tutorial.htmlTEXTR*ch~^~** Getting Started with URL Manager Pro

Getting Started with URL Manager Pro

Introduction

The Getting Started section contains a tutorial to help you get up to speed quickly using URL Manager Pro. In this tutorial, you will be introduced to the following topics:

Tip: This tutorial is also available as an Acrobat PDF document on the Web. Its URL is:

<http://www.url-manager.com/tutorial.pdf>

Tip (Mac OS 9 only): If you are new to the Mac, you might want to switch on Balloon Help. Balloon Help provides interactive help with many of the commands URL Manager Pro.

To switch on Balloon help, select the Show Balloons command from the Help menu. Balloon Help will now be displayed in URL Manager Pro. To switch Balloon help off, select the Hide Balloons command.

The Sample file

The follow the tutorial, locate the Bookmarks file 'Sample', which is in a folder named Startup Items in the URL Manager Pro folder. This contains a collection of Bookmarks.

Note: Bookmarks contain Universal Resource Locators (URLs), the format in which Internet addresses is stored. A URL is represented in URL Manager Pro as a Bookmark.

By exploring this sample collection Bookmarks, you will get a sense of the power and versatility of URL Manager Pro. Naturally, as soon as you familiarise yourself with the way the program works, you will want to start your own collection of Bookmarks.

Launching Web pages

You can launch Web pages from Bookmarks stored in URL Manager Pro in one of three ways. The first way is by opening a bookmark from within URL Manager Pro. The second way is by using URL Manager Pro's Shared Menu feature for opening a Web page from within your Web browser. A third way is by using Drag & Drop. These three approaches each have their own advantages and are described below.

Opening a bookmark from URL Manager Pro
A good place to start learning how to use URL Manager Pro is by going to the URL Manager Pro home page. URL Manager Pro is updated on a regular basis, and it is possible that there is a newer version available than the one you have, particularly if you obtained your copy on CD-ROM. It is always a good idea to use the latest version of URL Manager Pro.

Open the Sample file and look at the Tutorial folder, the top folder in the Sample document window. You will find three bookmarks. Double-click on the first bookmark, called URL Manager Pro's Home Page.

If your Web browser isn't running, URL Manager Pro will launch it. If your browser is running, URL Manager Pro will try to open this Web page in it. If you are not connected to the Internet, your Web browser will alert you that it cannot make a network connection. In this case, you should start your PPP dialer or whatever other program you use to connect to the Internet.

If you are connected to the Internet, your Web browser should load the URL Manager Pro Home Page. It may take several seconds to load completely. Once the URL Manager Pro Home Page is loaded, take a moment to view the contents of this page. You'll find it offers links to various useful things, such as the latest version of URL Manager Pro in various languages, documentation, support addresses, and the like.

To find out which version of URL Manager Pro you have, go to the Apple menu and select About URL Manager Pro... A window will be displayed in which the version number is shown.

If a later (that is, a higher-numbered) version of URL Manager Pro is available on our Web site, click on a download link and you will be prompted to download it to your computer.

Once the file transfer has been completed, exit URL Manager Pro, open the file you downloaded, and install the newer version of URL Manager Pro by replacing the application in the URL Manager Pro folder with the newer version. Restart URL Manager Pro. You are now up-to-date!

We recommend you check the URL Manager Pro Web site regularly for new versions and additional useful information about URL Manager Pro and our related products.

Opening Web pages from within URL Manager Pro is a good way to start surfing the Web. However, if you have already opened your Web browser and have been surfing for some time, you may find it more convenient to open a Web page, whose Bookmark you stored in URL Manager Pro, from within your browser. You will learn how to do that in the next section.

Opening a Web page from within your browser
URL Manager Pro uses a sophisticated feature of the Mac operating system called Shared Menus to automatically install its own menu in your Web browser and other Internet applications. Called the Diamond menu, because it has an icon in the shape of a diamond, it contains a number of useful URL Manager Pro commands, which allow you to control URL Manager Pro from within your browser and access the bookmarks you have saved in it.

