If you visit a number of web pages every day, Hello wURLd can save you time. Just tell Hello wURLd the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of each of your favorite web sites, and it will open them in separate windows in your web browser while you get some coffee. When you return, the pages will be loaded and ready for you to view. And with SmartPage™, you’ll see only the pages that have changed since your last visit.
Installation
Hello wURLd has no special installation requirements. Put it anywhere on your hard disk. After you’ve created one or more URL files, you might want to put aliases to those files in your Apple menu for quick access.
Version History
• Release 3.0.1 fixes a bug in the way SmartPage™ processes FRAME statements on some web pages. The recommended memory allowance has been increased, and low memory situation handling is improved. A bug that prevented Hello wURLd from running on older Mac OS revisions has been fixed. There is now only one status window for opening URLs.
• Release 3.0 improved SmartPage™ performance by simultaneously processing up to three web pages. The progress window changed to display more information about your URLs and their SmartPage™ results. Browser window arrangement options were added. URL drags from your browser’s bookmarks or favorites file include the URL’s description. Multiple URL drags from Internet Explorer were added. The human interface was simplified. SmartPage™ processing for certain web servers was improved. URLAccess library support was added.
• Release 2.1 improved SmartPage™ technology with new date recognition features, faster web page retrieval, and a modified SmartPage™ human interface. A bug some users had with error -108 on large documents was fixed, and you could now include a user name, password, and port number in a URL.
• Release 2.0 added SmartPage™ technology, added a “quit when done” checkbox to the progress window, fixed bugs that some users experienced when they had incomplete Internet Config setups, fixed an update bug where using the “Choose…” button in the Edit window and selecting a new application seemed to have no effect, and changed the meaning of double-click on a URL in the URL window.
• Release 1.2 made the launch URL process more flexible, fixed an extraneous character bug when dragging bookmarks from Netscape Communicator™, fixed a problem with MacTCP on PowerPC computers, and added support for Apple’s new Navigation Services (“File/Open” and “File/Save As…” dialogs.)
• Release 1.1.1 fixed a crashing problem on slower Macs and improved speed on faster Macs.
• Release 1.1 added a URL menu and a sound preference. Registered users can specify a sound for Hello wURLd to play after all the URLs have been loaded. The main URL list now supports multiple selections. The balloon help icon has been corrected and now appears on every window and dialog. A bug in removing URLs from the document has been fixed. Dropping a valid URL into the main list will not bring up the edit dialog.
• Release 1.0.1 fixed a problem with the “new window” option for Netscape Communicator™.
Using Hello wURLd
Hello wURLd stores your favorite web pages in its own documents. The first time your run the program, it will open a new untitled document, as shown below.
Click on the “New…” button to add a favorite URL to the document, which brings up this dialog:
Type or paste the URL of your favorite website in the URL field. Most web URLs begin with “http://” but you may omit that part if you choose. The Name field allows you to specify a shorter name to appear in the document window.
You can also drag a text selection from another application into any of Hello wURLd’s text fields or into the list of URLs.
Hello wURLd is not limited to opening web pages. You can enter any URL that you use frequently, such as an FTP site, newsgroup, or even an email address (for sending, not receiving, email.) Here are some examples of those kinds of URLs:
If Internet Config is installed on your Macintosh, (or if you’re running Mac OS 8.5 or later), the “Use Internet Config” button will be selected. This means that Hello wURLd will use your Internet Config preferences to choose which application will open this URL.
If you click the “Use” button, or if Internet Config is not installed, you can manually specify which application will open this URL. To specify the application, click the “Choose…” button and use the standard Macintosh open-file dialog to identify it.
“Open in new window” is the default for certain web browsers that support the required functionality. The AOL browser automatically supports that function even though the checkbox is not enabled.
If you specify a standard web page URL, the SmartPage popup menu will be enabled. If you activate it, SmartPage™ will remember what the web page contained the last time Hello wURLd viewed it, and only tell your browser to open the page if it has changed since then.
To automatically determine the best setting for a specific URL, click the “Calculate SmartPage™ Settings” button. Hello wURLd will connect to the web page and apply its SmartPage™ technology to determine the best settings for the page. This is most useful for pages that contain rotating banner advertisements.
