Print (Menu: |
Ctrl+P ) this page for a quick reference to WebSpeedReader. Use Print
Preview () to see how it will look and how many pages will be
printed.(Note: This page lists the most commonly used features and functions
to help get you started as quickly as possible in using WebSpeedReader. For a
complete reference to WebSpeedReader's many capabilities, read the complete help
and tutorial ( | F1).
Reading this document might be confusing at first, but if you read it and the
Help & Tutorial as you are using WebSpeedReader, you'll start to understand it,
and appreciate it as a faster and better way to browse, read, and search the
Internet. But, it does take time to learn.
If you find any bugs, report them by selecting
from the menu. Also, bug fixes and
upgrades are always posted in the What's New page, which can be accessed by
selecting . From this page, you can upgrade WebSpeedReader by downloading the
upgrade file, which is much smaller than the original download. The upgrade can
be downloaded and installed in literally less than 2 minutes. If you encounter a
bug, always check here first for any bug fixes, even if you just downloaded
WebSpeedReader.
The Use of the Mouse in WebSpeedReader in contrast to Internet
Explorer
The mouse is used differently in WebSpeedReader than in Internet
Explorer. The functions have been changed to associate the most commonly used
functions with the simplest mouse commands. This may be confusing at first, but
you will see that this makes browsing a much better experience. Thus,
right-clicking the mouse in WebSpeedReader displays the next window rather than
showing the context menu. Scrolling with the mouse wheel pages up and down rather
than moving 3 lines up or down at a time, which is the Window's default. To get
Internet Explorer's default action, just press the Ctrl
key as you right-click or scroll the mouse wheel. When you right-click selected
text, you will get WebSpeedReader's context menu.
Context Menus that WebSpeedReader shares with Internet Explorer
Pressing the
Ctrl key while right-clicking a selection, shows IE's context menu for a
selection. More will be said about how to use the mouse in WebSpeedReader, but
here is a quick summary of the functions in IE's context menus:
Ctrl + right-clicking the document
yields these options:
-
Back - move back in the window's history for documents
that you visited earlier in the same session in the same window.
-
Forward - move forward in history. Because of the way
WebSpeedReader works, the Back and Forward functions will not be as useful as
they are in other browsers, because WebSpeedReader minimizes the need to go back
and forward in history. More on this later.
-
Save Background As... - If a document has a background
image, you can save this image to disk by selecting this option. However, this
option will disabled if the document does not have a background image.
-
Set as Background - Sets the background image of the current
document as the background image of your desktop. The background image becomes
the current wallpaper for your desktop. To change it, or remove it, right-click
on your desktop, select Properties, select Desktop, then choose
the wallpaper you want, or None, if you just want to remove it. Note that
the wallpaper you choose with Set as Background will be listed as
Internet Explorer Wallpaper in the wallpaper list. Thus, you can select this
wallpaper at any time.
-
Copy Background - Presumably this copies the background, but
you can't paste it in anything, not even an editable document, so it's not very
useful.
-
Set as Desktop Item - This copies the image used for the
document background to your desktop. The difference between this option and the
Set as Background option is that this option shows the image as its actual
size, is not listed as wallpaper, and is removed or moved by hovering the
mouse over the top of the image until the title bar is displayed. You move the
image by dragging the title bar. You can close the image by clicking the X in
the upper right-hand corner, just like a form. Because the image doesn't cover
the whole background—unless it is really large or you have a low-resolution
monitor—you can have various images displayed on your desktop as a collage.
-
Select All - This selects everything on the web page for
copying.
-
Paste - This option will usually be grayed, because most web
pages aren't editable, and thus, nothing can be pasted on them.
-
Create Shortcut - Creates a shortcut to the current document
on your desktop. Just click the shortcut to go there again.
-
Add to Favorites - This adds the current document to
Internet Explorer's Favorites. Note that WebSpeedReader, though it imports IE's
Favorites, uses a database to store Favorites, which makes it much more usable
(more on this later). Select |
A |
Shift+F6 to add to WebSpeedReader's Favorites.
-
View Source - WebSpeedReader has its own View Source feature
that is color-coded and shows the source of all frames in 1 document. However,
if you want a plain text view, or you want to copy code to paste into something
else, then select this option. If the document has frames, then this option will
show the source code for the right-clicked frame.