Below you see Microsoft Internet Explorer's menu bar with URL Manager Pro's Diamond menu and Sample bookmarks menu installed. The bookmarks menu right next to the Diamond menu always displays all bookmarks in your current open URL Manager Pro bookmarks document. The name of the menu is the name of the document, in this case Sample.

If you go to the Sample menu, you will see that it lists all the folders and subfolders in the Sample file.

If, for example, you select URL Manager Pro's Home Page, from the Tutorial sub menu, your Web browser will open this page, provided you are connected to the Internet. Once you get used to using the Shared Menus, you will find that it is a powerful feature of URL Manager Pro. The Diamond menu and the Shared Menus are explained in this help book, but more specific information is also given Shared Menus Help book.

Note: If you double click the Contact the Author bookmark, your email program will be started. This is because it is a different type of Bookmark. It is a bookmark with the mailto: protocol. This feature of URL Manager Pro is described in more detail later.

Open a Web page using Drag & Drop
Drag & Drop is a powerful feature of the Mac operating system. It allows you to drag icons and other objects from one program to another. This is very useful for opening Web pages whose Bookmarks are stored in URL Manager Pro. To open a Web page using Drag & Drop, you will need to make both your Web browser and the URL Manager Pro windows visible. On a monitor, this shouldn't be difficult; on a PowerBook, you may need to have one slightly over- lapping the other.

Activate the URL Manager Pro bookmark window by clicking on its window title bar. Open a folder by double clicking on it or click the disclosure triangle. For example, open the Magazines folder.

Select, for example, the MacWeek icon.

Now, press the mouse button and keep it depressed.

While you are doing this, move the cursor over to the exposed part of your Web browser window. If you look carefully, you will see an outline of the icon as you drag it. This is to let you know that Drag & Drop is functioning.

When your mouse cursor is over the Web browser window, release the mouse button. You have now "dropped" this icon in your Web browser. Your Web browser will now open the MacWeek home page, provided you have an active Internet connection.

You can explore the other Bookmarks in the Sample document at your leisure, either by opening them from within URL Manager Pro or by means of Drag & Drop. We have supplied a collection which we think may be of interest to you as a Mac user. However, you will probably want to start developing a collec- tion of your own URLs right away. You will learn how to add URLs to URL Manager Pro in the next section.

Adding Bookmarks to URL Manager Pro

You can add Bookmarks to URL Manager Pro in one of four ways. The first way is by adding Bookmarks directly to URL Manager Pro from inside the program. The second way is by means one of the Shared Menus it installs in your Web browser. The third way is by means of Drag & Drop. The fourth way is by importing the bookmarks file of your Web browser. These four approaches each have their own advantages and are described below.

Adding Bookmarks directly in URL Manager Pro
If URL Manager Pro isn't already running, open the URL Manager Pro folder and click on the URL Manager Pro icon to start the program.

As before, you will be presented with the default URL Manager Pro document called Sample.

Let's say you would like creating a Bookmark for AltaVista, a popular site for searching the Web.

Select the Bookmark "Contact the author".

Go to the Bookmarks menu.

Select the command New Bookmark.

This will create a blank bookmark icon in the Sample document called Untitled. The new bookmark is created after the selection.

The label field next to the icon will be highlighted, which is URL Manager Pro's way of prompting you to give it a name right away.

Type in AltaVista.

Press Tab.

Now, the URL field will be highlighted. For now, ignore the string of letters http:// in this field. This is part of the Internet's URL addressing scheme. It indicates that the address is a Web page. (This is the URL Manager Pro default)

Click the mouse cursor to the right of http:// and start typing: www.altavista.com

Press Enter when you are done. The new icon is now called "AltaVista".

Make sure that you typed it correctly and that there are no spaces. If there are any spaces, URL Manager Pro will not be able to open the page.

Now double-click on the new AltaVista icon. Your Web browser will open the AltaVista Web page, provided you have an active Internet connection.

