* Authentication: Sites Requiring a Name and Password
* Controlling the Length of the Summary
* Choosing the Web Browser to Launch
* Choosing Whether to Open A New Browser Window
* Working with Proxy Servers
* Local Sites: Ignoring the Proxy Server
* Accessing Old Reports
* For Webmasters: What Morning Paper Means to You
* The robots.txt file: how to limit (or deny) access
* How to Contact Us
* Acknowledgements
Morning Paper is copyright 1997 by Boutell.Com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Evaluation copies of Morning Paper can be used for 30 days before expiration. Click on the REGISTER button in the software for more information about how to register the software for indefinite use.
What is Morning Paper?
Morning Paper automatically visits your favorite web sites every so often to find out what's new, and presents a summary of what's new on each page as part of a "newspaper" which it displays in your web browser. If you're like us, there are lots of web sites you like but never remember to visit. Morning Paper will keep you up to date on what's new and interesting, and provides convenient links for you to visit the pages that have changed in order to get the juicy details!
What's new in this version?
Version 1.3 added the following features:
* The progress display can now be minimized, so the whole program can be minimized during a summary.
* When installed by a first-time user, Morning Paper automatically configures itself to run a summary at 7am daily. Most users were not aware of the need to do this manually.
* Tries harder to communicate with an existing web browser before launching a new one.
* Many bug fixes, especially for various types of sites that use frames.
Version 1.2 added the following features:
* Automatically analyzes the largest frame's content! It is no longer necessary to find frame URLs manually.
* http:// is assumed if a URL is typed in without a protocol.
Version 1.1 added the following features:
* Support for FTP URLs
* Support for sites that require "cookies"
* Greatly improved output format
* Access to old reports
How do I get started?
The first time you run Morning Paper, you'll need to use the Add URL button to add several of your favorite web page URLs to the list that the software will visit.
Note: If you have already run the program at least once, and you chose to install it in your Startup group, it will already be running. Click on the Morning Paper icon in your Windows 95/NT system tray, in the lower right corner of the screen, to bring up the main window. In Windows NT 3.51, Morning Paper will display an ordinary "minimized" icon at the bottom of the screen.
The URLs you add in Morning Paper need to be complete URLs. They should look like this:
http://www.boutell.com/
You'll notice that the Add URL dialog box also has options to ignore a proxy server, and to log into a site with a name and password for sites for which this is appropriate. For most sites, you will not need these options. Just type or paste in a URL and click OK.
Your First Summary
After you have added a few URLs, click on the Summarize Now button. A dialog box will appear, showing Morning Paper's progress through your list of URLs. The program may take a while to do this if some of your sites are slow. This is why you have the option to schedule the program to run by itself when you're not around. When you first install it, Morning Paper is set to run at 7am each day; if you start up your computer later, or choose not to install Morning Paper in your startup group, then Morning Paper will run a summary when you start the program. You can easily change these settings.
When Morning Paper has finished summarizing the web pages in your list, your web browser will be launched if it is not already running, and the "newspaper" page will be displayed. Here you can read a summary of what's "new" on each page. Of course, since you have not run the program before with these URLs, everything is new. Morning Paper attempts to create a reasonably brief summary, and this feature works much better after the first try, because the program knows it can ignore material that is not new to you.
Problems, And How To Fix Them
Occasionally, problems may occur with various aspects of the program. Be sure to take note of any errors that appear in an "Errors" section beneath the summaries of what's new. Here's how to deal with various common situations.
Morning Paper didn't run the web browser I like!
If you would prefer that Morning Paper use a different web browser to show its newspaper, use the Settings button to bring up the Settings dialog box. In this dialog box, you can use the Browse button to locate the web browser of your choice on your hard drive, such as NETSCAPE.EXEor MSIE.EXE. If a browser is already running, Morning Paper will always talk to it instead of launching a new one, because this is much faster.
None of my URLs could be accessed!
If none of your URLs could be accessed, you probably are supposed to use a proxy server when accessing the web. That's okay -- Morning Paper supports proxy servers. You will need to click on the Settings button and set your proxy server's host and port in that dialog box, then click OK. If you are not sure what your proxy server settings should be, check your proxy settings in your web browser. If you are still not sure, ask your local system administrator for help with these settings.
Of course, it is also possible that you were not connected to the net when you asked Morning Paper to run the summary. If that's the case, you need to make your connection to the Internet first before running the summary.
A few of the sites could not be contacted.
This usually is because the site was down, or because it did not respond in a reasonable amount of time (eight minutes). Check and make sure your URL is correct. If it is, then most likely the program will succeed on a later try, when the site is back up.
