Internet Archivist

Posted on 2 Jul 2002 at 17:32

Davey Winder enjoys a new way of surfing - in his sleep - and continues his search for the elusive perfect email client.

Several new applications have appeared that, at first glance, seem to be nothing but poor relations to the horde of off-line Web browsers that go and surf for you while you're asleep, then let you browse through the results later.

In fact, there's nothing poor about this new breed of product; I think they have a greater role to play than Web OLRs, as they fulfil a need in a simple way. These products are the Internet archivists, and their job is to archive Web pages of interest (complete with their full graphics if you desire) and provide an index to locate these items in the future.

Some of these archivists are too simple, amounting to nothing more than a fancy interface into your browser's cache. Others try too hard by adding cartoon graphics, highlighting pens and post-it notes. But one has got it just right - and it's name is SurfSaver (www.surfsaver.com). Currently it's only available as an add-on for Internet Explorer 4, which is, of course, its biggest weakness. But I'm reliably informed that a Netscape Communicator-compliant version is in development and due for release in the autumn.

Install SurfSaver and at first it's easy to think nothing has happened: there are no new Desktop icons, and no additional toolbar items when you fire up IE 4. But connect to the Net, locate a page of interest and right-click the mouse and you'll notice new options on the pop-up menu.

There are just three of these - Save, QuickSave and Search - which testifies to SurfSaver's simplicity, but perhaps belies its power. Hit Save and the SurfSaver window pops up, from which you can select a folder to save this entry and add a title, notes and the all-important keyword entries.

Hitting the Options button lets you choose whether to include the full graphics in your archive, among other things.

If you're in a hurry, then with a single click QuickSave saves the pages into a predefined archive folder with the settings that exist at the time. It's easy enough to sort through your archived pages afterwards, adding the necessary keywords and titles when you're off-line.

But where SurfSaver really shines is in its indexing and retrieval functions. As you save Web pages you can add whatever keywords you wish, then use a search function to retrieve just those pages that match your criteria. Boolean functions are not implemented - so you can't use familiar search engine terms like + or AND, but you can enter NEAR between two words to force SurfSaver to locate only instances where those words appear together, within a set number of words of each other, or on the same line. You can view pages off-line from the archive only, or you can select to go on-line and get the latest version of the page, which is useful if you know the information stored is date critical.

Selecting the Search option from the right-click menu brings SurfSaver to life, attaching itself to your IE 4 window and eating up a not inconsiderable amount of screen real estate. A new toolbar is added in a docked section at the bottom of the IE 4 window, and a list of the matching pages will be presented, from which you simply click one to display it in all its glory.

All hyperlinks, internal and external, are saved along with the pages, so clicking on an active URL will take you directly to that page. You can make use of all existing browser features, and in particular I find the 'send to' option useful as it means I can email complete archived pages to colleagues and clients when needing to explain some aspect of my research.