-
Encoding... - This option allows you to change the character
set used to display the document.
-
Print... - Prints the current document.
-
Refresh - Refreshes the current document by downloading the
document again.
-
Properties - This shows such properties as title, URL, the
created and modified date.
Ctrl + right-clicking a link, which
may be a hyperlink text or an image:
-
Open Link or Open Link in New Window - These
options aren't very useful in WebSpeedReader. All links that are normally
clicked download in the background anyway, so just clicking the link is much
faster.
-
Save Target As... - Presents the File Save dialog box to
save the target of a link. In most cases, you will probably want to see what the
target of the link is before you save it. There are various ways to save the
current document under the menu.
-
Print Target As... - Prints the target file. Again, in most
cases, you'll probably want to see the document first before printing it. The menu has options for Page Setup, Print Preview, and Printing the
current document.
Ctrl + right-clicking a picture:
-
Show Picture - In this case, you would be Ctrl +
right-clicking the icon for the picture rather than the picture itself. This
option shows the picture if the Display Images option in Internet Options
has been turned off.
-
Save Picture As... - Displays a Windows dialog box that
allows you to save the image to a file.
-
Email Picture - Opens your email client with a new message,
adding the picture as an attachment.
-
Print Picture - Guess what this does!
-
Go To My Pictures - This opens Windows Explorer to display
the My Pictures directory.
-
Set as Background, Set as Desktop Item - This is the
same feature mentioned earlier, but uses the selected picture instead of the
background image. Set as Background expands the image to cover the entire
desktop, whereas Set as Desktop Item shows the picture in its original
dimensions.
-
Copy - Copies the picture to the clipboard so that it can be
pasted into another editable document. The document will usually be from another
application because most documents displayed in the browser are not editable.
-
Copy Shortcut - Copies the URL to the picture to the
clipboard, so that it can be pasted elsewhere.
-
Add to Favorites - This adds the URL of the picture to
Internet Explorer's Favorites.
-
Properties - This shows the picture's size and dimensions,
in addition to the other properties listed above.
Ctrl + right-clicking selected
text:
-
Copy - If you want to copy selected HTML or text, then
select this option.
-
Print - Print the selected text.
-
Cut, Paste - These options aren't very useful in a
browser because most pages are not editable.
-
Select All - Selects everything on the web page, but you
probably don't want this command if you have already selected text, so it's not
very useful in this context.
Opening Links
- All links clicked with left-mouse button download in a background window.
- Selecting Open in Same Window ( |
S
| F2) causes all downloads to occur in the current
window unless it is Shift + clicked. This is the way Internet Explorer
normally works.
- Shift + click opens link in background window,
even if it is in a frame or Open in Same Window is in effect, and sets it as the
next page when selecting .
- Ctrl + click opens link in current browser
window.
- Alt + click forces the creation of a new window
to download the link, preventing
WebSpeedReader from re-using any windows, and thus, preserving all documents.
- Ctrl+O or Ctrl+L opens a dialog box allowing you to type in the
address, opening a new window in the background. http://www.
will be prepended, and.com/ will be suffixed to anything entered
that has no period. This is also true for the address box, but navigation
will occur in the same browser window as the address box. Example: type example
and WebSpeedReader will navigate to http://www.example.com/.
Find more features and help in the dialog box itself.
- Select a link in the document, then right-click and select Open URL
from the context menu.
- To open a file on your computer, select to
bring up a dialog box that will allow you to browse for web files on your
computer.
- Click on on the top menu for many more options, including
open all links, all image links, all internal links (links pointing to the
same domain), all external links (links pointing to domains other than the
current), and, if any part of the document has been selected, all selected
links. It doesn't matter if there is intervening text in the selection. Other
options include loading the home page of the current site, and loading the
current page in Internet Explorer. You can also access this menu by
right-clicking on any hyperlink.
- WebSpeedReader can automatically read RSS and OPML files, so you can
read these links without a special reader.
Although clicked links generally download in the background, there are 3 exceptions to this.
-
Clicked links in framed pages will cause navigation to occur in
the targeted frame, which is usually the same frame as the clicked link, but
sometimes can be another frame, or to a new window. A frame is a web page
consisting of several documents. If a page has frames, WebSpeedReader will show
this in the 3rd panel of the status bar. If you want the links
in a frame to download in background windows, then shift + click them (hold the
Shift key down while you click the link). This will open the link unframed in its own window, thereby enabling you to
save it as a Favorite or to schedule it, since framed pages don't display their
own URL. If you want to scroll in a particular
frame and if it doesn't already have the focus, then click the frame first to select it.