Depending on your network connection, especially if you connect through a proxy or firewall, SmartPage™ may work better if you check the “Use URL Access” checkbox. (URLAccess requires MacOS 8.6 or later.) You can determine the best setting by clicking the “View Page Source…” button. The resulting window will display the HTML source that SmartPage™ will later use to check for changes. If you see errors or text such as “Your browser sent a request the server could not understand,” try changing the “Use URL Access” setting. Using URLAccess may require that you increase Hello wURLd’s memory allocation.
To manually change the SmartPage™ settings for this URL, select one or more of the popup menu items.
As you might expect, selecting one or more of the “Ignore <TABLE>”, “Ignore <FORM>”, “Ignore Commonly changing HTML”, etc. menu items will tell Hello wURLd to ignore changes in those types of statements if they occur in this web page.
The “Use dates in text” menu item is exclusive of all the “Ignore…” items, and is a good choice for web pages that contain an “Updated” field or other dates in their display.
Note: Indiscriminate use of “Ignore <FORM>” and “Ignore <TABLE>” menu items can cause SmartPage™ to confuse actual content changes with banner advertising. The “Calculate SmartPage™ Settings” button will not select either of those options.
Note: You should not enable SmartPage™ for stock quote pages, banking pages, or other information of a critical or time-sensitve nature.
SmartPage™ is not perfect. Some web pages embed their banner advertising so thoroughly that it is impossible to separate it from the contents. You should disable SmartPage™ for those pages. Other pages are generated by applications on the web server which may interact with “cookies” stored in your browser, and SmartPage™ may not interpret the contents of such pages correctly. SmartPage™ cannot interpret how a Java applet might affect your browser’s display. You should be extra cautious with URLs that contain the following:
.asp .bin .cgi .dll .exe
SmartPage™ can be disabled for the entire application by a menu selection and a checkbox in the document window. In addition, SmartPage™ can be temporarily toggled by holding down the Option key when you click on “Open.”
If you haven’t registered Hello wURLd, SmartPage™ is only functional for three URLs per launch.
Hello wURLd supports balloon help.
Preferences
You can configure Hello wURLd’s preferences so Hello wURLd will automatically open all the URLs in a document if Hello wURLd is started by opening the document. Hello wURLd can also quit automatically after opening the URLs if you choose.
URLs are normally processed from top to bottom in your document. That means that when Hello wURLd has finished, the topmost window in your browser is the last URL in your list. If you alphabetize your list and prefer that the topmost window be the first URL in your list, turn on the “Open in reverse order” checkbox.
You can assign up to three SmartPage™ “threads,” which means that SmartPage™ will retrieve up to three URLs at a time for change analysis. This reduces the amount of time that Hello wURLd spends waiting for Internet data. You should increase the amount of memory you allocate to Hello wURLd (in the Finder’s “Get Info” window) if you use multiple threads or large numbers of URLs.
If you haven’t registered Hello wURLd, you can only have one SmartPage™ thread.
Because individual websites may respond more quickly than others, Hello wURLd might open your URLs out of sequence in relation to each other if you have more than one SmartPage™ thread enabled. Even with one thread, if you have some URLs that use SmartPage™ and others that don’t, the new routines in Hello wURLd 3.0 can change their opening order. If you want your URLs to always open in the order they appear in your document, check the “Keep URLs in sequence” box. This will set the “SmartPage™ threads” menu to one. “Open in reverse order” is still applicable.
Hello wURLd can arrange your browser windows in either a tiled or stacked tableau:
Stacked Windows
Tiled Windows
Netscape Communicator 6.0 does not support the interface that Hello wURLd uses to arrange the browser’s windows. Earlier versions do.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How does Hello wURLd know which browser (or email program, or FTP client, etc.) to execute?
There are two ways it decides this. The first, and preferred, way, is by using your Internet preferences (“Internet Config” on Mac OS 8.0 and earlier) for a particular URL type. For example, you may use Internet Explorer for “http:” URLs.
The alternative is that you specify which application will open each URL, by clicking on the “Use:” radio button in the Edit URL window, and then clicking on the “Choose…” button to point to the application you want Hello wURLd to use. You must use this technique if you don’t have Internet Config, or if you want to override your Internet preferences for a particular URL.
2. Where can I get Internet Config?
Internet Config is included with Mac OS 8.5 and up, as the Internet control panel. For earlier systems, Internet Config is free, and available from most Internet software sites, including
http://www.download.com
3. When I boot my Macintosh, it appears that Hello wURLd is dialing up my Internet connection. How do I stop that?
You must have put a Hello wURLd document (or an alias to one) in your Startup Items folder. Just find the document or alias and drag it out of the Startup Items folder.
