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Upgrade file for Windows 98 and ME: http://thisMatter.com/WebSpeedReader/Browser/wsrUpgrade.zip
Upgrade file for Windows 2000 and XP: http://thisMatter.com/WebSpeedReader/Browser/wsrUpgradeXP.zip
These files are little more than 300K, and will download in less than 1 minute even on a dial-up connection. Unzip the file, make sure that WebSpeedReader is NOT running, click on Setup.exe, and your new version of WebSpeedReader will appear almost instantly. You do NOT have to close any other programs or your Internet connection to install.
This page list all of what's new to WebSpeedReader since January 1, 2004. You can also read the archive of What's New to see all changes between April 28, 2002 and December 31, 2003. You can read this page to decide if you want to upgrade to a new edition of WebSpeedReader at any time. You can upgrade even if you are only in the trial phase. If you purchased the product, you can upgrade at any time at no additional cost! You can quickly access this page by selecting from the menu in WebSpeedReader. You can determine what version of WebSpeedReader you have by selecting from the menu.
You can read more detailed help, along with some screen shots, about new features in the new New Feature Help.
This version has minor fixes that include deselecting text after some action has been done on it, such as defining a word. The new website for WebSpeedReader is now located at http://thisMatter.com/WebSpeedReader/, and the new URLs have been incorporated into the Help submenu of WebSpeedReader.
A few bugs have been fixed. In addition, you can append selected HTML text to a research file, specifically wsrResearch.htm in My Documents\wsr folder. To load it easily add this page to your Favorites, and check the Quick Links checkbox so that it appears in the Quick Links list. Add an exclamation point to the front of the name so that it will be displayed at the top of the list—!wsrResearch.htm, or you can just rename the displayed title. This is somewhat primitive right now, but still useful. You use it by selecting any HTML text in any web page, right-click the selection, and choose from the context menu. It saves not only the selected html, but also the title and link of the page. If you select more text on the same page, it will just save the html. When you save new html on a new page, then that page's title and URL will appear as a link above the same fragment. This is a great way to save info for blogs. Right now, it just saves to the same file, so periodically you'll have to delete it. To do so, just display the wsrResearch.htm page in the browser, then select | Ctrl + D to delete the file. I'll soon upload a new version that will allow you to save to different files, or to a database. You can also add notes to the research file. Just type in a note, then right-click the new note button ¥ to add the note to the research file, and clear the note for new entries.
Minor Enhancements:
Bugs fixed, or at least ameliorated:
Fixed a bug with the most recent edition of WebSpeedReader that downloaded this page whenever an RSS link was clicked. A few other minor bugs have also been fixed.
On startup, and if connected to the Internet, WebSpeedReader automatically detects if the current version that you are using is the latest version. If not, then WebSpeedReader will load this page to show you what's new, and if you want to download the latest version, just click on the appropriate link at the top of this file.
The Sections tab and Notes tab have been moved to the top of the sidebar for faster access when modifying the view of the sidebar. A few other minor bugs have been fixed, also.
Bugs fixed:
Some bugs were fixed in this version, especially with regard to the current document losing focus when documents were downloading in the background.
Added 2 new references to the search bar and the context menu. The Wikipedia encyclopedia, found at http://wikipedia.org/ and Answers.com for other references that includes specialized dictionaries and encyclopedia articles. These references replace the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, which wasn't free, and the Vivisimo search engine. You can still search using Vivisimo by typing "v" followed by a space or "/" and the search terms in the address box, then pressing Enter to submit the search. If a space follows the beginning "v", then the search will be downloaded in the current window; a "/" causes the search results to be downloaded in a background window. Similarly, you can type "w" to submit the search to Wikipedia.org, or an "a" to submit the search terms to Answers.com. Thus, to search for the subject graffiti in the Wikipedia, you would type "w/graffiti", then press Enter to download the results in a background window.
Happy Holidays!
Sometimes WebSpeedReader would cycle between 2 windows rapidly, locking up the application. This has been fixed. Numerous other bugs have been fixed as well, including some focus problems.
You can now save all open windows as a group, or session, by select from the menu. You can list all groups in the sidebar by clicking the G tab at the top of the sidebar or selecting . Groups will also be displayed in the submenu. Simply load the group by clicking it. Groups are saved as a special folder in Favorites—!wsr\Groups. Therefore, you can rename either the group or the individual URLs in each group, delete the group or individual URLs in the group, move them around, or add to them by selecting from the menu. You can also look at only the groups by entering "\Groups\" in the filter box at the top of the Organize Favorites form.
Sometimes a document is too long to read in one sitting. Now you can select , to not only load the current page automatically when WebSpeedReader is started again, but to have it scrolled to the exact page position when you selected the command. If you don't want it scrolled, just select the command before you scroll down.
Bug Fixes - There are numerous bug fixes to this edition, most notably the multiple downloads of the same pages when opening selected links.