-
Secure transactions, which use the https protocol, will
download in the same window if the current document is also using the secure
protocol. This is necessary to prevent errors. WebSpeedReader will automatically download
secure requests to the same browser window that submitted
the requests. If you don't want to wait for the downloads, you can continue
reading other documents, if you have any, and come back to the results later.
Cycling through the windows will eventually return you to the results page. Or
you can select the window by clicking on its link in the sidebar. When it is
fully downloaded, it will turn blue.
-
Any form submission that is submitted by a POST transaction.
These are submissions where the form data is uploaded as part of the body
rather than as part of the URL, known as a GET submission. Submitting a search
term to Google, for instance, is a GET operation, where you can see your search
embedded in the URL. POST transactions that don't download in the submitting
window sometimes results in errors, which is why it is done this way. However,
you can download a POST transaction in a background window by pressing the
Shift key while submitting the form.
Navigating Among Windows
- Sidebar - WebSpeedReader's sidebar displays all open windows. There are several tabs in the second
toolbar right above the sidebar, and below the main toolbar. The default tab is the Links Bar
(∞), which initially will display
the same links that you saved to Internet Explorer's link bar located near the
address box, if it's visible. However, you can now save any link to the Links Bar by checking the
Quick Links checkbox when you save the link to your Favorites.
Right-click any link to manage the links. Black entries indicate the
beginning of a download; blue entries
indicate fully downloaded sites but not yet read, and red entries
are documents that have been read. Maroon entries
are windows where the Keep in Memory is toggled on. This means that the
document will not be replaced by other downloaded pages after the document
is read. You might want to do this if you are doing research, for instance,
and you need to go back to the document. The current window is the
selected entry. Click on any link to go to the site immediately. Important
Note: WebSpeedReader limits the number of windows to minimize memory
use. You can adjust the number of windows by selecting from the menu. The default number is
50.
WebSpeedReader re-uses windows, so you do not have to close the window to
move to the next window. When more links have been clicked than the maximum
number of windows chosen, WebSpeedReader queues those links. As you read
each document and move to the next, a new document will be downloaded in the
window that you have just read. You will NOT see queued links in the
sidebar, because they are not actually loaded yet, and thus, don't belong to
a window.
- Note: WebSpeedReader displays documents in a particular order when
selecting next.
|
|
t |
Z | <
, | Shift + F12 | |
|
u |
X | >
. | F12 | ź
Del |
- The priority of the documents is Shift +
clicked links > unread
loaded documents > unread loading documents > read documents. You
can access any document any time by clicking on the menu or
the Windows sidebar and
selecting the document from the list. Once all documents have been read,
then selecting next simply cycles through all of the documents.
-
- Right-mouse click on the document moves to the next document, but
only if there is no text selected, and the right-click doesn't occur inside a
textbox or textarea.
In both of the latter cases, a context menu is presented.
- Note: Ctrl + right-click will show the default context menu for
that item, the same as Internet Explorer.
- If you want to copy selected text to the clipboard, either press
Ctrl + C or Ctrl +
right-click the selected text for the context menu.
- Closing a browser window will also select the next document, but it
is not necessary to close any windows. WebSpeedReader simply re-uses those
windows to download other documents.
- To keep a document in memory so that it will not be replaced by another
document after it has been read, select | K
| F3. This is a toggle. The window will not be
used to download other documents until it is toggled off.
Scrolling
-
You can scroll with the usual keys: Page Up,
Page Down,
the arrow keys, Home to go to the beginning of the document,
End
to go to the end of the document. You can also scroll down using the space
bar.
-
Rotating mouse wheel over the document scrolls the page up or down 1 page
for each notch (requires Internet Explorer 6).
-
Holding the right mouse button down while turning mouse wheel
scrolls the page the default number of lines, which is usually Window's
default value, 3.
-
While holding the right mouse button down, click the document
to scroll to the top of the document or double click it to go to the end of
the document.
-
Alt + mouse wheel scrolls the page a few lines at a time
up or down.
