Webmeesteres V., c. 1995–1998
I am a sentimental old woman, and that disposition clashes with the nature of the Internet, which is constantly changing its face.
Sometimes the changes are small. The Book Square will suddenly feature a different illustration where “Your advertisement here?” once stood, but from that moment on it is, for a while, no longer my square.
Something that once felt tangible has already dissolved into transience.
Admittedly, it rarely happens that I have not taken a proper picture of such a page using the “Print Screen” key, but the orderly archiving of such images on my hard drive, which in any case only capture information within the browser frame, requires so much effort that in practice a great deal is lost.
It becomes worse when a page disappears altogether. I once came across an address called:
Rimbaud’s Internet Page
Its maintainer had neatly categorized the most objectionable newsgroups. Even alt.sex.fetish.amputee, where pin-ups of mutilated bodies are offered for purposes of self-gratification, was represented. An indispensable page when one wishes to get rid of an irritating guest who insists on being shown the Internet.
During a visit to http://www.shareware.com, however, I encountered a program called Hot Save. I had never heard of it and therefore assumed it could be nothing of value. It installed itself and, uninvited, placed a logo of an offensively bright color in the menu bar of my Netscape Navigator, and I had nearly decided to remove the program without further inspection. I would certainly have done so, had it not been that I had, only days earlier, switched to a new PC with an equally new “operating system,” and had not the faintest idea how to accomplish such a thing.
It has now entirely changed my use of the Internet.
The program is simple. One click on Hot Save, and the page is transferred in its entirety to my PC. A clear software shell ensures that the pages thus collected can be easily archived, so that they may later be viewed offline at leisure.
The only disadvantage is that a sentimental old woman such as myself once again takes the time to read, rather than limiting herself to looking at pictures, and as a result it becomes all the more apparent how much rubbish there actually is on the Net.
Part of the Webmeesteres V. archive →