Masks in NetAnts is very flexible and handy. It is used in many functions such as automatic login based on URL mask and file name mask used when add multiple jobs. There're 2 types of masks in NetAnts: wildcard mask and regex (regular expression) mask.

In wildcard mask, you can use * to represent a string and ? to represent a single character. For example, if you need to do automatic logins when visit Microsoft's sites, the URL mask should be "*.microsoft.com/*". Please note that if you set the mask to "http://www.microsoft.com" it won't work when you login to "http://www.microsoft.com/topsecret/".

Regex mask uses common rules of regular expressions. Ask some UNIX gurus if you are not familiar with regular expressions.

To turn off the splash screen on start-up, add a DWORD value "NoSplash" under the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\NetAnts\Layout, and set its value to 1.

To turn off the window background, add a DWORD value "NoWindowBK" under the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\NetAnts\Layout, and set its value to 1.

Since version 1.2, background image can be controlled by set skin under the "Visual" tab of the options dialog box.

The automatic categorization feature of NetAnts is based on file extension. Sometime, you may need to logically categorize downloaded files. For example, "Games" or "Utilities", files in either category may be in EXE or ZIP form.

Here's a work around: Define a category "Games" and leave the extension box empty. Now, every time you drag a URL to the basket, there will be an additional destination "Game" for you to drop that URL. Note that this only works with the drop basket, not click capture or clipboard monitor.

Just right click on a finished job entry and select "Explore" from the pop-up menu. You can also launch the file by selecting "Launch".

Sometime, you may make some mistakes while adding new jobs, for example, set the wrong download directory, or forget to use the proxy, which is needed to access the sites. Since version 1.2, you may select multiple job entries, right-click on them, choose "Edit..." to modify common properties for all selected jobs.

Be sure that every job you need to modify is NOT running.