 174 MB). SHA-256: 45e64183ba9c1be9718602155595837a312acdb8d47396bdfdd2c17e68c99376.

Latest release generated 2026-05-28 19:09 UTC. Release files are immutable when timestamped. The toa-lite-latest.zip link points to the most recent published build.

Release files are immutable when timestamped. The toa-lite-latest.zip link points to the most recent published build.

What to do after downloading

  1. Download the zip file to a local folder or USB flash drive.
  2. Extract the zip file. Do not open pages from inside the compressed archive.
  3. Open start.html in the extracted talkorigins-portable-lite folder.
  4. Use the included search/index.html page for offline search.

Desktop and laptop instructions

Windows

  1. Right-click the downloaded zip file and choose Extract All.
  2. Open the extracted folder.
  3. Double-click start.html. If Windows asks which app to use, choose Edge, Firefox, Chrome, or another browser.
  4. To carry it on a USB drive, copy the extracted folder, not just the zip file.

macOS

  1. Double-click the zip file to extract it.
  2. Open the extracted folder in Finder.
  3. Double-click start.html. Safari, Firefox, Chrome, or another browser should open it.
  4. If Gatekeeper warns about downloaded files, choose to open the local HTML file in your browser.

Linux and ChromeOS

  1. Extract the zip file with the file manager or with unzip.
  2. Open the extracted folder.
  3. Open start.html in Firefox, Chromium, Chrome, or another local browser.
  4. On ChromeOS, use the Files app to extract the archive, then open start.html.

Phones and tablets

iPhone and iPad

  1. Download the zip file into the Files app.
  2. Tap the zip file to extract it.
  3. Open the extracted folder and tap start.html.
  4. If Safari does not preserve local navigation well, try moving the extracted folder to iCloud Drive or use a file-manager app that can open local HTML in a browser.

Android

  1. Download the zip file with Chrome, Firefox, or your file manager.
  2. Extract the zip file with Files by Google or another archive-capable file manager.
  3. Open the extracted folder and tap start.html.
  4. If your browser blocks local file navigation, use the file manager's browser/open-with option or move the folder to shared storage.

USB and external storage

  1. Use a FAT32 or exFAT formatted flash drive when sharing across operating systems.
  2. Copy the extracted talkorigins-portable-lite folder to the drive.
  3. Open start.html from the copied folder on the target device.
  4. Keep the folder structure intact; pages, assets, and the offline search index depend on relative paths.

Check the download

The checksum file allows users to confirm that the zip file was downloaded intact. This is optional for casual browsing, but recommended for redistributed USB copies.

Windows PowerShell

Get-FileHash .\toa-lite-latest.zip -Algorithm SHA256

macOS

shasum -a 256 toa-lite-latest.zip

Linux

sha256sum toa-lite-latest.zip

Known limitations

  • Offline search covers only the public pages included in the Lite package.
  • Feedback submission, live multi-corpus search, and workbench review require the online site.
  • Some mobile browsers handle local HTML folders better than others; extracting the zip before opening is essential.
  • External links require an internet connection.