Copyright: Web Highlighter Version 1.0  Copyright © 2001, Ziff Davis Media, Inc.


Contents

Overview

Using Web Highlighter

Context menu commands

Configuring Web Highlighter styles

Configuring Web Highlighter options

Known problems

Support


Overview

Web Highlighter is a Microsoft Internet Explorer (tm) Extension  that is able to attach personal information to any Web page. Web Highlighter works with Internet Explorer version 4.0 and higher and requires a pointing device.

Web Highlighter allows you to highlight a selected text area in a Web page and to have this text area highlighted again when you navigate back to that page later. Once a text area has been highlighted, you can attach a note to it. The note will display as an infotip when you hover this text area. You can also link the highlighted area to any Web address (URL). When clicking the highlighted area, the browser will navigate to the specified URL. Web Highlighter refers to a highlighted area, with or without notes or links, as an annotation.

Moreover, you can export the annotations that you created to an XML file that any user of Web Highlighter will be able to import. This means that you can easily communicate annotations made on a Web page to another person.

Web Highlighter doesn't change the original Web page in any way, even on your disk in the Temporary Internet Files folder. It only changes the in-memory representation of the page once it has been loaded by Internet Explorer. So if you save the current page to a file, you'll get the original file, not the annotated version.

Please see Using Web Highlighter for details about how to use this program.

Web Highlighter is made up of two modules: WebH.dll (the IE extension) and WHConf.exe (the configuration program). WHConf can be run independently or launched directly from Internet Explorer.

Web Highlighter works under Windows 95/98/Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or above. You should have MSXML version 3.0 SP2 or above installed on your system in order to avoid problems when running Web Highlighter. You can download the installer for MSXML from http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml.The installation program should have already checked this. Web Highlighter can be uninstalled from the Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs dialog box. Depending on your Windows version you may have to remove WebH.DLL manually if you uninstalled Web Highlighter while Internet Explorer was running.

Using Web Highlighter

Context menu commands

Configuring Web Highlighter styles

Configuring Web Highlighter options

Known problems

Support


Using Web Highlighter

Most of the time, you'll interact with Web Highlighter by using its context menu commands which are integrated in the standard context menu of Internet Explorer. However, you can decide to display the Web Highlighter items only by depressing the Ctrl key before right-clicking in the Web Page. You should be aware that this may generate a conflict if another Internet Explorer extension also uses Ctrl+right-click for its own purposes. The extension that is loaded first will have priority but there's no way to control the loading order. You can disable the Ctrl+right-click menu if you want (see Configuring Web Highlighter options).

The available commands depend on the menu context. Basically, Web Highlighter available commands will vary according to the following situations: you right-clicked a selected area or you right-clicked an highlighted area or you right-clicked outside of any selected or highlighted area. The various commands are explained in detail in the Context Menu Commands topic. If you select text within an highlighted area and right-click it, the available Web Highlighter commands will be the same as if you had right-clicked the highlighted area directly.

You can also interact with Web Highlighter by using hotkeys. There are 4 possible hotkeys for enabling/disabling Web Highlighter, for invoking the configuration dialog, for deleting all annotations on a page and for disabling the Ctrl+right-click menu. See Configuring Web Highlighter Options for details about the hotkeys.

Finally, you can also call the configuration program (WHConf) either from the Start | Programs menu, from the icon added to the Internet Explorer toolbar (if you accepted this option during installation) or by using the corresponding hotkey. The configuration program essentially allows you to configure the hotkeys and to modify or create highlighting styles. See Configuring Web Highlighter Styles for details.

All user-created data are stored in a subfolder named after the user's name (logon id). The XML file containing all user-defined styles and user-created annotations is always named WebH.xml. The options are stored in WebH.ini.

Overview

Context menu commands

Configuring Web Highlighter styles

Configuring Web Highlighter options

Known problems

Support


Context menu commands

The Web Highlighter commands are available either from a stand-alone menu (Ctrl + right-click) or from the standard context menu of Internet Explorer (in that case, they are located in the "Web Highlighter" submenu).

You can use Highlight (default style) or Highlight (custom style) to highlight a selected text area. You can define your own styles by using the configuration dialog.See Known problems for details about situations that may prevent Web Highlighter from working as expected. These commands also allow you to change the style of an existing highlight.

Once a text area has been highlighted, use Notes|Add/edit note to attach a note to this area or to modify it. If you leave the mouse cursor over the highlighted area for a few seconds, the note will popup as an infotip. Note that there is a known issue with Internet Explorer when the infotip text contains too much lines. If the infotip is too high to fit between the highlight and the top or the bottom of the screen, the infotip window will flash. In that case, you may want to use smaller font sizes, shorten the note text or remove a few newline characters.