If you are connected to the Internet, your Web browser should load the AltaVista Web site. It may take several seconds to load completely. AltaVista is very useful for finding things on the Web. Keep in mind that it may take ten seconds or more to display the results of a search.

You will find this technique for entering a Bookmark directly in URL Manager Pro is useful for adding a Bookmark you find listed in a magazine or newspaper or another source away from your computer. For a Bookmark you discover when surfing the Internet, there is a better way of adding it to URL Manager Pro.

At this point, now that you have started customising your collection of Bookmarks, you may want to give it a more meaningful name. Let's rename the Sample document.

Go the File menu.

Select Save As... You will be prompted to give it another name (the name of the current document, Sample, is listed as default).

Type in a suitable name, such as My Bookmarks

The follow-up procedure is different on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.

On Mac OS 9, the Save As dialog will look something like this:

Using the folder icon (the middle button on the right in the picture above). Select Documents from that folder popup menu to make the Documents directory the current directory.

Click the New Folder button. Enter the folder name Bookmarks. Now save your new file in this new folder.

On Mac OS X, the Save As dialog will look something like this:

Using the popup menu next right to the Where: label. Select Documents from that popup menu to make the Documents directory the current directory.

Use the downward pointing triangle button to expand the window.

Click the New Folder button. Enter the folder name Bookmarks. Now save your new file in this new folder.

Sample has now been renamed My Bookmarks and saved in the folder ~/Documents/Bookmarks/ on your hard disk.

Tip (Mac OS X): To have a Bookmark file started up automatically each time you launch URL Manager Pro, open Preferences and use the button 'Select Bookmark File...'.

Note: To have multiple Bookmark file started up automatically each time you launch URL Manager Pro, put these files into a folder named Startup Items in the ~/Documents/Bookmarks/ folder. On the other hand, you may also want to drag the Sample document out of Startup Items so that it will not be loaded at startup. Put it in the Cabinet folder instead. Documents in the Cabinet folder can be easily opened from within URL Manager Pro via the Quick Open menu command of the File menu. Furthermore, documents in the Cabinet folder are listed in the Cabinet sub menu of the Diamond menu. This means you can open your bookmark files right from within your web browser!

Below you can see the preferred hierarchy of storing your bookmark documents.

Note: You may use aliases for the Startup Items and Cabinet folders and the Bookmarks files may also be aliases. The Cabinet and Startup Items folders are more fully explained in the Special Features section of the Reference of the User's Guide.

Adding Bookmarks to URL Manager Pro from within your Web browser

First, switch to your Web browser.

Let's say you have encountered a Web page and you would like to save its Bookmark in URL Manager Pro. The URL is, for example: http://www.washingtonpost.com. (For the purpose of this tutorial, open the home page of this well-known newspaper in your Web browser).

Go to the Diamond menu and select the first command, Add Bookmark....

The Add Note Window will be displayed. By default, the title of the Web page is displayed as the name of the bookmark, but you can enter any text you wish. In this case, the default is "Washingtonpost.com:News Front" Let's rename it simply: "Washington Post".

In the empty box underneath, the Note field, you can enter a description of this Web page. This is useful for keeping pertinent information about this page. Let's add a Note, for example: "Washington DC daily".

The following dialog box will be displayed:

Tip: You may think that the contents of a Web page is obvious from its name or URL, and that, at the moment you save a Bookmark, a Note is unnecessary. However, after using URL Manager Pro for a while, most people find they have a very large and continually growing collections of Bookmarks. You may find you have a hard time finding a Bookmark you saved in the past or remembering why you saved a Bookmark. This is particularly the case for the URL of a document buried deep within a Web site. If you add a one or two line note at the time you save a URL, your Bookmarks will be easier to manage, and you will more easily be able to find a Bookmark again.

This Bookmark will now be added to URL Manager Pro.

Switch to URL Manager Pro. Open the Drop Basket folder. New Bookmarks you add using the Add Bookmark command are stored in the Drop Basket folder. You will find an icon called "Washington Post".

