NetPumper compatibility considerations

Integration with Netscape Navigator 6+. Integration with Opera 6+. MSIE: Plugin stealing problem.
Conflicts with other download managers.  Conflict with scandisk.  Conflicts with other software.

Integration with Netscape Navigator  6+

Netscape Navigator 6.x is a  very unfriendly program in  terms of click monitoring problem.
There is no good click monitoring mechanism known at the present time.
In the current NetPumper implementation we use a method proposed by GetRight developers.
The main idea is to install a Navigator plugin(s) which will serve a limited number of file types instead of Netscape itself.

In comparison to click monitoring used in some other browsers, this method has the following restrictions:

• Monitoring relies on 'mime type' of the file rather than on filename itself. Mime type is an abstract data type identifier used internally in HTTP and SMTP internet protocols. In fact, a mime type depends on how a remote server was configured by it's administrator. There are no standard identifiers for many widely used types (for instance, for 'RAR' files).
• You can enable and disable click interception for three large groups of resources:
  • archives and executables
  • audio files
  • video files

  You can not enable or disable click monitoring for a particular type of  file.
  In the current implementation of NetPumper you can not change  content of these three groups or  create  additional ones.

• In multi-user systems you usually have to have administrator's privileges to reconfigure this click monitoring mechanism.
• Multiple links added at once could  improperly work in Netscape Navigator 6.x.

You can enable and disable click monitoring for these three groups of resources at the Click monitoring pane in Preference window.

Integration with Opera 6+

Click monitoring in Opera browser is based on the same technics, as click monitoring in Netscape Navigator 6.x, with the same abilities and limitations.

MS Internet Explorer: Plugin stealing problem.

MS Internet Explorer steals plugins from Netscape Navigator and Opera.
Among others, MSIE steals NetPumper's plugins used for Click monitoring in Netscape Navigator and Opera.
These plugins can not work inside MSIE, so files of corresponding types becomes unavailable.
There were an error reports about NetPumper  v. 1.10 and lower, stated that files remains unavailable after NetPumper uninstallation as well.

Now NetPumper clears MSIE's links to NetPumper's plugins as frequent as possible.
NetPumper also guarantees that all these links will be cleared on NetPumper uninstallation.
Unfortunately this is not a complete solution because MSIE can steal plugins again at any time regardless of is NetPumper active or not.
In many cases NetPumper have no chance to take appropriate measures.

Recommendation:
To avoid this problem, use NetPumper with your preferred browser (either MSIE or Netscape Navigator or Opera) only and do not use
click monitoring in several installed browsers. In particular, turn off click monitoring in Netscape and Opera if you use MSIE mostly.

Conflicts with other downloading   managers

Download managers concur in link monitoring / interception process. This conflict is caused by the nature of the task and  can not be resolved in general. Some managers (such as GetRight) check monitoring points and asks the user what the Manager should do.  In this case THE MANAGER can push out other MANAGER from the monitoring point in question or  let it catch the clicks and, consequently,   miss those clicks by itself.

NetPumper is a very young product and such details can not be implemented yet. We also want to keep NetPumper's current simplicity in the future, so probably such features are not to be implemented at all.

You can enable and disable NetPumper's click monitoring mechanism separately for MS Internet Explorer (all versions), Netscape Navigator 4.x and Netscape Navigator 6.x browsers. To do this, go to Click monitoring pane in Preferences window.

Usually other managers allow you to enable and disable click monitoring mechanism too.

Recommended steps for transference of click monitoring rights from one download manager to another are the following:

• disable click monitoring in the first manager
• enable click monitoring in the second manager
• restart the browser(s); this is necessary for Netscape Navigator (all versions) but not for MS Internet Explorer.

Note, that you usually have to have administrator's privileges on multi-user systems to reconfigure click monitoring mechanism for Netscape Navigator 6.x.

Besides that, you can easily uninstall NetPumper at all and the and install it again. See Uninstallation and upgrading section for details.

Note that your preferences and links will be kept between uninstallation and following installation.

This usually is true, unless you upgrade to newer version of NetPumper, and setup program explicitly warns you that your preferences and links will be lost.

Conflict with Scandisk

NetPumper itself and NetPumperIEProxy daemon prevent Scandisk to complete its work.

Before running Scandisk, please shutdown these programs. Do either of these:

• Select Shutdown menu item in the NetPumper group in the system Start menu
• Press Ctrl-Alt-Del, select NetPumper and NetPumperIEProxy in the Task Manager's task list and press 'End Task'

Note, that NetPumper will not be able to monitor clicks in MS Internet Explorer without NetPumperIEProxy running. To run the daemon again, restart NetPumper.

Conflicts with other software

Conflicts with some anti-virus programs were reported.

This problem will be worked out in NetPumper's future releases.