-
Mouse wheel Panning - Quickly scroll a document in any
direction, even horizontally or diagonally, by pressing the mouse wheel, and
moving the mouse in the desired direction. When you want to stop scrolling,
simply release the mouse wheel. Tip: You can also pan
the sidebar.
-
Auto-scroll - Click mouse wheel on blank area of document
to turn on
auto-scroll, which scrolls the document continuously until it reaches the
top or bottom. Auto-scroll has 2 marks, a center mark and a scrolling mark. Dragging
the scrolling mark up, scrolls up; dragging it down, scrolls down. The
farther the scrolling mark is moved from the center mark, the faster it
scrolls. Clicking any mouse button stops it.
-
-
-
On the numeric keypad (the 1st column shows
the numeric keys as they appear on most keyboards, a close simulation,
anyway):
0
Ins |
Page down. |
ź
Del |
Go to the next document. |
1
End |
Page up. |
2
¤ |
Go to top of document. |
3
PgDn |
Go to bottom of document. |
4
ť |
Go to next document, but keep current one in memory. (Keep in
Memory) |
7
Home |
Go to the home page of the current URL. |
Windows Management
-
As you click on more links and download more documents, WebSpeedReader
opens more windows. Eventually, as you read the documents, the windows
containing read documents will be reused to download other documents. This is
how WebSpeedReader conserves memory. However, any window where you have
toggled Keep in Memory on
( | K |
F3 | keypad: 4 ) will not be re-used. Whenever Keep in Memory is toggled, it will also
display the next page, so do this after you are done with the document for the
time being. As you click on more links and download more documents, WebSpeedReader
opens more windows. Eventually, as you read the documents, the windows
containing read documents will be reused to download other documents. This is
how WebSpeedReader conserves memory. However, any window where you have
toggled Keep in Memory will not be re-used.
- Open in Same Window (
| S |
F2
) - Selecting this option causes all navigation in the current window to occur in that window. You
can still Shift + click to open a link in a
background window. In other words, it
will work just like Internet Explorer.
The following items can be selected from the menu under submenu or from the context menu by right-clicking
on any window in the sidebar.
- Close All Read Windows will close all windows that you have read, except for windows that have
been designated as Keep in Memory.
- Close All Windows except Current will close all windows except the
one window that you're looking at.
- Stop All Downloading stops all navigation in all windows.
- Cancel Queued Downloads - When a large number of links are selected
to download, such as downloading scheduled links or downloading all links on a
page, only a few are downloaded at a time—the rest are queued for later
downloading after the first documents have fully downloaded. Selecting this
option clears the queued document list.
Windows can also be managed from the sidebar:
- Press and hold the K key down and click any window that you want to
Keep in Memory.
Windows that are kept are boldfaced in the sidebar and will not be replaced by
other documents.
Favorites
-
View Favorites ( |
F
| F6) displays your favorites in a
separate form. The Favorites form has 2 modes,
download mode and organize mode, which you can toggle by clicking the top command button. When you select View Favorites,
download mode will be in effect. You can click as many links as you like; each link will
download in a separate browser window. You can download
links by:
-
Clicking on them individually.
-
Click on a folder to download all links in that folder, but not
subfolders.
-
Ctrl+click to download all links in that folder and all
subfolders.
-
Shift+click a link to download all links between it and a
previously downloaded link in the same folder, or if there isn't any, then it
will download all links from the top of the folder to the clicked link.
Right-click
on a folder to rename, edit, delete, or add a new favorite. Right-click a
link to rename, edit, or delete the link. Right-clicking anywhere else
brings up more options.
-
Quick Links is shown in the sidebar under the Links
tab ( ∞ ). This displays the links that show up on the link bar in
Internet Explorer. Keep your most commonly clicked links, that aren't
scheduled, here. You can also view Quick Links in the Favorites form
by right-clicking on an empty part of the tree view, and select Quick Links
from the context menu.
-
Sidebar - Quickly Filter Favorites or History to Display in Sidebar -
In the textbox at the top of the sidebar, you can type in a few
characters and click F in the second toolbar at the top, just to the right of
the textbox to filter your list of Favorites, which will be displayed below, in
the sidebar. This selects all favorites that have the typed characters in the
title, URL, or keywords. Some tips: (1) type in a domain to select all
Favorites with that domain; (2) enter "file://" or "c:\" to
select all files on your disk; (3) enter "foldername\subfoldername" to display
all links in that subfolder. Remember to press Enter
after typing in your letters to display the new list.
