lucy24 - 8:08 am on Sep 17, 2012 (gmt 0)

If it's a properly coded page it should open perfectly well from a local copy. The only difference is if your stylesheet uses a site-absolute link ("/stylesheet.css"). The page will come out styleless-- and similarly for images. But it should still be html. So there's some other problem. The reference to "quirks mode" makes me uneasy; it makes it sound as if something is missing from the dtd or elsewhere in the head.

That's assuming the pages don't have SSIs or php stuff that will only work if they're coming from a server.

Digression:
Thanks to MAMP, I've now got three count 'em three varieties of "local" viewing.
--Just-like-real via the pseudo-server.
--Almost-like real in a browser-- somewhere along the line they've all learned to show directory indexes, so links ending in "directory/" involve only a brief stopover to find the index.html file, not a terminal "Ain't no such file on this computer".
--Less accurate but instantly responsive using SubEthaEdit's www preview-- built with webkit, so it pretty much looks like Safari. Perfect for ebooks, where everything is either internal or relative.