Most minor enhancements and bug fixes this edition, including a better Help file and a menu option to load the Start page.
Whenever a large number of links are selected for downloading at a time, WebSpeedReader only downloads 4 at a time to prevent server timing-out errors, and to download complete documents more quickly. The rest of the links are queued—they are downloaded as prior documents are downloaded or read. For someone who doesn't understand how WebSpeedReader works, clicking on the extra links would look like WebSpeedReader was not working in accepting the links, but it is. Now the queued links are displayed in the sidebar in a smaller font right below the open windows, so that the user knows that the links are being accepted for downloading. As they are downloaded, the displayed links will move from the queued link section to the open window section of the sidebar.
To find the current website's popularity and related links, as determined by Alexa, select from the menu. Alexa information will download in a background page.
Bug Fix:
Enhancements:
Bug Fixes:
If you have a lot of folders in your Favorites list, it can sometimes be difficult to find the right folder that you are looking for. Until now. Type in some characters in the Add to Favorites keywords textbox, and a list of all folders with those characters will appear below. Read the New Feature Help for more information and a screen shot.
Clicking the P tab right above the sidebar displays some information about the current page, which includes the document title, URL; the number of links, images, forms, and frames; the number of readable characters, words, and the approximate time to read them, and the cookie associated with the document's domain. This information will be displayed for each page downloaded in the current browser window or for each page as it becomes activated. Turn Page Info off by clicking one of the other sidebar tabs.
For some pages, using numpad 0 or numpad 1, or using the mouse wheel, to page down or up, scrolled the page too much. This has been fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it relates to how Internet Explorer treats some pages for backward compatibility, and some not.
If there are no home pages, or if you press the Shift key while starting up WebSpeedReader, then WebSpeedReader will load a start page that presents numerous other options, such as downloading scheduled pages, downloading the last session, viewing history if it is being maintained, or viewing or organizing Favorites. These options can also be selected from the menu or toolbar, but this adds convenience and more utility than just loading a blank page when the user pressed the Shift key.
Bug Fixes:
Windows Tip - You can change the Windows default mouse wheel scrolling of 3 lines by selecting . Note that this change takes effect in all applications that uses the Windows default scrolling.
Bug Fixes - With Windows XP SP2, there were focus problems with the popup blocker, preventing the scrolling of text, particularly in frames, and also preventing the use of other keyboard shortcuts.
For a long time, WebSpeedReader had the option of opening all links on a page, all internal links, all external links, and all selected links from the menu. Now you can select links on a page, then download all selected links by choosing from the context menu. Remember that you also can get Internet Explorer's context menu by Ctrl + right-clicking.
A new keyboard shortcut—Alt+Backspace—and a new menu item——has been added that displays the previous window.
Users sometimes go to the next document by mistake, and it was difficult to find the previous document, or it was replaced by a new document. This has been changed, so that the previous document is not replaced or unloaded right away, so that the user can immediately go back it. Just click the ◄ tab to the left of the address box, or press Numpad - to back to the previous window. You can select this command repeatedly to go back and forth quickly between 2 documents. If you press Numpad 5 to unload a form, the form will remain loaded, but its entry in the sidebar will have a line through it. This is so you can return to it if you pressed Numpad 5 by mistake. Once you move to yet another document, then it will be unloaded. Note that pressing the keys on the numeric keypad will only effect commands if you are not in an editing box, such as the address box, or a textbox or textarea in the document, which will then just input the characters.
Version 8.7.24 - The New Feature Help shows help for new features in reverse chronological order—the newer the feature, the closer it is to the top of the file. This makes it much easier for people who are already familiar with WebSpeedReader to read about the new features without scanning through the main help. To stay up to date, just keep reading until you get to familiar features. The new feature help begins with version 8.7.22. The New Feature Help also includes images for faster learning. (Images are not included in the main Help file to keep downloaded file sizes smaller.)
Bug Fix - Form submissions sometimes didn't work - A fix was introduced yesterday that prevented duplicate windows from links on poorly designed web pages. Unfortunately, this fix also prevented some form submissions, where clicking the Submit button did nothing. This fix still prevents duplicate windows, but also properly submits the forms.
Version 8.7.22 - WebSpeedReader now implements the Windows XP Service Pack 2 popup blocker, which can block many popups that couldn't be blocked before, most of which were HTML Dialog windows. When a popup is blocked you will hear the characteristic sound that IE makes when blocking a popup. WebSpeedReader uses the same settings as Internet Explorer. The popup blocker is on by default, but can be changed by selecting . Set the popup settings by selecting the Settings command button. The Popup Blocker Settings dialog box is self-explanatory. The default setting is to block most automatic popups, that are created by script, but allows popups that you specifically click. This is the best setting. You probably don't want to set it at the highest settings, which would block all popups, including links that you click on. There are many links on the web that are targeted to new windows, and these would be prevented unless you press the Ctrl key while clicking the link, and you wouldn't know to press the Ctrl key until you click the link and see that there is no navigation and you hear the sound (the sound can be turned off in the Popup Blocker Settings dialog box.) Thus, the highest setting would be a great inconvenience.
