Web Highlighter lets you attach highlighting, notes, and links to any Web page viewed with Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher. Simply select the text you want to highlight, and right-click to invoke the Web Highlighter menu. You can customize highlighting styles by changing the font type, font color, and background color. After highlighting a text area, you can attach notes and links to it. Notes will display as infotips when you hover the mouse over the highlighted area. If you attach a link, clicking in the highlighted area will bring you to the specified URL.
When you return to an annotated page (a page with highlights, and possibly notes or links), your annotations will still be there. But Web Highlighter doesn't change the original Web page in any way. Annotations are stored locally in an XML file. You can export selected annotations to an XML file for sharing with other users who are running Web Highlighter.
REVISION HISTORY:
Changes in Version 1.1:
- Fixed an import bug; the TITLE values were not imported.
- Added a workaround for an IE problem with "Open in new window". The DOCUMENTCOMPLETE event sent when a document is empty caused WH to display an incorrect error message.
- Added a workaround for a newly discovered IE anomaly. IE would sometimes crash when WH's "Force refresh" command was used or when highlights were removed because IE returns incorrect information about the current document.
- Fixed problem where the Active/Inactive toggle state was sometimes not correctly stored to the INI file. This was because of IE's "short-circuit" shutdown process. The INI file now written in real time.
- Fixed problem with multiple highlights on the same page. Sometimes WH didn't remove the right-clicked highlight when using the "Remove annotations | Current only" command; it would remove another highlight on the page.
- Added a warning about the "File | Save As" menu issue to the installation program and the help file.
- Fixed a problem that occurred on systems using the default Win9x username. WH creates the data folder name from the user's login name (returned by the GetUserName API function). On some Win9x systems, GetUserName returns "***". Since a folder name containing this string cannot be created, the annotations were not stored.
- WH now checks to be sure its program folders are not set to read-only, since this will cause WH to crash IE.
- Corrected a problem concerning pages with frames. WH relies on IE to tell it where a user has clicked on a page so it can put up the correct context menu. But when a page contains frames, IE can return incorrect mouse coordinates. This meant that commands were missing when right-clicking on a highlight, or appeared erroneously when right-clicking on a non-highlighted area. To work around this bug in IE, WH now detects when a page contains frames, and adds a positive or negative offset to the mouse coordinates to compensate.
- Completely re-architectured the component cleanup mechanism. This internal design change does not affect functionality, but helped in solving the frames problem.
- Updated help file.
THANKS TO OUR BETA TESTERS:
Bob Abrahams
Alec Burgess
Herbert Bushong
Robert Eisenbach
Ken Holt
David Reusch
Bruno Sonnino
John Sulmeyer
BETA TESTERS FOR V1.1:
Bob Abrahams
Alec Burgess
Glenn Charles
Ken Holt
Ray Nobert
Frank Phillips
Bruno Sonnino
John Sulmeyer
INSTALLATION:
Before installing Web Highlighter, close all Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer windows. Then unzip the downloaded file into a temporary folder, run the supplied installation program,áwhsetup.exe, and follow the instructions. To uninstall Web Highlighter, use the Add/Remove Programs applet in Control Panel. For details on program operation, refer to the program's online help file.
FILE LIST:
WHsetup.exe - Web Highlighter installation program
readme.txt - the file you are reading
license.txt - PC Magazine Utilities license agreement
webh_src.zip - Web Highlighter source code (for programmers)
SUPPORT:
Help for PC Magazine's free utilities can be obtained in our online discussion area on the World Wide Web (http://discuss.pcmag.com/pcmag). You may find an answer to your question simply by reading the posted messages. The authors of current utilities generally visit this forum daily. If the author is not available and the forum sysops can't answer your question, the Utilities column editor, who also checks the forum each day, will contact the author for you.
LICENSE INFORMATION:
PC Magazine programs are copyrighted and cannot be distributed, whether modified or unmodified. Use is subject to the terms and conditions of the license agreement distributed with the programs.
----
Patrick Philippot, the author of Web Highlighter, is a developer based in Draveil, France. Sheryl Canter is the editor of the Utilities column and a Contributing Editor of PC Magazine.
