Dave McManus looks at 'caching' pages and offers tips on keeping ahead of the game

Most people who surf the Web with any measurable degree of regularity will realise that visited pages are 'cached' on your computer. Cached pages can be a great idea if you want to re-visit a site you were at very recently, as the page will be immediately loaded into your browser from your computer's memory.

As well as offering convenience at times, page caching can also cause a few problems when you are expecting new content on a site and find the same old stuff that was there the last time you looked.

If you grow suspicious about an absence of new content on a particular page, make sure you hit the refresh button on your browser. This will cause the page you are viewing to load up afresh, whether you have it cached or not.

If you want to exploit page caching, I came across a very useful tool the other day for anyone who wants to keep a constant archive of pages they have viewed.

History Book works by trawling through the pages stored in your Internet Explorer cache folder, usually referred to as the History folder by Microsoft, and making an HTML page of them. I have found that the software works very well, and can be downloaded free if you go to this site.

As reported previously, the hype surrounding WAP finally seems to be dying away. BT has come under heavy criticism for its 'Surf the Net, surf the BT Cellnet' because it is has been claimed that potential users are let down when they discover that they can't actually go to their favourite Web sites from their new mobile.

I spoke to a number of my friends and colleagues - gadget-heads like myself - who own WAP phones, and not a single one of them said they pull up WAP sites more than once in a blue moon.

I spent a couple of hours 'surfing' the WAP world on my phone last weekend, after Orange introduced a new free weekend tariff in a desperate bid to boost WAP's failing popularity.

Apart from a couple of genuinely amusing uses of the technology (intentional or otherwise, it was hard to tell), the majority of my WAPathon experience was mind-numbingly dull.

And this is really where WAP falls between two stools. Many would point out that the WAP experience is not intended to be an all-singing and dancing one, and that it is more about simple text delivered quickly, which is perfectly valid and reasonable.

The trouble is that there are really very, very few occasions where people need mobile access to their stocks and shares or the latest news.

Thankfully, we are seldom in so much of a hurry that we can't wait until we get home for this information, where it is available quicker and in a much easier to digest format on TV or the 'real' Internet.

If you feel compelled to indulge in a WAP experience without having to fork out for a WAP device, download a good WAP emulator for your PC from this site.

Send comments or suggestions to: david.mcmanus@nqo.com