Use Links|Add/edit link to link the highlighted area to any URL. Once the link has been defined, clicking on the highlighted area will cause the browser to navigate to that URL. If you do not specify a protocol header (like http://...), the URL will be considered as relative to the current site and a warning will be issued. Please avoid creating a link over an existing link. If you do so, the existing link will take precedence. If there is an existing link within the highlight and if you add a link, it will not even appear in the section outside the existing link. The exact behavior will vary with the HTML context of the highlight. Use the Remove command to remove a note or a link.

The Remove annotations group allows you to delete the right-clicked annotation (Current only), all annotations for the current page (All on current page) or all annotations globally for all pages (All annotations).

Editing notes or links or removing annotations cause pages using frames to be reset to their initial state. You may have to hit the Back button in order to return to the page (frame) from where you triggered the operation.

The Export commands (Import/Export | Current page annotations and Import/Export | All annotations) allow you to save the annotations that you created to a XML file. You can then send this file to a friend or colleague who will use the Import command to add your annotations to her own. Web Highlighter exports and imports all custom styles. If a style with the same name already exists on the target machine, the new style will be ignored while importing and a warning message will be displayed.

The Force refresh command instructs Web Highlighter to reload the current page. This command is provided as a workaround for an Internet Explorer limitation. When you use the standard Refresh command, Internet Explorer doesn't notify the installed extensions that the current document has been reloaded. In that case, Web Highlighter will not be able to re-create the annotations in-memory. You'll have to use the Force refresh command instead.

The Enable toggle allows you to temporarily disable or re-enable Web Highlighter.

The Configure... command opens the configuration dialog.

Overview

Using Web Highlighter

Configuring Web Highlighter styles

Configuring Web Highlighter options

Known problems

Support


Configuring Web Highlighter options

The Options tab in the configuration dialog box allows you to select which key will trigger which function in Web Highlighter while you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer. Be sure not to use keystrokes that are already used by Internet Explorer itself. In that case, the corresponding functions of Internet Explorer will be disabled.

Invoke configuration dialog (default: Ctrl-F9)

This key launches the configuration program. You can't run two instances of WHConf simultaneously. The running instance will be put to the foreground if you try to run a second instance. The Apply button in WHConf allows you to apply your changes without leaving the program. This will be handy in many situations when testing your settings.

Enable/disable Web Highlighter (default: Shift-F9)

This key sets Web Highlighter in active or suspended mode. The user will be notified of the new mode. Sometimes, you'll want Web Highlighter  not to be too intrusive when navigating to certain sites. In inactive mode, you can still launch the configuration dialog but other functions are disabled.

The current value of this toggle is shared by all running copies of Microsoft Internet Explorer. When closing the last instance, the current setting is memorized and will be re-used when starting a new IE session: if you close IE while Web Highlighter is inactive, it will be inactive when reloading IE.

Delete current page annotations (default: Alt-F9)

This key deletes the annotations associated with the page currently displayed by Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Force refresh (default: Alt-F5)

This key triggers the Force refresh command. Force refresh is a simple way to cure annotation display problems that may come up with some web pages.

The Disable Ctrl+Right-click menu option allows you to disable this feature if there's a conflict with another program. See also Menu Extensions in the Known problems topic.

Finally, clicking the Display list of annotated pages button will launch Internet Explorer and open a page containing a list of all annotated pages showing the page title (if any) and its URL. Clicking on the URL will bring you to the corresponding page directly. The format of this page is based on a XSL style sheet (PageList.xsl) which extracts data from the user's WebH.xml data file. If you are fluent in XSL and XML, you can decide to change the output format to better suit your needs.

Overview

Using Web Highlighter

Context menu commands

Configuring Web Highlighter styles

Known problems

Support


Configuring Web Highlighter styles

You can use custom styles to highlight text areas in different ways, based on your own criteria. The installer creates two custom styles (High interest and Big and bold) but you can modify them or create new styles. The Default style is used when you delete a style that is still referenced by an annotation. In that case, Web Highlighter resets these annotations to the Default style which you can also configure. Note that the Default style doesn't change the font, only the colors. The existing font is preserved.

The Styles tab in the configuration dialog allows you to edit existing styles or create new styles. A style is made up of a text color, a background color, a font name, a font style, a font weight and a font size. To create a new style, click on the New button and edit the default values. To edit a style, click on the Edit button and edit the style properties. Then click on the Accept button. The Cancel button switches back to view mode and discards your changes.

On the left of each button allowing to change the style characteristics, there's a checkbox that is enabled by default. If you uncheck it, the corresponding style parameter (text color, background color or font) will be discarded. That is, the corresponding parameter in the original HTML text will be preserved. For example, if you uncheck the checkbox corresponding to the Font type button, the style will be used to apply new colors to the highlighted area but will leave the existing font unmodified. You can't disable the 3 checkboxes simultaneously.

Use the Apply or OK buttons to commit all changes made in this dialog. The changes should be immediately reflected in the currently viewed Web pages (the current pages will be reloaded).

