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1998-02-27
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Acorn Internet: Hints and tips
==============================
This file details a few things that can make using Acorn Internet a bit
easier, such as how to tell WebServe to stop fetching at the same time
as Browse, or how to quickly open a web page link in a new browser
window.
A more up-to-date HTML version of this file can usually be found on the
Acorn Internet web site, at:
http://www.acorn.com/browser/hints.html
This carries a 'last updated' time at the bottom of the page which will
let you see if it has been changed since you last read it.
Contents
========
* Browser cacheing
* Automatic URL modification
- Ctrl + Tab
- Shift + Tab
* Keyboard modifiers
- Shift + Click
- Ctrl + Click
- Adjust
* The hotlist
- Loading HTML files
- Recording open directories
- Drag and drop
- Adjust
* Data transfer
Browser cacheing
================
Browse uses WebServe to do its cacheing for it. If you want WebServe to
be hidden (have no icon bar icon) and be started automatically for you
by Browse, here's what you do:
1. Make sure WebServe, WebCache and Browse are all sitting next to
one another in the same directory.
2. Open WebServe's Choices dialogue, and turn off the option to show an
icon bar icon. Click on 'OK'.
3. Set the 'Automatically start WebServe' option in the 'Others' section
of the Browse Choices dialogue. Click on 'Save'.
4. That is all you need to do - the 'Cache...' option on Browse's main
menu lets you reconfigure WebServe if you want to bring its icon bar
back again (or just double-click on WebServe).
Automatic URL modification
==========================
When in the URL writable icon at the top of a browser window Button Bar
or using the Open URL dialogue box, you can use the following special
keys:
Ctrl + Tab
----------
This will take whatever you have typed into the URL writable icon in
the Button Bar or Open URL dialogue box and try to find something that
matches it. First, URLs in the Hotlist are searched, then titles
associated with the Hotlist items. If nothing is found, the global
history is searched in a similar manner. This can make getting to a
site quickly very easy - for example, to get to the Dilbert Zone with
the default browser hotlist, just type in 'dilbert' and press Ctrl +
Tab. Or to get to Alta Vista Search, simply type 'av' and press Ctrl +
Tab again. The Hotlist is searched first as you can always get to the
global history from the menu popup (for the Button Bar, see below ) if
what you actually want is there, but the browser keeps finding
something in the Hotlist. It doesn't work so well if things are the
other way around.
Shift + Tab
-----------
This is less useful, but handy when remembered. To save you having to
type in 'http://', 'ftp://' or whatever before every URL, pressing this
key combination will cycle through a selection of protocols for you. Of
course, if you do type in a site name without saying how it is to be
fetched - such as
micros.hensa.ac.uk
rather than
ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/
then the browser will do its best to work out what you wanted. In the
above case, though, there are no clues as to whether HTTP, FTP or
Gopher are to be used for the fetch, so the browser would choose HTTP.
At this point, if you wanted something different, all you need to do is
press Shift + Tab. The 'http:' protocol at the front of the URL will
change to 'ftp:', and from there cycle through all of the available
protocols. This way, you can quickly get to the URL you wanted and
press Return to start fetching it.
Keyboard modifiers
==================
The browser has some useful keyboard and mouse button modifiers that can
be used when clicking on links.
Shift + Click
-------------
Shift-Clicking on a link allows you to save the object that the link
points to as a file on disc. This can be useful for downloading archives
and other such files from program resources such as Hensa . It's also
handy for saving out images where the link points straight at an image
(the information in the browser's status bar, when the pointer is over
such a link, will typically end in something like ".jpg" or "gif").
If you also hold down Ctrl, then the fetch will bypass a cache - this is
useful if you know a resource has updated, but fear a local cache or a
remote proxy server might be storing an older copy of that resource.
Shift-Clicking on the menu popup in the top right of a browser window
Button Bar will open the global visit history, rather than a list of the
pages viewed in that particular window, which is the behaviour if you
don't hold down Shift. This is often faster (if you remember it!) than
going to the Open URL dialogue, which always gives the global history
menu.
Shift-clicking on the Stop button in the Button Bar will reverse the
action of the StopWebServe option - in practice, this means you can
force WebServe to stop fetching an object at the same time as the
browser this way. Normally, WebServe will carry on fetching something
after the browser has been stopped, just in case the browser wants it
again later.
Ctrl + Click
------------
If you have image loading turned off , perhaps because you have a slow
connection to the Internet or you just aren't interested in most of the
images whilst browsing the Web, you can ask the browser to load a
specific image by holding down the Control (Ctrl) key and clicking on
that image.
If you hold down Ctrl when you click on the toggle size icon of a
browser window, the window will be opened to full size vertically, but
not horizontally (normally, it fills the screen in both directions). (As
an aside, holding down Shift will stop the window obscuring the icon
bar, as usual).
If you hold down Ctrl when dragging a single item from the Hotlist, the
item will be saved in ANT's URL file format, which you can use with ANT
internet software such as ANT's Fresco® web browser. This is instead of
writing a standard Acorn URI file.
The behaviour of a Shift + Click on a link is modified by Ctrl, as
described above .
Adjust
------
If you use Adjust (the right-hand mouse button) when clicking on a link,
a new window will be opened and the link will be followed into it. This
can be useful whilst navigating a site - you may want to keep the site
home page visible whilst briefly investigating other pages that it links
to. Clicking with Adjust on some of the Button Bar buttons will have a
similar effect - Back, Forward, Reload, and items in the history menu
will all be shown in a new window if you use the right hand button
rather than the left hand button on them.
When a new window opens in this way, it inherits the visit history and
some of the display characteristics of its parent.
The hotlist
===========
The hotlist has a few relatively obscure features worth mentioning here.
Loading HTML files
------------------
You can drag HTML files to the browser's hotlist window to add links
from within the HTML to the hotlist. This is only really designed to
allow you to take bookmark files from (for example) ANT Fresco® or
Netscape Navigator™. You can also save your local or global visit
history to the hotlist, if you wanted to remember all of the sites you
had visited in there. However, the hotlist will accept any HTML files,
though as for how many links can be extracted... Well, your mileage will
vary!
Recording open directories
--------------------------
When it is saved, the hotlist records which directories are open and
which are closed. The hotlist doesn't bother saving itself for every
opening and closing of a directory though, so the information is only
recorded when the hotlist next saves for another reason (which will
depend on the hotlist configuration settings).
Drag and drop
-------------
Not only can you drag items within the hotlist window, but you can drag
them to browser windows or frames within browser windows to fetch the
page the hotlist item points to. You can drag selections, or even save
the entire hotlist to browser windows too, in which case the selection
or hotlist is saved as an HTML file which the browser will display.
Adjust
------
The hotlist acts a bit like the RISC OS Filer, in that if you
double-click on an item or drag it to a browser window to launch that
link, the hotlist window will close afterwards. This can help keep the
Desktop a tidier place!
Data transfer
=============
The browser knows a lot about the way that RISC OS applications talk to
one another. You can save HTML straight from other applications, such as
text editors or other browsers, or export files from the browser to
those other applications (provided they can load straight from another
application themselves!). The browser can also load URL files and
supports a subset of the URL broadcast protocol as used by applications
like ANT Fresco®.
(Last updated 25/02/1998)