If the site is a local site inside your firewall that should not be accessed through the proxy server, you can select that URL with the mouse and use the Edit URL button, and then click on the Ignore Proxy Server checkbox.
My favorite site "does not allow accesses from automatic programs!"
Some of the larger sites expressly forbid all visits by automatic software like Morning Paper. If the site forbids such accesses in its robots.txt file, then Morning Paper has no choice but to obey. For legal and ethical reasons, we are not willing to go against the clearly expressed wishes of web site administrators. If you feel a site's policy is unreasonable or counterproductive, contact the site and ask why they do not allow any access by "robot" programs like Morning Paper. Encourage them to restrict only robots that behave poorly, instead of blocking all robots completely. Smaller sites in particular may benefit considerably by allowing Morning Paper to have access, because it encourages people to remember to visit!
Scheduling Automatic Summaries
The summary is nice, but wouldn't it be nicer if you didn't have to sit and stare at that progress meter? Sure, and you can avoid it very easily by scheduling Morning Paper to run automatically.
Click on the Settings button to bring up the Settings dialog box. Here, you can schedule summaries to run every so many hours, beginning at a particular time of day, starting on a particular day of the week. When you first run the program, the Run Every... selector will be set to 24 Hours. Change this setting if you wish, and change the Beginning at... selector to the time of day at which you would like the summary to be generated. If you are generating a daily summary like this, it does not matter what the Day of Week selector is set to. That selector is useful, however, if you decide you want summaries only every two days or once a week.
"Why can't I run summaries more often?"
Morning Paper will only work in the long run if it is a responsible user of the web. That means that we don't want the program to overwhelm web sites. The program defaults to a daily summary, and we encourage you to use that setting, except when studying sites that you know will not object to frequent automated visits.
Important note: if your computer is not turned on when it comes time for the summary to run, then that summary will begin immediately the next time you start up your computer. This feature means that if you don't always leave your computer on overnight, you can still get a summary first thing in the morning when you do boot up your machine; you'll just have to wait a few minutes. When a scheduled summary is being generated, Morning Paper will display a "Busy" icon in the system tray. To see the program's progress, just click on the Busy icon.
How To Read The Latest Summary
There's a very convenient way to pop up the latest summary in your web browser if you are running Windows 95 or Windows NT 4. Just right-click the mouse on the Morning Paper icon in the system tray to pop the summary right up!
If you prefer, you can just pop up the Morning Paper main window by left-clicking the icon in the system tray, or double-clicking the minimized icon (in NT 3.51). Then, click on the View Last Summary button to display the summary in your web browser.
Advanced Options
We've covered the basics, but there are also advanced options you can use to summarize unusual web pages and control the way the summaries are generated.
Reorganizing your URLs
Would you like to remove one of your URLs, or change the order in which they appear in the report? Use the Delete button to remove the currently selected URL. Use the Move button to move a URL to a different position in the list. Please note: in version 1.1 and later, documents that have new content always appear first in the output, then documents that had problems requiring your attention, and finally documents that have not been updated since the last summary. However, the order within each of these groups will match the order in the list.
Authentication: Sites Requiring a Name and Password
Do you use web sites that require a name and password to log in? No problem! When you click on the Add URL button to add one of these pages, or select an existing URL and click on the Edit URL button, you will notice the Name and Password fields in the Add or Edit URL dialog box. Just fill out these fields with the appropriate name and password for that web page, and Morning Paper will be able to log in and get the page just as you would. Please note: Morning Paper does not attempt to encrypt your password in its preferences file. Names and passwords for web sites aren't handled in a very secure way on the web itself, either. This is an inherent problem in the web's protocol. So please don't choose the same names and passwords you use for more important things.
Controlling the Length of the Summary
You can control the length, in words, that Morning Paper shoots for in a summary. The summary will not always be limited to this length, because the program always chooses a summary that is complete at a particular level of detail, rather than cutting the summary off in the middle of a sentence. The program also chooses a somewhat too long summary instead of a drastically shorter summary than you have indicated a desire for.
Click on the Settings button in order to bring up the Settings dialog box. In this dialog box, you can edit the Ideal Summary Size field to indicate the length in words you would prefer.
Choosing the Web Browser to Launch
You can control what web browser Morning Paper will launch if none is already running. Use the Browse button in the Web Browser to Launch section of the Settings dialog box to do this. You will need to locate the appropriate application using the file browser dialog box that appears. If any web browser that supports such communication is already running, Morning Paper will always ask it to open the summary page instead of starting up another browser, because this is much faster.
