Spy allows you to run a server on your Mac, that when accessed by any normal web browser, allows people to see a snapshot of your screen, as well as information about your Macintosh. But it doesn't stop there - they can look at a normal static image, or they can look at your screen, live, continously updated, in real-time! You can also choose which image format you want to use - JPEG or PNG. Not only that, but the user can choose what picture quality they want by manually specifying their desired quality/depth and scale in the picture.jpg or picture.png request. Other features include 2 built-in page layouts with custom layout support, a detailed "Log Window", a "Live Connections" manager that lets you see everyone that is viewing your desktop live as well as disconnect any of those users, and an "External IP" window which displays your true, external IP address, even if you are behind a router or firewall. Best of all, Spy is completely free, and runs on Mac OS X or Mac OS 7.6 and up.
How do I get started?
Launch the Spy application. Click the "Start" button. You are now running a Spy server! Use the Copy Address menu item in the Edit menu to copy the URL people need to use to access your Spy server. (However, if you are beind a firewall, that address may be wrong. See the "I have a firewall" section below). On the main page is your computer info (configurable in the preferences) and static image. Users can click the "Live" link at the top of the page to access the Live stream of your screen. You can also set other features in your Preferences window such as graphic type, quality, maximum Live bandwidth, and other things.
Nobody else but me can access my Spy page. I think I have a firewall or a router. Can I use Spy?
Yes! Even though Spy may show an internal IP address (such as 192.168.0.1), which does not work for anyone but yourself, as long as you set your router to map the port Spy is set to use (default is 80 on Mac OS Classic and 2000 on Mac OS X) to your internal IP address, then you can give people your external IP address (which you can get from the new External IP Address window, accessable from the Window menu in Spy) along with your port number (in the format of http://ip:port) and then they can access your Spy server.
Have no idea what the heck I'm talking about? You can get detailed, easy to follow instructions on how to setup many popular routers for use with Spy. Visit the new Spy Router Help site now at http://www.silvernetwork.net/products/spy/routerhelp/. Still need help? Read the "How can I get help with Spy?" section below.
How do I make a template?
Actually you need to make two templates. One of them is for the actual Snap and Live Stream pages, and the other one is used for Error pages and the Live Stream bandwidth selector. Then build your page and put these tags for wherever you want that content to go (I am assuming you have a basic knowledge of HTML and you are using a text editor or using the source mode of your graphical editor):
<spytitle> - This tag shows the title for the page. Use it for your page title with <title><spytitle></title> and wherever the title is displayed on your page.
<spytags> - This tag displays all of the Spy computer information tags wherever this tag is placed. Only applicable for the first template (Snap/Live template).
<spyimage> - This tag displays the Spy static image or Live image wherever it is placed. If it is a thumbnail static image, it also places the "Click for larger version" text below the image. Only applicable for the first template.
<spycontent> - This tag displays the page content wherever it is placed. Only applicable for the second template (Error/Live bandwidth selector template).
<spygetspy> - This tag displays the Get SPY! image wherever it is placed, but only if it is enabled in the preferences.
Live does not work, or works poorly!
Live does NOT work at all in Safari or OmniWeb, and I am 99% sure that Live does not work at all in Internet Explorer for Windows (but it works great in Internet Explorer for the Mac). These browsers do not support HTTP server-push. Please e-mail the browser authors and request that they support HTTP server-push. It is not a new standard, it debuted in Netscape 1.1! Additionally, iCab has poor support for Live. You will see the image update, but you will probably see flickering as iCab erases the previous image and then begins to load and draw the next image. Please e-mail the author of iCab and request that he alter his renderer to not erase the image so that Live can be fully supported in iCab.
PLEASE READ THIS CONCERNING IMAGE QUALITY
Being a dial-up user myself, and knowing that the majority of people still have dial-up, I implore all Spy users to use a lower quality setting. The image still looks fine and is readable, but it really saves dial-up users a lot of time, and even keeps stress off of your own connection. A quality of 50 for JPEG should deliver a perfectly acceptable image. A quality that is 80 or above is basically unnecessary and the image will not be that much better than it would be if you had it set at 60 or 70.
What's definately planned for future versions?
