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Sidescape 1.00 FAQs

Written By Kiyoki OOKUBO

1997/1/28

What kind of systems are you supporting now?
PowerMac
Mac OS 7.5 and later
Netscape Navigator 2.0 and later
3 Megabytes of RAM or more for Sidescape
If you are recording WWW pages, 100 Megabytes of extra hard disk space are preferred


Other than Power Mac with Netscape, do you plan to support other configurations?
Netscape on 68K Mac----as soon as possible
Netscape on Windows---end of March, 1997
Explorer on Windows----end of May, 1997
Explorer on Mac---------end of May, 1997
Unix-------------------no plans yet
How does Sidescape watch and control Netscape?
Using an interface of Open Scripting Architecture. If you examine Netscape Navigator application with Resourcerer provided by EnFour Inc. or Script Editor provided by Apple Computer Inc. then you can understand the interface. More details are presented at http://home.netscape.com/newsref/std/mac-remote-control.html.
How do the documents get to Sidescape?
All documents come through Netscape Navigator. After Netscape Navigator downloads a WWW page, Sidescape takes it from Netscape's cache. Since the pages are not being taken independently from each remote server, Sidescape will not create new congestion on your Internet connection.
Sometimes, you may notice that a "saving progress bar" from a previously-viewed page will persist when you visit a new page. This occurs when you are visiting new pages faster than Netscape Navigator downloads those pages. On rare occasions, the "saving progress bar" for a part of the page will appear before Netscape Navigator starts showing that part. In this event, the WWW page will still be properly saved.
Will Sidescape cause any security problems?
Your privacy is protected. Sidescape of this version does not send or receive any packets directly to or from the Internet. Sidescape only controls Netscape Navigator and obtains data from it.



There are already some applications categorized as "Off-line Browsing Tools." How does Sidescape differ from these other products?
"Off-line Browsing Tools" and Sidescape share some functions, but an "Off-line Browsing Tool" downloads WWW pages and then allows you to browse them locally. The purpose of an "Off-line Browsing Tool" is to allow Internet use during lower-cost time periods. Sidescape can be used as a downloading and storage tool, but Sidescape's real purpose is to enrich the WWW browsing experience in real-time, as it happens. Here are two examples of features that are unique to Sidescape.



There are already some WWW sites providing facility categorized as "Search Engines." How do Sidescape's features differ from a Search Engine?
Search engines, and Sidescape's find feature both operate by cataloging, and then displaying, WWW pages that contain specified search words. With a search engine, any user around the world will obtain merely the same result, if the search word is same and it is done nearly the same time. But, Sidescape will only search through pages that you have previously visited - in effect, letting you conduct personalized searches. Search engines utilize an indexing scheme, i.e. it creates a dictionary contatining words included in WWW pages as it collects pages, to make a very rapid search response possible. Since Sidescape scans the entire pages of the requested range each time as a request comes, it works slow. But Sidescape gives you more flexibility in designating search requests. For example, Sidescape allows you to specify a sequence of letter consisting of part of a word. Sidescape offers features that complement the features of search engines, allowing you the advantages of both tools.


How much of my computer hard disk space will Sidescape consume?
In the History List, an item's one-line entry will only consume the length of the URL + the length of the page title + 14 bytes. So, if each item's entry is about 100 bytes, and if your History List contains 10,000 items, this will only consume about 1 megabyte of disk space. We recommend that you set the Controller's Track switch on, to add items to the History List, whenever you are browsing the WWW. If the Controller's Rec switch is on while you are browsing, however, and you choose to save a copy of every type of document you encounter (including images, sounds and animation), a larger amount of disk space will be consumed. You can choose to only record the HTML text of WWW pages, however, to reduce this storage burden. If you regularly record every type of document as you browse the WWW, you can easily fill up 500 megabytes of disk space in a few months.




When I am browsing the WWW with the Controller's Rec switch on, a "saving progress bar" continually appears on the screen. Is there any way to eliminate the display of these "saving progress bar"?
The "saving progress bars" are controlled by Netscape Navigator, so unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to eliminate them. However, you can click on one of the "saving progress bars" and drag it to a less-bothersome place on your computer screen. You may have to try this several times.



Even when I am browsing the WWW with the Controller's "Rec" switch off, "saving progress bars" sometimes appear anyway. Why does this happen?
Even when the Rec switch is off, there are three situations in which Sidescape needs to save the HTML pages for analyzing the pages. The first situation is during Auto Navigation, when Sidescape is acquiring the anchors (links) from the WWW pages. The second situation is when Keyword Watcher is active. The third situation is when read and follow Visit Tags has been activated. During these three situations, Sidescape directs Netscape Navigator to place WWW pages temporarily on your computer's disk. Since Sidescape erases them after they are analyzed, no disk space will be consumed.