-
Special Filters - There are special filters that will
display particular links. All the special filters
start with a letter, which is case insensitive and designates the type of
filter to apply, followed by a space.
-
∞ tab - Displays your Quick Links in the sidebar.
If you want to remove a link from the Quick Links bar, just right-click on the
link, and select Remove from Quick Links from the context menu.
-
¸ tab - Shows all links that are scheduled. If you don't want to read all the links
scheduled for today, then the next best thing is to show all scheduled links,
and click on the ones that you want. If you want to unschedule any links,
simply right-click the link, and select Unschedule from the context
menu.
-
-
H tab -
Type some characters in the filter box, then click the
H tab to display
all history entries with the typed characters in the title, URL, keywords, or
description, if you
maintain history. Thus, law will show all history entries that have
law in the title or URL.
Entering yahoo.com will show all of your history entries that have the
domain yahoo.com. Note that maintaining history is on by default, but you can
turn it off, and it will erase all history entries. However, if you do this,
then the history filter will obviously have no effect.
-
F tab - Clicking the F tab will filter your Favorites list. Thus, entering "blog"
in the filter box will display all
links with "blog" in the title, URL, or keywords. Enter "science\history" to
display all links in your science\history subfolder, assuming that you have
such a folder (probably not). Remember to press Enter
after typing in your letters to display the new list.
-
Organize Favorites - Organize mode allows you to move,
copy, rename, and delete links and folders. Because folders are nothing more
than a group of links with the same keywords, any action on a folder is simply
an action on all of the links with the same keywords. The available commands
can be accessed by clicking on the command buttons on the right, or
right-click on an empty part of the tree view for the context menu. You can
access commands in the context menu either by clicking on the desired command,
or after the right-click, continue holding down the right mouse button,
highlight the desired command, then release the right mouse button. To move,
copy, or delete links, you must first select links. Select links by:
-
Clicking on them individually.
-
Click on a folder to select all links in that folder, but not
subfolders.
-
Ctrl+click to select all links in that folder and all
subfolders.
-
Shift+click a link to select all links between it and a
previously selected link in the same folder, or if there isn't any, then it
will select all links from the top of the folder to the clicked link.
When 1 or more links are selected, then the copy, move, and
delete commands are enabled. If copy or move is selected, then click the
folder where you want the links moved or copied. After this is done, then all
selected links are deselected. If you want to copy or move to a new folder,
then after selecting copy or move, select the New Folder command, then
click the folder where you want to place the new folder. You'll be placed in
edit mode. Type in the name of the new folder, press ENTER, and the files will
be copied or moved, depending on which command you selected prior to selecting
the New Folder command.
-
Undeleting links - When links are deleted, they are moved
to a special folder in Favorites called Delete. You can restore any
deleted link by selecting 1 or more links in this folder, then moving them to
another folder. When WebSpeedReader is closed, then the links in this folder
will be deleted permanently.
-
Add to Favorites ( |
A |
Shift+F6) - Add the current page to Favorites.
This form will load with the title and URL of the link, and also the
document keywords and description if available. If it is not available, then
you can add your own. You can also select a category from the tree view on
the left side of the form, or you can create a new category simply by typing
in the keywords textbox. Use the backslash (\) to create
different levels of categories. Examples: Typing Science in the keywords box creates the
Science category if it doesn't already exist; entering Science\Biology creates a Science category with a subcategory of Biology.
If the Science category already exists, then it will simply create the
subcategory Biology if it doesn't already exist. If it does exist, then your
new Favorite will be stored in that subcategory. Of course, if the category
already exists, you can select it from the tree view on the left instead of
typing it. Also, with the Add to Favorites form:
-
Notes - You can add notes for each bookmark.
-
Home Pages - You can add the page as a home page. WebSpeedReader allows any
number of home pages. These are pages that load up every time you start
WebSpeedReader. If you have home pages, but want to prevent them from loading,
simply press the Shift key while the program is loading.
WebSpeedReader will then load a blank page. If you have a dial-up connection,
WebSpeedReader will automatically dial the connection if you are not already
online. You can cancel the dial-up connection.