Some kind fellow donated a few dollars in hopes that I would add support for only capturing a portion of the screen (like in SnapperHead), so I will definately be adding that to Spy v1.2. I'm also probably going to add some more page information stuff to Spy v1.2 including a body area where you can enter in some text (including HTML) that appears in the default templates as well as in custom templates with the <spybody> tag.
When I quit Spy, I get an "Unexpectedly Quit" error.
Nobody should be getting this error anymore. It is a fluke. You may ignore it because your preferences have been saved. If you still get this error, contact me and I'll into it more.
How can I get help with Spy?
You can e-mail me directly at mike@silvernetwork.net. My AOL Instant Messenger screennames are "Smartkid88" and "SlvrNtwks", I am on them all of the time. I am also occassionally on Yahoo! Instant Messenger under the screen name "SlvrNtwks". You can also head over to the official Spy forums at http://www.silvernetwork.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=spy. There are other Spy users there who can help you and I also visit there daily.
Version History
v1.1b1
- Added external file serving to Spy! This allows you to select a folder with files you want to be served by Spy. For example, if "blah.gif" is in the folder you select, then going to "http://your.ip.goes.here/blah.gif" will cause that file to load into the browser. One level of sub-directories are also allowed, so if blah.gif were in a folder, you could access it from that, too. This is intended primarily for serving images and other media which go on your template. It is not a general purpose web server. Please test this vigorously!
- Added the External IP Address window. This is a very nifty window that shows you your actual, true, external IP address. This IP address is the address that people behind a properly configured router or firewall must distribute in order for other people to successfully access their Spy server. If you are not behind a router or firewall, this window will not be of much use to you.
- The Live bandwidth choices have been tweaked for better performance. The Broadband selection has been split into Broadband Low and Broadband High. Broadband Low is like the old Broadband, but with 30% quality instead of a 35% quality. Broadband High uses 50% scale and 30% quality. The LAN setting has also been altered to use 50% quality instead of 80% quality.
- Picture.png now supports a new value, depth. By manually requesting picture.png with a different bit depth, you can get a low color, small filesize, non-JPEG degraded image of the screen. Example: http://64.25.75.102/picture.png?scale=50&depth=8. Note that at this time, depth cannot be set in the preferences.
- Fixed a freezup issue that occured when Spy erratically tried to do reverse DNS lookups on internal (router) IP addresses (ones that start with 192.168 or 10.0) or localhost IP addresses (0.0.0.0 and 127.0.0.1). Spy no longer tries to do lookups for these addresses.
- Now sends a "Last-Modified" header with replies for GetSpy.gif so that if it's later requested with an "If-Modified-Since" header, Spy does not have to send it again and merely just needs to send a "304 Not Modified" reply with no data, thus saving bandwidth.
- Reverse DNS lookups are now cached. This means Spy will no longer freeze up while trying to resolve a reverse DNS lookup for the 2nd or later time for the same IP when the bandwidth is very full. This also reduces internet traffic and possibly CPU load.
- Changed the Quality/Scale editfields in the Static panel of the preferences into sliders. The new quality slider only goes up to 85%, because anything higher is unnecessary. Please contact me if you must require more quality.
- Fixed a bug which may have caused inactive Spy windows to have a black or multi-colored rectangle drawn right inside the window border on Mac OS Classic.
- Adjusted the Safari Live block to include v73 and below. It looks like Safari will probably never support Server Push.
- Added a notice dialog for people who are beind routers (IP address starts with 192.168 or 10.0).
- The "CPU Type" tag now says "PowerPC G3" if it used to say "cput value 288".
- Increased memory allocation for Classic/PPC version from 12MB to 16MB.
- Added Tracker rules to the Tracker panel of the preferences.
- Behavioral changes to the Preferences window on Mac OS X.
- Changed some internal code slightly.
v1.1a2
- Added a JPEG and PNG compressor check on launch. The only suitable compressor is QuickTime v4.0 or later. Older versions of QuickTime will cause an error after launching. Previously, Spy would launch, but all images would be broken.
- Now relists on the tracker every 10 minutes (to reduce load on tracker, which now delists servers who haven't relisted in the last 11 minutes).
- The border of the Get SPY! logo is now transparent, in order to blend better on pages with non-white backgrounds.
- Fixed the simple log feature not always being simple (ie, sometimes showing Disconnects when it shouldn't, etc).