Sometimes the title of an item added to the History List seems not to be correct.
When Sidescape is recording or analyzing WWW pages as you browse the Internet (when the Controller's Rec switch is on, or when Auto Navigation, Keyword Watcher or read and follow Visit Tags has been activated) the page titles will be correctly retrieved. But, when you are simply browsing the Internet, without any necessity of analyzation or recording, Sidescape will pick the page titles from the title bar of the Netscape Navigator window. If you are turning pages rapidly, Netscape may not yet put the window title of the page when Sidescape supposes it to be placed. The result is that a previously-displayed page's title will be retrieved. URLs, however, are always recorded accurately on the History List.



Is it possible to make my computer speak the word "I gotta Apple!" when the Keyword Watcher encounters the word "Apple" during the display of WWW pages?
Yes. Record a sentence with your computer's microphone, and simply add that sound to the "Sound" control panel on your computer. Keyword Watcher allows you to choose any sound that appears in this control panel. Or, if you are more technically-minded, and you have ResEdit or Resourcerer, you can create a "snd" resource and paste it to the Sidescape application. This will automatically add a sound menu to your Keyword Watcher setup window.


How can I edit a Hotlist created by Sidescape, and convert it into a new WWW page of my own design?
The Hotlists are in a folder called "hotlist," inside the folder called "SidescapeDatabase." Make a copy of the desired Hotlist from there, and edit it. Be careful, though, not to alter any other files in the "SidescapeDatabase" folder, because they are necessary for Sidescape to operate properly.

When I doble-click on the file icon which was downloaded by Sidescape, SimpleText opens the file. Can I change the setting so that the file will be opened by Netscape Navigator?
Which application opens the file downladed by Sidescape is determined by the setting of "Options | General Preferences | Applications | View Source." To make Netscape Navigator is the application to open the file, set the "View Source" to be the position of Netscape Navigator application using "browse" in this option.




Before Auto Navigation, I set the Auto Navigation Method to follow links only within the current site. But, during Auto Navigation, I noticed that Netscape Navigator sometimes displays pages outside the starting site.
Sidescape decides whether a page is within the current site by examining the URL. But, as shown below, some anchors (links) are written using CGI (Common Gateway Interface). 
	http://www.foo.com/cgi-bin/jump?http://bar.com
Those anchors will appear to point to the current site, but actually contain a "jump" to a different site.

Some HTML documents recorded by Sidescape contain images that are displayed as question mark. Why?
There are two situations where this can happen. First, during Auto Navigation, the time specified in the display each page for setting may be too short. Or, during manual navigation, when you are clicking a new anchor before an entire page can be displayed. The second situation happens as follows: When Sidescape saves WWW pages on your computer's hard disk, it reads and alters the anchors (links) imbedded in those pages -- so that the anchors point to locally-stored pages. Sometimes, though, WWW pages contain anchors coded with HTML tags that Sidescape does not support. When this happens, the anchor will not be changed, or it might be changed improperly. In this case, a question mark will be displayed. Here are three categories of anchors that Sidescape has trouble altering:
  • http://www.foo.com will be recorded as if it were http://www.foo.com/index.html, but it may not be the correct name. Because it depends on the setting of the site's http server.
  • If a symbolic link, a kind of nickname, is used as an anchor, Sidescape cannot determine the actual "path name."
  • If there is a JavaScript in the HTML page, set to retrieve images or files not present in the downloaded page, Sidescape cannot know what the JavaScript program was intended to do.



Sometimes, during Auto Navigation, I notice that the same page appears more than once. I thought that no page was supposed to be displayed twice. Why is this happening?
The cause of this is similar to the previous two questions.
  • Sidescape considers the following two URLs to be different, but they may point to the same WWW page: 
        http://www.foo.com/cgi-bin/jump?http://bar.com
    http://bar.com
  • Sidescape considers http://www.foo.com to be http://www.foo.com/index.html, but there may be situations where it should instead be read as http://www.foo.com/Default.html. Because it depends on the setting of the site's http server.
  • If a symbolic link, a kind of nickname, is used as an anchor, Sidescape cannot determine the actual "path name."
What are your plans for the future?
We hope to design more effective ways to help users enjoy their WWW navigation experience.