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You can also drop files or folders onto Big Brother's icon rather than using the Open menu command.
Once you have found the right file or folder, click OK. Big Brother starts scanning the file(s) for links, checks each of them, and displays the results in a new window. For each link, a diagnostic is displayed. If the link is valid, its diagnostic is printed in black; otherwise, an error diagnostic is displayed in a different color.
If the link has a name, it is displayed in the first column (the name is the text contained between the <A> and </A> tags). Otherwise, the link type is displayed in italics.
In the upper left corner of the window, Big Brother displays the number of links which have been successfully checked, the number of links which have been found invalid, and the current number of open network connections. Below is the name of the source file which is currently being scanned. As long as the check is running, a button labeled "Abort" is available. Clicking it stops the checks.
Multiple series of checks can be started simultaneously by using the Open command several times or by dropping several files or folders onto Big Brother's icon. The only limitation is the available memory.
Another way of automating actions is to use scripts.
To choose which browser should be launched when the saved document is double-clicked, go to the Miscellaneous section of the Settings dialog.
Balloon Help can be turned on or off by clicking the icon located in the top right corner of the dialog.
When you're done editing settings, click OK to confirm your changes or Cancel to discard them.
If you don't know whether you need a proxy, ask your nearby guru. Having a look at your browser's settings might also help. If you find you need to use a proxy, check the first box and enter the proxy's name. For instance, my proxy's name is www-rocq.inria.fr. If your proxy uses a custom port number, you must add a colon followed by the port number to the server name, e.g. www-rocq.inria.fr:80.
You usually don't need to use the proxy when connecting to a machine within the same domain as yours, because it is also behind the firewall. If that is the case, check the second box and enter your domain's name. For instance, my domain is inria.fr.
If you have installed Internet Config 1.3 or later, you can tell Big Brother to automatically follow Internet Config's proxy settings. The above controls become ineffective and Big Brother then mirrors Internet Config's settings, even when you change them. This allows you to use Internet Config as the one centralized place to set your Internet preferences.
Links are divided into two categories: remote and local links. The former can only be accessed by establishing a connection to a remote machine, while the latter represent files or folders on your hard disk. Checking local links is usually much faster and does not require your Mac to have networking capabilities. You can choose to ignore remote links (say, because you do not want to use your modem) or to ignore local links (say, because remote links are more likely to become invalid as time passes).
Next comes a panel which displays a list of mappings. Below it are three buttons which let you add, modify or delete mappings. A mapping is a way of telling Big Brother that a certain address really represents a certain folder on your hard disk. It consists of a source URL and a destination URL. While checking links, whenever the beginning of the address being checked matches a mapping's source URL, it is replaced with the mapping's destination URL.
For instance, my home page address is http://pauillac.inria.fr/~fpottier/. The source files for it are stored on my hard disk, in a folder whose URL is file:///Hal/Home%20Page/. So, I define a mapping with these two URLs. Note that I don't need to type the destination URL by hand, because the "Set..." button lets me select a folder and creates the URL for it automatically.
Thanks to this mapping, any link to one of my pages will be checked by looking up the contents of the disk, rather than by establishing a connection with the server pauillac.inria.fr. For instance, http://pauillac.inria.fr/~fpottier/mac-soft.html.en is mapped to file:///Hal/Home%20Page/mac-soft.html.en, and checking whether the file exists on the hard disk is enough.
You can now define any number of mappings.
The second box has an effect when you select a folder using the Open menu command, or when you drop a folder onto Big Brother. It tells whether folders found within that folder should also be searched.
The third box lets you decide whether aliases to files or folders should be resolved, or simply ignored. Be careful, aliases can create loops which will cause Big Brother to run endlessly!
Next comes a 4-character code which tells what kind of documents is created by the Save As command. The first time you run Big Brother, it is read from Internet Config (if you have installed it). You can change it using either the nearby popup menu (which contains a list of a few popular browsers) or by clicking the Same As button and selecting a browser. When you double-click a file created by the Save As command, it is opened by the browser you have defined here.
Finally, a similar 4-character code defines your preferred text editor. This editor is used when you select View in editor from the Links menu. Big Brother can have any editor open the correct source file. In addition, if your editor is supported, Big Brother can ask it to highlight the correct location in the source file.
You can determine which editor to use in the Miscellaneous section of the Settings dialog. Unfortunately, not all editors are scriptable, and highlighting the proper location in the source text is not always possible. Currently, only Alpha, BBEdit (version 3.5.2 or later, not Lite), and CodeWarrior allow this. If you use another editor, the document will be opened as expected, but the link will not be highlighted. Let me know if you know of other scriptable text editors which you think Big Brother should support.
First, if the address is relative, it is turned into a full address using the current base address. The current base is either determined by a <BASE HREF> tag or the current document's address.
Next, Big Brother applies user-defined mappings to the address. If the beginning of the address matches the left side of a mapping, it is replaced with the right side of the mapping. The idea is to allow you to turn http: addresses into file: addresses, thus turning remote checks into local checks.
At this point, Big Brother knows whether a local or a remote check should be performed. It checks the values of "Ignore local links" and "Ignore remote links" to determine whether this check should be bypassed.
Finally, if allowed, the check is performed. Remote checks require opening a network connection, while local checks only require accessing the hard disk and are much faster.
If you want to use an absolute link in a non-ambiguous way, use the BASE HREF tag to specify explicitly what / represents. For instance, if you specify http://myserver.com/~me/ as base URL, /mysubfolder/myfile will be turned into http://myserver.com/~me/mysubfolder/myfile. You can then define a mapping to allow this URL to be checked locally!
You can read and modify all of Big Brother's settings through AppleScript. Using the Open event (which is similar to the Open menu command), you can launch a series of checks. Each Open command takes a snapshot of the current settings when it starts, which means that you can change settings without affecting ongoing checks.
A sample script called "Check Documentation" is bundled with Big Brother; when run, it launches Big Brother and asks it to check its own documentation files, with appropriate settings. You can use this script as a template to write your own scripts. Scripts provide a convenient way of changing settings and launching a series of checks with a double click.
Starting with version 1.1, Big Brother offers a custom event called Check Links. This event allows you to submit a list of URLs to Big Brother and to receive a detailed report for each of them. It is probably too complex to be used within a script, but it should be of interest to software authors who want to make use of Big Brother's capabilities. For instance, Big Brother's integration with URL Manager Pro is based on this event. If you want to use this event, look at the technical documentation in BrotherEvents.h. If you need help, I'll be pleased to answer your questions by email.
However, although Big Brother is good at reporting problems, it isn't very good (yet!) at fixing them. To manage bookmarks, it is best to use Big Brother together with URL Manager Pro by Alco Blom.
URL Manager Pro is an excellent tool to manage bookmarks. Among other things, it has a Validate Bookmarks command which brings up Big Brother automatically. Big Brother checks your bookmarks and reports the results to URL Manager Pro, which displays them graphically and fixes your bookmarks when possible. So, selecting Validate Bookmarks once in a while is all you need to keep them up-to-date! It is also possible to drop bookmarks onto Big Brother's icon in URLM's Helper Dock.
You will need URL Manager Pro version 1.4b13 or later; earlier versions do not have support for Big Brother.
If your preferred bookmarks utility does not support Big Brother, tell me, and tell them too! Let them know I'll be pleased to provide technical help on adding this feature.