-
Scheduling - Any page can be scheduled for every day,
every weekday, any day of the week, and for any week of the month. Thus, to
schedule a page for every Monday, click on the Monday checkbox; to schedule a
page for Tuesday and Thursday, check the boxes for Tuesday and Thursday; to
schedule a page for the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month, check the
Wednesday box, then check the 1 and 3 boxes of the Week-of-Month frame. If
you want to schedule a page for every week, then do NOT check any
Week-of-Month checkbox. Week of month is only checked if you want to
restrict the downloads to specific weeks of the month. To download the
scheduled web pages, just select |
Shift+F2.
-
Quick Link - Add any page to the Quick Links sidebar by
checking the Quick Links box.
-
Add to Favorites Form Submissions - Because WebSpeedReader
now uses a database to store Favorites, it is now possible to not only save
links as Favorites, but also any type of form submission, including password
logons. Thus, any kind of form submission can easily be automated with
WebSpeedReader. Now submitting data or logging onto password-protected sites
is just a click on a Favorite. However, a warning: anyone who has
access to your computer and can log on as you can also access your password-protected sites,
effectively posing as you. Although the form data is not encrypted, passwords
cannot easily be found, but they could be found by someone with enough
knowledge and time. Therefore, do not use this feature if security
is a potential problem! Saving these Favorites requires a special
procedure.
-
Set Capture by selecting .
-
Fill in the form, then submit it.
-
When you press the submit button, the Add to Favorites form
will load. 2 textboxes will be filled with the information from the form
submission. This includes the URL and the post data. It is very important
not to change either the URL or the post data unless you know what you are
doing; otherwise the submission will not work properly!
Also keep in mind, that web pages do change, and sometimes it may
be necessary to recapture the information. You can add any other information
to the record, including a category, adding it to your Quick Links
list, or scheduling the page.
Bookmark Manager
-
Overview - The bookmark manager stores your Favorites in a
database, instead of using the lame file system approach that Internet
Explorer uses. Much more information can be stored in it than would otherwise
be possible. Additional information that can be saved includes document
keywords, description, posted data, and notes. Bookmarks can also be scheduled
in the Edit form, including being able to set more than 1 home page. The rest
of this section will cover features of the bookmark manager that have not be
covered in the Favorites section above.
-
Filtering the display of links - In either download
mode or organize mode, you can filter the links by typing in
letters in the text box in the upper-right corner of the Favorites form. Thus,
typing in "law" will show all links that have the "law" in the keywords,
title, or URL. You can either download the links or organize them.
-
Folders - To create a new folder, you can either type in
new keywords when you add a favorite, or you can select a number of files,
then select copy or move, then select New Folder, then
click on the folder in the tree view where you want to add the new folder.
You'll be placed in edit mode, so you can type in the new name of the new
folder. Note that you must have links selected for copy or move in order to
create a new folder. This is because, the so-called folders are not really
folders in the file system, but rather hierarchies of keywords. Thus, if there
are no records corresponding to a new folder, then that new folder cannot be
created. Therefore, if you delete the last link in a folder, then that folder
will also be deleted. The folders is used because it works basically
the same way, and most people are familiar with the folder terminology. Note
that any changes made to the Favorites in WebSpeedReader will NOT be reflected
in Internet Explorer's favorites. An export option will be added in the near
future.
-
Edit or delete a favorite without opening a form - Another
great time-saver with WebSpeedReader's bookmark manager is the ability to edit
or delete a Favorite without opening the Favorites form at all. When you are
viewing a web page that you downloaded by selecting a link in the Favorites
form, then you can either edit or delete that Favorite simply by selecting . If the current page was not downloaded by clicking on a Favorite,
then these 2 options will not be enabled. In addition, there are also 2
toolbar buttons at the top that will be displayed when the current document
is a Favorite. If you click Delete this Favorite, then the next document
will also be displayed.
-
Schedule
-
You can schedule pages for download by filling in the
scheduling information in the Add to Favorites form, or by editing the
Favorite links you want scheduled. You can schedule pages for daily,
weekday, Monday - Sunday, or monthly. Check 1 or more of the boxes for Week
of Month to download monthly. for instance, check Monday in the Day of Week
frame and check 1 and 2 in the Week of Month frame to schedule a page for
the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month. However, to download a page every
Monday, just check the Monday checkbox in the Day of Week frame, and leave
the checkboxes in the Week of Month frame unchecked.