4. I use Internet Explorer 5.0. Doesn’t its “Channels” feature make Hello wURLd unnecessary?
Not at all. First, most of the websites you want to view every day are still not available in channel format. Second, channels don’t magically download any faster than “traditional” web pages, so you can still use Hello wURLd to open channel URLs while you do something productive.
5. How is SmartPage™ keeping track of the pages I’ve seen?
When Hello wURLd is told to open a URL with SmartPage™ activated, it first connects to the web server and examines the page contents to generate a small “hash” total. Configurable filtering is applied to ignore the varying banner advertising that is often included on commercial news pages. That hash total is then compared to the value obtained the last time Hello wURLd examined the page. If they are different, your web browser is told to open the page. Note that Hello wURLd does not filter the banner ads from your browser; they are only filtered from the “hash” routine.
6. Is SmartPage™ filtering out advertisements?
No. SmartPage™ ignores advertisements when it examines a page for changes, because banner advertising typically changes on every viewing. But SmartPage™ does not stop you from seeing advertising on pages whose other content has changed. And of course, you decide whether or not to enable SmartPage™ for each URL.
7. I use Internet Explorer 5.0. Doesn’t its “Check this site for changes” feature make SmartPage™ unnecessary?
Not at all. Most web servers don’t support the function that IE 5.0 uses to check pages for changes, so IE will always open them. SmartPage™ has algorithms to support its function on most web pages, including those with variable banner advertisements.
8. Why do I keep seeing this extra web page?
That is a gentle reminder that you need to register your copy of Hello wURLd. That page will not be opened after you register the software.
9. Does Hello wURLd run on Mac OS X?
I’ve received user reports that Hello wURLd does run on the beta version of Mac OS X. However, it doesn’t communicate with the native version of Internet Explorer, and instead launches IE into the Mac OS 9 compatibility mode. (Note that Netscape Communicator doesn’t run as a native OS X application yet, so that restriction is irrelevant.)
I do plan to release a Mac OS X native version of Hello wURLd. I don’t have a timetable for the release yet. Check the Hello wURLd web page for updates.
Latest Version
The latest version of Hello wURLd is available at
http://members.aol.com/SoftHarbor/HellowURLd.html
Trial Software
This trial software is made available for you to evaluate prior to purchase. You can use Hello wURLd for 15 days to evaluate whether it meets your needs. At the end of that period, you must register your copy of Hello wURLd (see Registration, below) or remove it from your system.
Hello wURLd has nearly full functionality in its unregistered form, but there are some operational differences. First, the splash screen has a delay before the program begins to run. Second, when you open the URLs in a file, Hello wURLd opens a reminder web page in addition to your URLs. This page will not be opened after you register the software. Third, registered users can specify that Hello wURLd play a sound when all the URLs have been loaded. Fourth, unregistered users can use SmartPage™ on only three URLs per launch of Hello wURLd. Finally, unregistered users can only use one SmartPage™ thread.
Requirements
Hello wURLd requires an Internet-equipped Macintosh with at least 700KB of free memory when your browser is running. You should have System 8.5 or newer for the best compatibility with Internet applications. Hello wURLd supports PowerPC Macs only. Hello wURLd works best with Internet Config, but it is not required. (The Internet control panel replaced Internet Config starting in Mac OS 8.5).
Most Internet software applications that support Apple Events should work with Hello wURLd. Hello wURLd has been tested with the following web browsers:
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Netscape Communicator
AOL 3.0, 4.0, 5.0
Registration
Hello wURLd is a commercial program. You may try the demo for 15 days. After the trial period, you must register a separate copy for every machine you use it on. Registration is US $10 per copy (site and worldwide licenses are available.) An educational discount of 50% is available.
Please go to this web page for registration instructions:
http://members.aol.com/SoftHarbor/register.html
License Agreement
IMPORTANT-READ CAREFULLY: This End-User License Agreement is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and David McCarthy (the “VENDOR”) for the software product(s) identified above which may include associated software components, media, printed materials, and "online" or electronic documentation ("SOFTWARE PRODUCT"). By installing, copying, or otherwise using the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, you agree to be bound by the terms of this End-User License Agreement. If you do not agree to the terms of this End-User License Agreement, do not install or use the SOFTWARE PRODUCT.
The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is protected by copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties. The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed, not sold.
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The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed as follows:
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This End-User License Agreement is governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA
Apple, Mac, Macintosh. and Power Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the US and other countries.
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