- Added a Dock menu to Spy OS X. It has "Start/Stop Server", "Copy IP Address", and "Preferences" menu items.
- Now freshens the tracker listing if you change any of your preferences which would affect your listing.
- Fixed DNS IP name not being used in advanced logging mode (the numeric IP was still being shown).
- The Start/Stop button on the Log Window now lists/delists from the tracker, respectively.
- Added a menu item to the File menu that allows you to start or stop the Spy server.
- Added an extra 2 seconds to the timeout for tracker delisting (when Spy is quit).
- Fixed Spy Tracker URL in preferences not being underlined/blue on Mac OS X.
- Fixed weird bugs with the log window on new installs.
- Improved internal error handling.
v1.1a1
- The Spy Tracker system has now been implemented. It allows you to list your Spy server on the Spy Tracker page located at http://www.silvernetwork.net/products/spy/tracker.php. Other people can then go to that page, find your Spy server, and view your screen. Spy will automatically list if you want it to and automatically delist when Spy is quit. Spy also relists every 5 minutes (may be later changed to 10) because the tracker purges servers that don't relist after 6 minutes in order to keep it clean of any crashed Spy servers. The PHP script handles all listing, delisting, and relisting.
- You may now close the Log Window. Additionally, Spy will remember if it is closed or not when you quit the program and will not open the Log Window if you previously had it closed. Note that the log is erased when you close the Log Window, however, the saved log files are not.
- There are now two levels of logging: Simple and Advanced. Simple logging displays standard IP addresses and GET Requests. Advanced logging displays the DNS name rather than the IP address and also displays the Referer as well as when the user disconnects.
- Changed the Safari/Live block so it blocks v62 and lower (v62 does not support Live). Apple, YOU NEED TO SUPPORT LIVE!!!
- You can no longer enter invalid values for Index Quality, Index Scale, and Thumbnail Scale in the Preferences window.
- Revised preferences file format. Old preferences files (pre-v1.1) should import seamlessly.
- Fixed some data sometimes not being written to the saved log file correctly.
- Fixed META GENERATOR tag being placed incorrectly in the HTML.
v1.0.1
- The "Use Default (Port)" button now highlights the port number field and gives it the focus when clicked.
- Spy now adds a META GENERATOR tag after the <HTML> tag when processing templates for sending.
- Changed the Safari/Live block so it blocks v58 and lower (v58 does not support Live).
- Added the ability to limit how many people can view the Live stream at once.
- Reorganized a bunch of the source code to make it easier to maintain.
- Improved the mask of the 8-bit and lower Spy icons.
- Added the ability to turn off the Live stream.
v1.0
- When viewing the Live stream, Safari v54 and below now see some text explaining that Safari does not support Live, rather than just seeing a blank image. This is only for v54 and below since later versions (not yet released as of the time of this writing) might support Live and we would not want to incorrectly block them out.
- Fixed a complicated bug that would sometimes cause the main layout to change from your custom layout back to the "Spy Default" layout if the alternate layout was not a custom layout or was missing.
- Added "How can I get help?", "How do I get started?", and "Unexpectedly Quit error" sections to the Read Me file.
- Attempted to fix "Bus Speed" and "CPU Speed" values sometimes being 1 MHz lower than they should be.
- Fixed the "Live Connections" window not showing up if the Log window was at the bottom of the screen.
- Fields which normally only need numbers should now only take numbers and reject all other letters.
- Moved a few things around in the Preferences window and fixed a minor graphical bug on Mac OS X.
- Removed the "Max. Access Log Size" feature becuase it was not even implemented at all.
- Fixed the "CPU Load" value sometimes being blank. Now it should always work.
- The "CPU Type" tag now says "PowerPC G4" if it used to say "cput value 268".
- The "Get SPY!" image is now turned on by default in new installations.
- Fixed "Startup Disk Used Space" value sometimes being incorrect.
- Removed a beep that was accidentally left in for debugging reasons.
- Cleaned up the output for the "Startup Disk" values.
v1.0b2
- After some consideration, I have decided to remove GZip support from Spy. GZip is not appropriate in the case of Spy. It only saved up to 3% off of the size of JPEG images. If you want to save 3% or more off of your JPEG images, just lower your quality by about 2% in the preferences. It didn't work at all on Live streams. It compressed HTML well but that is only a fraction of what Spy handles. It added extra hard drive usage and used extra CPU time. And it actually caused PNG images to be slightly larger! As a side effect, this move will decrease the application filesize of Spy, meaning you can download new versions from the web more quickly.