To the left of the title, you will see the Bookmark icon. This information was automatically retrieved from your Web browser.

If you added a description to this Bookmark, the Clipboard icon will be displayed directly to the left of the URL. This serves a reminder that there is a note attached to the Bookmark.

To view and edit the Bookmark, go to the Bookmarks menu and select Get Info. The Get Info Window will be displayed. It contains a variety of information about the Bookmark, including the Name, URL, and Note field, and several advanced options.

Note: You can modify the Name and Note if you wish, but we recommend you do not change the URL. If so much as one letter is modified incorrectly, you will be unable to reopen this Web page.

For the moment, you can leave your new Bookmarks in the Drop Basket, but in most cases, you will eventually want to move items in the Drop Basket to other folders, depending on how you want to sort your Bookmarks. In some cases, however, you may already know in which folder you would like to save a Bookmark. In the next section, you will learn how to save a Bookmark directly into a specific folder.

Adding a Bookmark using a Shared Menu
In this section, we will create a new folder and save a Bookmark into it directly.

First, switch to URL Manager Pro.

Go the Bookmarks menu and select the command New Folder.

At the bottom of the Window, a new folder will appear called Empty Folder. Its label will be highlighted, and you can give it a more distinctive name. (If you select a bookmark or folder first, the new folder will be created just under the selection.)

Let's call it "Newspapers".

Now, go to your Web browser and choose Refresh Menus from the Diamond menu.

If you don't already have an active Internet connection, open one.

Go to the Washington Post web site: http://www.washingtonpost.com. It is sufficient to only type 'washingtonpost' in the browser's Location field.

In the previous exercise, you saved the Bookmark of this site to the Drop Basket using the Add Bookmark command in the Diamond menu. But let's say that you would prefer to save this Bookmark into a different folder, one you have already created for this kind of site.

If you look at the menu bar, to the right of the Diamond menu, you will see a menu called Sample or My Bookmarks. This bookmarks menu will list all your bookmarks in the current open URL Manager Pro document.

Go the Newspapers sub menu. You will see just one command displayed, Add Bookmark.... Select this command.

The Add Note Window will be displayed. By default, the title of the Web page is displayed as the name of the bookmark, but you can enter any text you wish. In this case, the default is Washingtonpost.com:News Front.

Let's rename it simply to "Washington Post".

In the empty box underneath, you can enter a description of this Web page. This is useful for keeping pertinent information about this page and helping you remember its contents.

Let's add a note, for example: A Washington DC daily newspaper

Click the Add button and switch back to URL Manager Pro.

If you open the Newspapers folder icon by double-clicking it, you will see the Bookmark you just saved located here. It will have a Clipboard icon to the right of the Bookmark, reminding you that there is a note attached to it. You will find the function of saving a Bookmark to a specific folder extremely useful when you are collecting Bookmarks of a similar type, such as the Web sites of newspapers, for example.

Most of the time, you will find that you save Bookmarks to URL Manager Pro either by means of the Add Bookmark command in the Diamond menu or, as in the above example, the Add Bookmark command in a Shared Menu that you have defined. However, if you have been surfing the Web for a while, you may have built up a substantial collection of Bookmarks in your Web browser. Wouldn't it be nice to move this collection into URL Manager Pro? In the next section, you will learn how to do this.

Importing Bookmarks to URL Manager Pro
URL Manager Pro allows you to import bookmarks created in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Note: URL Manager Pro also supports importing from Netscape, Mozilla, OmniWeb and iCab.

Select your browser from the submenu of Get from Browser from the File menu.

URL Manager Pro will import your browser's Bookmark file and open it as a separate URL Manager Pro document. It will have the same title as the browser Bookmark file.

You now have two URL Manager Pro document windows open. At this point, you may want to move the imported bookmarks into your main document, Sample, or whatever you may have renamed it.

You can copy Bookmarks one by one, by selection, or all at once.

To copy one Bookmark from the import file, select its icon with the mouse cursor and drag it to the target document, i.e. Sample.