Choosing Whether to Open A New Browser Window
Normally, Morning Paper will always ask your browser to open a new window in which to display the summary page. But if you consider this an annoyance, you can easily change it! Just use the Open New Web Browser Window? section of the Settings dialog box. Click on the No button to prevent the opening of a new window.
Working with Proxy Servers
Many users need to use a "proxy server" to access URLs outside the local company network. Morning Paper does support this. To set your proxy server, click on the Settings button and set your proxy server's host and port in that dialog box, then click OK. If you are not sure what your proxy server settings should be, check your proxy settings in your web browser. If you are still not sure, ask your local system administrator for help with these settings.
Local Sites: Ignoring the Proxy Server
You may have a few "local" URLs, inside your local company network, which should not use the firewall.
For these special cases, you can easily tell Morning Paper to ignore the firewall. When you click on the Add URL button to add one of these pages, or select an existing URL and click on the Edit URL button, you will notice the Ignore Proxy Server checkbox. Check this box to let Morning Paper know that this particular URL should not use the proxy server.
Accessing Old Reports
Scroll to the bottom of the "table of contents" frame in the newspaper. You will see a section labeled Recycled Paper, with up to seven numbers beneath it. These are links to the text of previous summaries. You can use these links to see summaries you may have missed when running the software automatically.
For Webmasters: What Morning Paper Means to You
We know webmasters have concerns about programs like this, both because of the bandwidth consumed (not much, in our case) and the possible copyright issues. This section responds to those concerns. If you have a concern which is not covered here, or you desire clarification of any kind, do not hesitate to contact
mailto:morning@boutell.com
morning@boutell.com.
"Won't Morning Paper's summaries keep people from visiting my actual site (and seeing my advertisers)?"
In our experience, no. Smaller sites in particular almost always benefit, because users discover there is something new and interesting on the site. Morning Paper provides prominent links to the sites with new material. Sites that are not updated often find this especially helpful, because of the tendency of users to forget to visit if updates are not frequent, or a site is not one of their top two or three favorites. Webmasters of such sites may even want to encourage their visitors to keep track of their site with Morning Paper. The short summaries generated by Morning Paper can be thought of as a teaser! Nonetheless, if you disagree, see the next item...
"How can I keep this program off my site?"
There is an open standard which you may already be using to keep robots off your server. This is the robot exclusion standard, and documentation on how to use it is included in this document (follow this link). Morning Paper fully complies with this standard.
"Won't Morning Paper users add extra demand on my server?"
A little, yes, because the software does retrieve the pages it's been asked to summarize on a regular basis. However, Morning Paper does not retrieve images and other large files, only HTML documents which are usually quite small. Also, if the program shows a user that new and interesting material is on your site, they are likely to follow the link and visit with their regular browser to get the details. Presumably that kind of "extra load" is something you want to encourage!
The robots.txtFile: How to Limit or Deny Access
To limit or refuse access to your web server by properly-written "robots" such as Morning Paper, create a document called robots.txtin the top directory of your server's web space.
Refusing Access to One Bad Robot
To refuse access by one poorly behaved robot, you could use the following text in the robots.txtfile:
User-agent: poorlybehavedbot-1.0
Disallow: /
This disallows all access by the robot which identifies itself as poorlybehavedbot-1.0in your web server's access logs. (This information appears in the "user agent" field. If you do not have that information your access logs, or in a separate user agent log, we recommend that you complain to your web space provider. It is useful information!)
The filename /is understood to mean that robots should not access any of the files on the server.
Note: the current version of Morning Paper identifies itself with the following user agent string:
Morning Paper 1.0 (robots.txt compliant!)
You can list as many robots as you need in this manner, writing a User-agent:and a Disallow:line for each.
Refusing Access by all Robots
You can refuse access to all robots, rather than to individual robots, by the special "user agent" string *. For example:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
In this example, access to the /cgi-bin directory is refused to all "robots" that adhere to the standard, including Morning Paper.
Further information about this standard is readily available on the Internet.
How to Contact Us
Boutell.Com can be easily contacted through our
http://www.boutell.com/morning/
web site. If you wish to contact us regarding Morning Paper, please send email to
mailto:morning@boutell.com
morning@boutell.com. Additional contact information is available on our web site.
Acknowledgements
Software and documentation by Thomas Boutell. Thanks are due to Jenine Abarbanel, Chris Adams, Eamon Daly, Stevi Deter, M.L. Grant, and Kevin Schnitzius.