You can always go back to the default settings for styles by deleting the WebH.XML file in your personal folder (a subfolder of the Web Highlighter folder). Doing this will also delete all the annotations that you have defined.

Overview

Using Web Highlighter

Context menu commands

Configuring Web Highlighter options

Known problems

Support


Known problems

Commands not available

Please note that in some cases, the highlighting commands will not be available. If the selected text area spans across multiple rows of an HTML table, highlighting is impossible. More generally, and even when the highlighting commands are available, it may happen that highlighting doesn't work for a given selection. This is not a problem with Web Highlighter itself but it is sometimes due to the way the page author has written the HTML code.

Non breaking spaces

There is also a known issue with Internet Explorer that prevents Web Highlighter from working properly when the selected area contains non breaking spaces (&nbsp;). In many cases, extending or reducing the selected area will solve the problem.

Newline characters

Due to some inconsistencies in Internet Explorer's internals, the presence of newline characters in the HTML source code at some specific places may (rarely) prevent Web Highlighter to recognize the highlighted text. In most cases, this will result in a highlight not including all the selected text.

Special characters

Some HTML pages directly embed special characters instead of using HTML entities. Although such characters may display properly in Internet Explorer, they are not handled correctly internally and cause Web Highlighter not to recognize the highlighted text when returning to such pages. More generally, try to select text only when creating annotations and avoid including special characters in your selection.

Accessibility

Highlighting will not work if you checked the Tools | Internet Options | General tab |  Accessibility | Ignore colors specified on Web pages option of Internet Explorer.

File | Save As...

When Web Highlighter is installed, the File | Save As... | Save Web Document dialog of Internet Explorer is replaced with the Save HTML Document dialog which proposes less options. This may happen with other BHOs as well. This is due to Internet Explorer which doesn't react correctly when a BHO takes control of the context menu. There's no fix for this probem until Microsoft fixes Internet Explorer itself. However, you can use our BHO Cop  utility to temporarily disable Web Highlighter without closing the current instance of Internet Explorer. Once this is done, any new instance of Internet Explorer will run without loading the Web Highlighter extension and will have the original File | Save as... dialog box.

Scripting errors

It seems that the presence of Web Highlighter reveals actual scripting errors in some Web pages. Web Highlighter doesn't create these errors, it just (sometimes) makes them apparent, hence the feeling that Web Highlighter generates these errors (because they are no longer reported when Web Highlighter is uninstalled). You may want to look at two options in Internet Options | Advanced | browsing: Disable script debugging and Display a notification about every script error. Checking the first option and unchecking the second may help. However, Internet Explorer doesn't seem to handle these options in a very consistent way. It appears that disabling the automatic error reporting feature of Internet Explorer can also help a lot when too many scripting errors appear. You can easily disable this feature by using our RegistryRobot utility (see Internet Explorer | Fixing problems | Turn off error reporting in this program).

Menu Extensions

The context menu of Internet Explorer can be extended by adding entries to a specific registry key (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MenuExt). This is what the Web Accessories package of Microsoft does, for example. These entries are correctly taken into account by Web Highlighter under Internet Explorer 6.0. But Internet Explorer 5.x has a problem with this and the custom context menu of Web Highlighter doesn't display these commands in that case. If you are missing these extensions, you can check the Disable Ctrl+Right-click menu option in the configuration dialog. Then, when Ctrl+Right-clicking in Internet Explorer, you'll get the original context menu containing the menu extensions (but no Web Highlighter command). Right-clicking will still yield the custom Web Highlighter menu.

Flashing notes

There are two conditions under which the note tooltips will flash when displayed. The first is when the note's text is too long to fit between the highlight location and the top or bottom of the screen. Shortening the text will solve the problem. The second is due to a Windows anomaly that occurs when you've selected the pointer scheme "Windows Standard (large)" or "Windows Standard (extra large)" on the Pointers page of Control Panel's Mouse applet. When either of these schemes is selected, pointing to an element that invokes the "Text Select" cursor will cause any tooltip invoked to flash. This will happen in any application, and is not related to Web Highlighter. Changing the cursor scheme or the cursor assigned to the "Text select" entry in the current scheme solves the problem.

"Enable third-party browser extensions" option in Internet Explroer 6.0

Internet Explorer 6.0 has an "Enable third-party browser extensions" option. Setting this option to no will disable Web Highlighter (and any other BHO). The installation program normally detects this situation and allows you to automatically reset that option.

Overview

Using Web Highlighter

Context menu commands

Configuring Web Highlighter styles

Configuring Web Highlighter options

Support


Support

Help for this program and for PC Magazine's free utilities can be obtained in our online discussion area on the World Wide Web.

Overview

Using Web Highlighter

Context menu commands

Configuring Web Highlighter options

Configuring Web Highlighter styles

Known problems