The icon of this Bookmark will be added to the existing collection.

To copy a selection of Bookmarks from the import file, proceed as follows.

Select an icon with the mouse cursor.

Press the Command key () and hold it down.

Select as many other icons as you wish. The icons you select will be highlighted.

Now drag the selection to the target document, i.e. Sample.

The icons of these Bookmarks will be added to the existing collection.

Note: to make a selection of multiple Bookmarks you can also use the Shift key or use the Drag-Select way of making selections.

To copy all the Bookmarks from the import file:

Go the Edit menu and select the command Select All.

Now drag the selection to the target document, i.e. Sample.

All of the icons in the import file will be added to the existing collection

You now are familiar with the basic techniques of adding Bookmarks to URL Manager Pro and opening Bookmarks saved in URL Manager Pro. In the next section, we will start to explore some of URL Manager Pro's sophisticated features for organizing your Bookmarks. This is where you will discover some of the important advantages of storing your Bookmarks in URL Manager Pro, rather than Bookmarks feature of your Web browser.

Organizing your Bookmarks

In this section, you are going to acquire some basic skills in organizing Bookmarks. You will learn how to create, copy, and delete Bookmarks. You will also learn how to search for a Bookmark.

In the previous examples, you learned how to create a blank Bookmark using the New Bookmark command in the Bookmarks menu. You also learned how to create a new folder using New Folder command of the Bookmarks menu, and how to add Bookmarks to it. Now you will create a folder within a folder, called a subfolder, and copy a Bookmark to it.

Let's use the example we used above. Open the Newspapers folder. It will contain the Bookmark for the Washington Post Web site.

Select the Washington Post icon. It will now be highlighted.

Go to the Bookmarks menu and select New Folder.

A new folder will now be created. By default, its name is Empty Folder. The title field is highlighted and you can give it a more meaningful name. Let's call it: Washington DC Newspapers. Press the Enter key to save this name.

Now select the Washington Post icon and press the mouse button. Keeping the mouse button depressed, drag this icon on top of the Washington DC Newspapers folder icon.

Now double click Washington DC Newspapers folder to open it. The Washington Post icon will be in this folder. Double-click the folder again to close it.

By using subfolders, you can make it much easier to manage large collections of Bookmarks. Say, for example, you are developing a large collection of Bookmarks of newspapers. By arranging them in subfolders, such as by city, state/province, and/or country, you will find it much easier to manage your collection as it grows.

In the above example, you moved a Bookmark from one folder to another. Sometimes, you will want to create a duplicate copy of a Bookmark. You can do this in several ways.

Say, for example, you would like a duplicate copy of a Bookmark in the same folder.

Let's try this by going to the Tutorial folder.

Open it by double-clicking it.

Select the URL Manager Pro's Home Page icon. It will be highlighted.

Press down the Option key and start dragging the icon.

Move the icon below the email icon of the last Bookmark in the folder and release. A copy of the Bookmark will appear.

Please note the underline that the program draws (see below) as you move the icon over bookmarks. It tells you where the bookmark will be dropped.

In most cases, you won't find it useful to have two identical Bookmarks in the same folder. But maybe you would like to have the same Bookmark in another folder as well.

For example, you might want to have a link to the URL Manager Pro Web site in your Macintosh Links folder. In this case, click on the icon of the duplicate Bookmark, hold down the mouse button, and Drag & Drop it to that folder. You now have the same Bookmark in two locations.

While you will find it slightly easier to manage your Bookmarks if you keep only a single copy of each Bookmark, you may nonetheless find it useful to have copies in some cases. For example, you may find you want to keep a copy of the Bookmark for the Netscape Web site in both your Mac applications and Internet folders. Or you may want to keep Yahoo in both your News and Search folders.

You can also delete Bookmarks you don't need any more. Let's delete the duplicate Bookmark we just created.

Open the Macintosh Links folder.

Select the URL Manager Pro icon.

Press the Backspace key. This Bookmark will be deleted.