- Since GZip support is removed, I have created a simple HTML post-parser that removes all carriage returns, double spaces, and other unnecessary data from HTML before it is sent. This doesn't use the hard drive at all and takes almost no CPU time. Requires no special browser features.
- Added icons for Layout, Index, and Live to the OS X Preferences window. The icons, however, don't match very well and are ripped from other Apple products. If you want to create some icons for me that do match, please get in touch with me at mike@silvernetwork.net.
- Fixed "Get SPY!" logo not showing up on 404 Error pages for requests that include directories (for example, http://ip_address:2000/blah/foo/nonExistant.html)
- Fixed "Force Default Values" possibly causing all Live streams to be delivered in one particular quality regardless of what the user chose.
- Copy Address now copies "http://" as well as the IP and port number (but only if the port number is something other than 80).
- The picture snapshot/compression code is now faster. This should reduce CPU usage moderately, especially in Live streams.
- Fixed blank pages and other problems with Safari and some Windows-based IE browsers.
- Removed the Advanced pane from the Preferences window since it is no longer necessary.
- Added warning about "Force Default Values" option causing Thumbnail support to break.
- Streamlined the internal HTTP header system to make it easier to maintain.
- Minor re-naming in the Preferences window to better clarify some things.
- The Spy bookmark/favorites icon (favicon.ico) now has a proper mask.
- Added "Firewall" and "Live Doesn't Work" sections to the Read Me.
- The iTunes song info now shows the Album name if there is one.
v1.0b1
- Started work on improving the "CPU Type" tag. It now says "PowerPC G4" if it used to say "cput value 272" and it also says "PowerPC G3" if it used to say "cput value 264". If you are getting the generic "cput value" for your machine, please e-mail the cput value and your Mac model (such as 6500/250, iMac Rev. B, PowerBook G3, etc.) to mike@silvernetwork.net.
- Now supports the "Computer Uptime", "Computer Boot Time", "Computer Boot Date", "Spy Uptime", "Running Process Count", "Running Process Names", "Remote IP Address", and "CPU Load" computer info tags.
- The Live Connections monitoring window now has a "Bandwidth" field, which tells you which Live bandwidth option that user has selected (Dial-Up, ISDN, etc.)
- The Spy Tracker has been temporarily removed and will not make it into the v1.0 final release. Look for this great feature in v1.1.
- Fixed crash on startup if Spy had never been used before (Spy ran fine the second time, however).
- Did some internal code cleanup and streamlining. Application sizes should now be smaller.
- Changed the "302 Moved" response to a "301 Moved Permanently" response.
- The Close menu item now works on the About window.
v1.0a7
- When users visit the Live webpage, they are now presented with a list of preset bandwidths that they can choose from. These presets are optimized for the indicated connection. However, if you only have, say, a dialup connection, you probably don't want people using higher settings like ISDN or Broadband, so now you can set a maximum bandwidth in the Live panel of the preferences.
- Spy now has a templating system! There are now two built-in templates: Spy Default, a new template created exclusively for Spy; and the old SnapperHead-style template. Additionally, users can create their own template using tags such as <spytitle> and <spyimage> which are intrepreted by Spy before the template is sent out as a page. See the Template section of this Read Me.
- Spy now has a bookmark/favorites icon (favicon.ico), which is currently just the Spy icon. A future version will allow you to customize that icon. This icon is currently displayed with the built-in templates in all Mozilla-derirved browsers and later versions of MSIE on Windows.
- Redesigned preferences window. On Mac OS 7.6 - 9.2.2, it now uses a listbox to select which panel you want. On Mac OS X, an Aqua-style toolbar is used to select the panel.
- When the Log Window is frontmost, the "Copy" menu item changes to "Copy Address" and when selected, copies the address to access your Spy server to the clipboard.
- Added an Advanced panel to the preferences with 2 new options. These are for advanced users and debugging purposes only and may be removed in a later release.
- Fixed GZip encoding accidentally not being used for some Internet Explorer clients that validly accept it.
