I've just tried saving the file as html to the desktop, unplugged the connection and viewed this thread no problem. If it's just a front page you want with no click throughs etc, it should work. If it's a number of pages you might need to save each page individually? I've never been able to get the 'make available off-line' function to do anything.
There should be a html file and a folder containing all the images etc. The html file and folder usually have the same name.