Tip: to delete multiple Bookmarks, select them and then press the Backspace key.

There are times when you will want to find a Bookmark quickly without opening folders. To do this, you can use URL Manager Pro's Find function.

Go the Edit menu and select Find.

The Find dialog box will be displayed. You can enter a text to search for in the Find field, which is highlighted.

For example, enter: Dilbert

Press the Find button.

The Find function found a Bookmark, which contains the text "Dilbert" in the Magazines folder. Press the Cancel button to close the Find dialog box. This Bookmark is highlighted.

If you would like to continue the search, select the Find Again command from the Edit menu. The Find function will search for another Bookmark with the same text.

In this case, URL Manager Pro will beep because this is the only Bookmark containing the text "Dilbert".

Close the Magazines folder.

The URL Manager Pro Find function also searches the Notes attached to Bookmarks.

For example, select Find and enter: daily

URL Manager Pro will find this text in the Washington Post Bookmark you entered earlier. It will display the Get Info dialog box so that you can view the Note field containing this text.

Press Enter to close the Get Info Window.

Tip: As you can see, by adding meaningful information to the Note field of Bookmarks, you make it easier to find Bookmarks again. This becomes useful when you have a large collection of Bookmarks.

While the majority of Bookmarks you collect in URL Manager Pro will be Bookmarks of Web pages, URL Manager Pro also allows you to store Bookmarks for other kinds of Internet addresses. In the next and final part of this tutorial, you will learn how URL Manager Pro handles email addresses.

Using URL Manager Pro with your email program
URL Manager Pro interacts with your email program in similar way as it interacts with your Web browser. For URL Manager Pro, an email address is, in fact, just one of several types of Bookmarks which it recognises. The chief difference between an email address Bookmark and a Web page Bookmark is that when you give URL Manager Pro the command to open an email address, it passes this command to your email program, not to your Web browser.

For example, open the Tutorial folder.

Inside you will see an icon called "Contact the Author". It has a different icon than the URL Manager Pro Home Page icon. This is because it is an email address Bookmark.

Double-click on this icon. It will launch your email program if it is not running. If it is running, it will open a New Message window with this address in the To: field.

Note: By default, URL Manager Pro is configured to recognise Eudora as your email program. If you want to change that configuration, open Preferences and click the Internet tab.

As in the case of your Web browser, URL Manager Pro also adds its Diamond menu to your email program. This means you can also save email address Bookmarks to URL Manager Pro from within your email program.

Note: Currently Eudora on Mac OS X does not support the Diamond menu yet. Enrourage on X will show the Diamond menu on the first update after version 1.0.

Note: If you want to have the Diamond menu in applications other than web browsers, you must make sure that the preference 'Show Shared Menus only in Web Browsers' in Preferences from the Diamond menu is turned off.

For example, open a Message Window in your email program.

Select the text containing the email address (see below for an example).

Choose the Add Bookmark... command from your email program's Diamond menu.

Tip: Alternatively, you can use the Diamond menu's Grab All command to extract all email addresses from a message. Although you can easily store your Web page Bookmarks and your email addresses in the respective Bookmarks and Address Books of your browser and your email program, you may find it ultimately more convenient and secure to store all your Bookmarks, Email addresses, and the like-in one central location: URL Manager Pro. This makes it easier to move from one browser or email program to another, even from one computer to another. Furthermore, URL Manager Pro is especially adept at helping you manage large collections of Bookmarks.

Launching URL Manager Pro automatically

You can configure URL Manager Pro in such a way so that it automatically opens when you launch your browser. Choose the Preferences command from the Diamond menu. Click the At Startup tab. Enable the 'Launch URL Manager Pro at startup' checkbox and use the Select... button to specify which version of the URL Manager Pro application you actually want to be launched.

This concludes the Getting Started with URL Manager Pro tutorial. By now, you have gotten acquainted with the main features of URL Manager Pro. You can explore the program further on your own or use the Reference section to learn more about additional specific features.


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