For the latest information please check http://www.backweb.com.
For a list of changes, please refer to the bottom of this document.
Introduction Let Information Find You for a Change
Labor-intensive Web surfing is being replaced by the information-intensive approach of BackWeb. Let your computer and the Internet do the work for you for a change.
Install BackWeb today and you'll be on your way to getting personalized information, entertainment, and software from the Internet— all delivered automatically to your desktop.
BackWeb makes this possible by sending software and information to you in the background, taking advantage of your Internet connection's idle time.
This means you no longer have to wait for long downloads or go out and search for information. You subscribe to the channels you're interested in once and from then on information is delivered to you automatically.
Contents
A. System Requirements
B. Installation Instructions
C. Uninstalling
D. Subscribing to BackWeb Channels
E. Important Note
F. Known Issues
For technical support please send e-mail to user_support@backweb.com
A. System Requirements
Operating System: MacOS™ 7.5 with OpenTransport 1.1.2 or higher
Minimum Hardware: Any Power Macintosh with 16 MB RAM
Disk Space: 4 MB for the BackWeb software and 6 MB per channel (user-configurable)
Internet Connection: Any Internet Connection
Web Browser: Either Netscape Navigator 2.0 or higher or Microsoft Explorer 2.0 or higher
B. Installation
If you didn't already download the BackWeb installer, check http://www.backweb.com for download instructions.
1. Open the ‘BackWeb Installer’ to install BackWeb on your computer.
2. After installation completes, your computer will restart.
3. When your computer restarts, the ‘BackWeb Viewer’ is opened and you are taken on a guided tour of BackWeb where Quick Setup will let you customize BackWeb to meet your specific needs.
Quick Setup lets you:
• view and interact with a sample InfoPak,
• specify whether InfoPaks should be played automatically or manually,
• subscribe to channels of your choice from BackWeb's Channel Directory, and
• specify the maximum amount of disk space per channel that you wish to allow for the storage of InfoPaks.
C. Uninstalling
To uninstall BackWeb from your computer:
1. Open the BackWeb Installer.
2. In the main installation window, hold down the Option key and click the ‘Uninstall’ button.
D. Subscribing to BackWeb Channels
Once BackWeb is installed, you can subscribe to channels to start receiving information.
Choose ‘Browse Channel Directory’ from the BackWeb Viewer's ‘Channel’ menu to go to BackWeb's channel directory Web page. From the Web you can subscribe to a wealth of channels which may interest you. The information from these channels will be received via BackWeb.
Quick Setup offers you quick access to BackWeb's channel directory Web page.
E. Important Note
The following is relevant to users who are connected to the Internet via a local-area network (LAN) and firewall, and possibly also to users who are connected to the Internet via certain on-line services.
There is a possibility that such Internet connections do not support the standard communication protocol called ‘UDP’. If this is the case, BackWeb cannot use its ‘Polite Agent’ mode.
To solve this problem, BackWeb also supports an additional standard communication protocol called ‘HTTP’. This protocol will work on any Internet connection.
It is recommended that you use the Polite Agent if possible, as it offers the substantial benefit of unobtrusive background communication. HTTP is not as ‘polite,’ and you will sometimes notice it working even though BackWeb is in the background.
Firewall Configuration
It is possible to configure a firewall to support the Polite Agent— consult your system administrator.
By default, BackWeb uses UDP port 370 to send and port 371 to receive, although this can be changed in the ‘Global Options’ dialog, by selecting the ‘Connection’ tab and clicking ‘Advanced Settings’.
F. Known Issues
1. Internet Config
BackWeb uses the ‘Internet Config’ utility to find a Web browser and the plug-ins installed for that browser. BackWeb will also use the HTTP proxy settings from Internet Config if you choose to work in HTTP mode.
2. The BackWeb Menu
BackWeb installs a menu on the right-hand side of the menu bar. The BackWeb menu provides quick access to some BackWeb settings and allows you to play InfoPaks manually. There is a submenu for each channel showing its available InfoPaks. When BackWeb is first used this menu will be nearly empty, so you must wait until some InfoPaks are downloaded.
The BackWeb Menu can be disabled via the Misc panel in BackWeb Viewer's Global Settings.
3. Registering to Channels
BackWeb uses a Web browser plug-in to subscribe to channels. The ‘Registration Plug-in’ is installed in the ‘Helpers’ folder in the BackWeb folder. BackWeb automatically creates aliases to this plug-in for all known Web browsers that are installed on your computer. If you are using a browser that doesn't have a plug-ins folder in the same folder as the browser itself, you can install the plug-in manually using the ‘Install Registration Plug-in’ item in BackWeb Viewer's ‘Miscellaneous’ menu.
4. Time Zone
Some InfoPaks are played or deleted at specific times. For this to work properly your computer's time zone must be set correctly. You can do this in the ‘Date & Time’ control panel.
5. Channel Disk Quota
Occasionally, a channel may report that it has filled its disk quota even though the InfoPak appears to be smaller than the quota. This happens because the size on disk of the InfoPak is actually greater than the size of the InfoPak itself (as can be seen in the Finder's ‘Get Info’ windows).
6. Plug-ins
BackWeb supports the use of plug-ins to play certain multimedia files (such as ShockWave). BackWeb uses the plug-ins installed for your default Web browser, as well as those located in the ‘Plug-ins’ folder in the ‘Helpers’ folder in the BackWeb folder. There is hence no need to install the same plug-in in both places.
7. Installing Plug-ins
For BackWeb to recognize a newly installed plug-in, you must either restart it by selecting ‘Stop BackWeb’ and then ‘Start BackWeb’ from the BackWeb menu, or restart your Macintosh.
8. Sound from Plug-ins
Plug-ins used by InfoPaks may produce sound even when the InfoPak or BackWeb is muted.
9. Communication via HTTP
You may experience problems receiving InfoPaks from some channels if you configured BackWeb to work with HTTP. This may be caused by outdated BackWeb servers or proxies which do not support BackWeb channels. BackWeb Technologies is doing its best to ensure that channel providers are using the latest version of the BackWeb channel server, which supports a wide range of HTTP proxies.
10. Unsupported
The current version of BackWeb will not download InfoPaks containing AVI files, Java applets, or Desktop pictures.
Changes
2.0 Release
- Bug fixes.
- Sprite now has the same functionality as Sprite 3.0 for Windows.