-
Downloading scheduled pages - The
submenu
has a number of options to download pages.
downloads the pages scheduled for today. Thus, if today were
Monday, May 3, it would download all pages scheduled for daily, weekday,
Monday, and the 1st Monday of every month. downloads all scheduled pages since
you last downloaded scheduled pages, up to 6 days past. So if today is
Thursday, and your last download was Monday, then this option will select
all pages scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Note, however,
that pages scheduled for daily and weekday will only be downloaded once.
-
Continuing Sessions - Sometimes you can't finish reading
everything. You can close WebSpeedReader, then continue later by selecting
from the submenu , which loads
the documents that you haven't read yet. loads
the same pages, but also downloads all pages scheduled for today.
Searching for Information
Search
-
Address box search - Type a ? in the address box,
with the search terms following it, to display a Google search in the
current browser window.
-
Select text in the document, then right-click and select either
Google Search or Vivisimo Search from the context menu.
-
Sidebar - Google Search - A search box is
always at the top of the sidebar. Just enter your search terms and press
Enter to submit search. By default the G tab is highlighted, and
thus, the search will be submitted to Google. By clicking the
V tab,
then the search will be submitted to Vivisimo, a search engine that clusters
search results into categories. The results will download in a background window. Thus, you can submit
searches as you read. Click the _—"_" for
underscore; "H" is used for History—tab to highlight those terms in all
documents, including all frames.
-
Search Page - ( | S
| F9) Displays a search page of more than 50 search engines of
different specialties, allowing you to quickly find just about anything.
Enter your search terms in the textbox at the top, then click on any number
of search engines; results from each search engine will be downloaded in
separate browser windows in the background.
-
Find text in document - Ctrl+F display a
textbox that allows you to search in the current document. This is the same
dialog box that Internet Explorer uses.
-
Find files on your computer - ( |
Shift+F3 ) - displays a Windows
Explorer dialog box allowing you to search for specific files on your
computer.
Highlighting Search Terms
Highlight search terms - By entering characters in the
textbox at the top of the sidebar, then clicking the _—"_"
for underscore; "H" is used for History—tab, all occurrences of the characters will be
highlighted, including all occurrences in frames. You can enter multiple terms that are
highlighted separately by separately the terms or phrases with the backquote
character `. This is the unshifted tilde key located next to the
1
key on the top row of most keyboards. The backquote key was chosen as a
separator because it is rarely used in text. Click OK to highlight the
text; click Cancel to stop highlighting. When highlighting is in effect,
the menu item will be checked. The text will be highlighted for any active
window, and for any downloaded documents in the active window (after the
document has downloaded completely). Thus, to search for 2 presidents, you would
enter in the textbox: "George Washington`Abraham Lincoln" without the quotes.
The current document, if it contained only 1 sentence would look like this:
George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln
were two of the greatest presidents of the United States. Note that case is
unimportant; so you could have entered "george washington`abraham lincoln" to
get the same highlighting even though the text in the terms are capitalized.
Another option is to select text in the document, right-click and select
Highlight Selection from the context menu. To turn highlighting off, just
click the _ tab in the sidebar.
Another advantage is that you can also click the
G for a
Google search of the terms or a V for a Vivisimo search of the terms, in
addition to highlighting the terms on all documents. Very convenient!
Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, and Other References
There are tabs on the second toolbar for more restricted searches.
To use this, enter terms in the textbox on the second toolbar, then click one or
more of the following tabs.
-
D - Define the word or phrase.
-
T - Look up synonyms and antonyms in
the thesaurus.
-
M - Look it up in the Microsoft
Encarta Encyclopedia.
-
C - Look it up in the Columbia
Encyclopedia.
You can use more than 1 reference at a time for the same terms.
Just click the tabs for the information that you want. Each page will download
in the background. If you use the same reference for more than 1 word or phrase,
then you can just press Enter after typing in the search terms to submit
that search.
The textbox can be quickly cleared, either by double-clicking in
it, or, if the textbox has focus, by pressing Esc.
You can also select any word or phrase in a document, right-click the document
to bring up the context menu, which includes most of the options in the second
toolbar that uses the textbox.
The Columbia Encyclopedia has more concise entries than Microsoft's
Encarta, but Encarta is more complete and better illustrated. Encyclopedia uses Microsoft's Encarta
Encyclopedia. Most of the major articles are available to nonsubscribers
(anything with a red asterisk beside it is restricted to subscribers). The
Columbia Encyclopedia is not as good as Encarta but all of the articles are
available and free of charge.