- Going to animation.html now redirects the browser to live.html rather than just sending the HTML data.
- You can now change the server's port number without restarting Spy.
- The Version History file is now a Read Me file.
- Fixed some tag mixups in the preferences.
v1.0a6
- The Start button now changes to Stop when clicked. When you Stop, all clients are disconnected and new connections are refused. Click Start to start accepting connections again.
- Fixed Disconnect button in Live Connections window not working (and usually causing a bad crash).
- Spy Preferences file now uses the "Spy!" creator code (instead of "SLht" for SilverHTTP).
- Fixed an extra colon in the "Physical RAM Installed:" text on the Index/Live pages.
- Moved Log Window and Live Connections menu items to a new Window menu.
- Changed some menu item wording on OS X because Drew said so.
- Fixed Server Log still sometimes being created in Spy's folder.
- The main Spy window is now called "Log Window".
- Fixed "View Log" in the Preferences not working.
v1.0a5
- Ported Spy to a different Open Transport plugin. This should fix corrupted images being sent on Mac OS X and should fix it crashing sometimes on Mac OS X. The only downside is that it is not possible to produce a 68K version anymore (which I didn't plan to do anyway due to other complications).
- Added a brand new Live Connections monitoring window. You can now get the address, user-agent, number of snaps, and bytes sent for all of the users connected to the live stream. You can even disconnect users who you feel are hogging up your bandwidth!
- Spy now tries to use GZip compression whenever possible. However, due to a combination of browser and protocol limitations, GZip can't be used on images embedded in an HTML page in Netscape 4, and GZip cannot be used on Live image streams. However, when it can be used, it can save up to 40% off of the file size.
- Animation has been renamed to Live to better reflect it's purpose and task. The new file names are live.html, live.jpg, and live.png, but the old animation.html will continue to work in order to be backwards compatible.
- Fixed nasty bug which sometimes caused a non-live (animated) picture request (picture.jpg or picture.png) to be treated as a live request and send the picture over and over again.
- Now using REALbasic 4.0.2 to compile the OS X version. The preferences window now looks much nicer on OS X and single-line editfields are now anti-aliased.
- New About window! Looks great on OS 9 and OS X (it follows the Cocoa About window specs on OS X).
- Moved the "display thumbnail" setting in the Preferences from the General tab to the Index tab.
- New server log! The new log should be easier to read and understand.
- No longer sends Cache-Control header twice for live.jpg or live.png.
- No longer creates a Files folder (leftover from SilverHTTP).
- Now uses the Preferences application menuitem on Mac OS X.
- Attempted to improve temporary file cleanup.
- Slightly decreased size of getspy.gif image.
- Added a Close window menuitem.
v1.0a4
- Added the animation.html page and the Animation tab to the preferences. The animation page lets users see your desktop, LIVE, in real-time, without the need for any plugins. All they need is a fairly recent web browser. Setup your animation settings, then direct people to http://your_address_here/animation.html so they can watch live! Note: the camera sound is not played for animation streams. Addditionally, they will show up as only one entry in the log. A new log and a new "connected users" item will come soon.
- Port numbers below 1024 are no longer allowed on Mac OS X because OS X only gives those ports to processes running as root or under special circumstances. Therefore, Spy would fail to work correctly when using a port below 1024 on Mac OS X.
v1.0a3
- Added CPU Type option for index page. Right now it just writes the gestalt value, but it should write the actual processor name (G3, G4, 604e, etc.) soon.
- Added "Display Get SPY! Badge" option for index page which shows the Get SPY! badge which links to the Spy product page at SilverNetworks.
- Added option to display a small image on the index page and let the user click on it to view the image using your default scale.
- The HTML generated for the index page now includes width and height tags for the image.
- Fixed "Default Port" button in preferences putting port 80 on OS X (needs to be 2000).
- Added option to play a little camera sound when a snap is taken.
- Creator code is now "Spy!" instead of SilverHTTP creator code.
- Added Physical RAM Installed option for index page.
- Added Bus Clock speed option for index page.
- Fixed a few bugs in prefs saving/loading.
- Now supports custom 404 error pages.
- Improved the default 404 error page.
v1.0a2
- Preferences are now called "Spy Preferences" and are now stored in the preferences folder.
- Fixed slowness on OS X by switching to Micono Screen Capture code.
