Kind of. HTTP was designed with caching in mind, so the idea was that if you GET a page it should more or less not change and you could add headers and stuff to

Kind of. HTTP was designed with caching in mind, so the idea was that if you GET a page it should more or less not change and you could add headers and stuff to instruct proxy servers about whether to cache or not and for how long. I think you could use HEAD then to check if a page had changed ... The browser cache used to actually be quite dependable as an offline way to view pages but this seems to have fallen out of favour in the mid naughties. I remember how disgusted I was when I realised Safari was no longer me letting see a page unless it could contact the server and download the latest version. I used to have a caching proxy server that would basically MITM my browsing and be more vigilant than even the cache and it really worked quite well. This was back in the 90s when every bit of your max 54kbs counted, or when you wanted to read something while your Dad or sister wanted to also use the phone. Anyway, you can no longer take this approach because bad people broke the Internet and now you have to have a great honking opaque TLS layer between you and the caching servers so there's no way for this optimisation to work any more. Of course it isn't really as important these days because we've got faster connections and interactions with the server are far less transactional and richer. But I still would like to have a way of tracking my own webusage and being able to go back in time without having to actually revisit each and every site. These days you have to hack the browser because that's where your TLS endpoint emerges. Kaspersky tried this for their HTTP firewall application and there was ructions over that. I'll defo take a look at this. Sounds just like what I've been looking for. > Isn't this how the internet was supposed to work in the first place? I remember Netscape navigator having a 'go offline' icon in the corner. Thinking back actually, if you forget about "the web"/HTTP - then yes actually - this is exactly how usenet worked and now I'm remembering that the "go offline" button used to download all your newsgroups along with your email and stuff so you could look at it all offline :-) If you want something that's like Usenet these days check out Scuttlebut.