With this same context menu, you can also open an URL if the selected text is an
URL, highlight the selected text, or search for it using either Google or
Vivisimo.
Sidebar
- WebSpeedReader now has a new sidebar that displays all of the open
windows. There are several tabs in the toolbar directly above the top of the sidebar
and to the right of the textbox. The default tab is
∞
(for Links). This tab has the same
entries as the links bar that sits at the top of Internet Explorer. This lists
all of the links in the Links subfolder of the Favorites directory.
However, with WebSpeedReader's new bookmark manager (see details below), you
can now set any Favorites in the Links Bar by simply checking Quick Links
in the Add to Favorites ( |
A
| Shift+F6 ) dialog box. For links that
you already have saved as Favorites, simply select Organize Favorites ( ), select the links
that you want to edit, then select Edit. A new dialog box will be
loaded with all of the links that you selected, allowing you to edit each
entry easily. Click 1 or more links to download in the background. Press
Ctrl+click
to download the link in the current window.
- The W (W for Windows) tab shows all of the open windows in WebSpeedReader.
You can also see the open windows at the bottom of the Links Bar. (You
may have to scroll to see them, depending on how many quick links you have.) Black entries indicate the
beginning of a download; blue entries
indicate fully downloaded sites but not yet read, and red entries
are documents that have already been read. The current window is the
selected entry. Click on any link to go to the site immediately. Important
Note: WebSpeedReader limits the number of windows to minimize memory
use. You can adjust the number of windows by selecting from the menu. The default number is
50.
WebSpeedReader re-uses windows, so you do not have to close the window to
move to the next window. When more links have been clicked than the maximum
number of windows chosen, WebSpeedReader queues those links. As you read
each document and move to the next, a new document will be downloaded in the
window that you have just read. You will NOT see queued links in the
sidebar, because they are not actually loaded yet, and thus, don't belong to
a window. Note also, that WebSpeedReader only downloads 5 pages at a time so
that there are no time-out errors. So if you click on more than 5 links in
rapid succession, or choose one of the download links in the submenu
that downloads many links at a time, only 5 will download to begin with. As
each document completes downloading, the next document will start downloading,
and so on.
- Headings - The headings tab is symbolized by the special mark for
sections: §. Headings divide up a document into
sections, so this makes sense and is easily remembered. If you do forget, just
hover the mouse over it momentarily to read the tool tip. By clicking on
this tab, all of the headings in the current document will be displayed. You
can click on any heading, and the current document will scroll to that place
in the document. New headings will show if other documents are loaded or by
moving to different windows, until you select another tab. You can see a
demonstration of this simply by pressing F1 for Help.
You will see the headings in the sidebar automatically.
- F
H tabs - The F and
H tabs use the filter
box to the left of the tabs to filter your Favorites or History. Selecting the
F tab will display in the sidebar all Favorites that have the typed
characters in the keywords, title, or URL; selecting the H tab will
display all history entries with the typed characters in the title or URL.
Note, however, that nothing will be displayed if you elected not to maintain
history.
- Resize the sidebar by clicking in the sidebar to select it, then
pressing Alt+Right Arrow to increase its width or
Alt+Left Arrow
to decrease it, and WebSpeedReader will retain the width that you have chosen.
You can also close the window by unchecking View - Show Sidebar from
the menu. Show the sidebar again by checking the menu item.
Filling Forms
-
You can now automatically log onto any site or submit form data
automatically by saving the form data as a bookmark. (See Add to Favorites
Form Submissions, above.)
-
You can also save a list of items that can be added to any
textbox by right-clicking the textbox, and selecting the text from the popup
menu. The item will replace anything already there. To create the menu, just select from
the menu. In the textbox type any sort of information that you wish to have
available in separate lines. The first 120 characters of each line will appear as a caption in the
menu, but you can store any amount of information on any given line, and it
will be inserted if it is not limited by the textbox or textarea itself. You might want to include such info as first name, last name, full name,
etc. You can also easily include multiple identities, when you want to stay
anonymous. However, if a number of people are using WebSpeedReader in your
household, there is no need to add their identities, since the file that
stores the information is different for each user.
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