AFP Engage! User's Guide

Using AFP Engage!

 

 

Accessing AFP Servers

AFP Engage! can initiate access to AFP servers in several ways:

Each method is covered in a section below.

 

The "Browse AFP Servers" Window

The easiest way to use AFP Engage! to initiate access to AFP servers is to use AFP Engage! 2.0's "Browse AFP Servers" window to dynamically locate and display AFP servers targeted through ShareWay IP 2.0. The AFP Engage! machine must be running Mac OS 8.5 for this window to be available. Choose "Browse AFP Servers..." from the File menu. The "Browse AFP Servers" window appears as shown below in Figure 1.

 

Figure 1. "Browse AFP Servers" window

AFP Engage! periodically uses the Service Location Protocol to query the local intranet for ShareWay IP 2.0 servers that have registered on the network. All such servers are displayed in the window's list. Selecting a server displays information in the "Server Information" area, including the server's AFP URL, the server name and, if AppleTalk zones are present, the zone name in which the server resides. To initiate access to a server, double-click the server, or select it and click "OK".

The busy indicator at the top of the window is present whenever AFP Engage! is searching for ShareWay IP servers. When the window is first brought up, there may be a delay of a few seconds before the busy indicator appears.

 

AFP URL Links

Clicking a link in an HTML or email document can initiate access to an AFP server if the link contains an AFP URL. Processing AFP URLs in Eudora documents is discussed below. To process AFP URLs in HTML documents, AFP Engage! must be registered as an AFP helper. When AFP Engage! is first launched, it automatically registers with whatever Web browser is running (if any) and with Internet Config or Mac OS 8.5's Internet Control Panel (if installed). After its first launch, AFP Engage! can be registered with a Web browser by launching the browser and choosing "Register as AFP Helper" from AFP Engage's File menu.

Should you ever want to deregister AFP Engage!, launch your browser and choose "Unregister as AFP Helper" from AFP Engage's File menu.

 

Using AFP Engage! with Eudora

Eudora 3.0 or later will automatically recognize and highlight any URL enclosed in angle brackets (for instance <afp://afp.opendoor.com>). The first time you click on a highlighted AFP URL, Eudora will ask you to select the helper app to use to process that URL. Simply select AFP Engage! and it will be used to process that URL and all other AFP URLs from then on (if you ever want to change the helper app selected, hold down the option key while clicking). Eudora versions through 3.1 will not, however, automatically recognize AFP URLs that are not enclosed in angle brackets. To use AFP Engage! to process such URLs, you can command-click the URL (select the whole URL and then click it while holding down the command key). It is also possible to teach Eudora 3.x to automatically recognize AFP URLs through a procedure documented in the release notes.

 

Direct Entry of AFP URLs

AFP Engage! can be used to open URLs directly, eliminating the need to go through a Web browser or other Internet application. To open an AFP URL directly from AFP Engage!, choose "Open URL" in the File menu. A dialog box appears, listing the last URL which AFP Engage! has accessed since it was run. To open a new URL, you can either modify the URL listed by AFP Engage! or type or paste in a new URL.

 

Apple Events From Other Applications

AFP Engage! will work with any application which sends it a standard GetURL (GURL) or OpenURL (OURL) Apple Event. These Apple Events are documented at http://www.scripting.com/midas/geturl.html.

 

Preferences

The Preferences window is shown below in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Preferences Window

 

Automatically quit when finished - If checked, tells AFP Engage! to quit after processing each AFP URL; otherwise, AFP Engage! remains in memory. AFP Engage! takes 1 MB of RAM; leaving it in memory makes processing AFP URLs somewhat faster, since AFP Engage! doesn't have to reload for each URL.

Allow server login messages to appear - If not checked, means you won't see the same greeting every time you connect to an AppleShare server which has the login message feature enabled.

Display status window - If checked, tells AFP Engage! to display a status window as it is processing AFP URLs.

Pathname processing - You can tell AFP Engage! to take one of two basic actions when it processes an AFP URL:

If you choose to process pathnames in URLs, you can also choose to:


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