Duplicate Windows - Some poorly designed websites have links that cause the browser to navigate twice to the same page. When the pages are downloaded in the background as they are by default in WebSpeedReader mode or Research mode, the double navigation causes 2 of the same pages to be downloaded into separate windows. The reason why these links work in Internet Explorer or if WebSpeedReader is in Tabbed Browser mode is because the second navigation replaces the first in the same window, but it does slow the downloading of the page by causing the browser to navigate to the same page twice. WebSpeedReader now prevents this double navigation.
In the Add to Favorites form, a new checkbox for RSS feeds and other XML files has been added. Checking this box will enable WebSpeedReader to download and display these files much faster. All Favorites that are so checked can be displayed in the sidebar by clicking the X tab at the top of the sidebar. (Mnemonic: X = XML) If you already have Favorites for XML files, simply edit the Favorite and check the RSS Feed box. To download RSS feeds or OPML files from the sidebar, just click the desired links. Each link will be downloaded in a background page. RSS feeds can also be scheduled just like any other web page in WebSpeedReader, or they can be downloaded as a group. Thus, you could put all of your computer feeds into a folder called Computers, mark it as a Quick Folder, then click that folder in the sidebar to download all RSS feeds in that folder.
The new browsing modes added recently to WebSpeedReader now can be changed with the menu (). A few minor bugs with the browsing modes have been fixed.
AI RoboForm is a well-regarded forms managing software for managing forms and passwords in web pages for Internet Explorer and various other browsers that use Internet Explorer. When AI RoboForm is running, which is indicated by its icon in the taskbar, it can greatly slow down some operations in any browser using Internet Explorer, including WebSpeedReader and Internet Explorer itself, at least in Windows XP; operations that seem to be affected includes trying to select text with the mouse, and right-clicking for the context menu. The effect seems to be contingent on the size of the page. The delay in pages 50K or larger is noticeable. The larger the page, the greater the slowdown. This has been tested in Window XP with AI RoboForm 6.0.8, which, according to its website, is currently the latest version. This effect can be eliminated by unloading AI RoboForm (click its icon in the taskbar, then select Exit). To prevent its startup when Windows starts, click its icon, select Options, and uncheck Show RoboForm Icon in Taskbar on Windows Startup at the bottom of the General tab. The slowdown may be related to the active searching for forms on each web page, and may be ameliorated with different optional settings. Read AI RoboForm's help for more information.
Version 8.7.4 - As the Link Checker checks links, it displays most of the information associated with each link record directly in the link checking page. Each link displayed in the page now has an Edit button as well as a Delete button. Clicking the Edit button displays the link's record in the Add to Favorites form for editing. Some sample records are displayed below:
PCWorld.com - Home
http://www.pcworld.com
Downloads: 59 Last Download: 9/20/2004 1:47:38 AM Date Created: 1/19/2004 4:54:20 AM
FitnessOnline.com - Exercise Health Nutrition Advice Weight Loss
http://www.fitnessonline.com
Description: FitnessOnline.com - expert advice on exercise programs, diets, weight loss, muscle gain, vitamins, supplements & strength training. Visit chat rooms for Men & Women. Magazine articles & fitness tools.
Document Keywords: Shape Fit Pregnancy Menís Fitness Muscle and Fitness Flex Natural Health Magazines Fitness Nutrition Body Health Better Health Lose Weight Overweight Underweight Tone Up Get in Shape Out of Shape Weight Loss Diets Fats Foods Recipes Body Mass Index BMI Abs Thighs Butt Tone Toning Calories Pectorals Pecs Biceps Bodybuilding Weightlifting Workouts Six Packs Abdominal Exercises Strength training Weight Training Workout Programs Stamina Energy Energize Healthy Eating Nutritional Supplements Vitamins Protein Supplements Sports Nutrition Building Muscles Herbs Herbal Remedies Pregnant Pregnancy Pregnancy Exercises Pregnancy Fitness Mental Health Sexuality Family Families Relationships BMI Calculators Calculate Ideal Weight Sleep Adventures Activity Activities Fitness Online Fitnessonline Self Help Weider Publications
Downloads: 0 Last Download: Never Date Created: 8/6/2004 1:41:08 PM
The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau
http://www.thoreau.niu.edu
Description: Extensive site devoted to the writings, philosophy, life of Henry David Thoreau; created by The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, definitive edition of Thoreau's works, directed by Elizabeth Hall Witherell. Contains biography, bibliography, research and manuscript material, links to related sites (on American literature, Transcendentalism, nature writing, natural history, environment).
Document Keywords: Henry D. Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau, Henry Thoreau, H.D. Thoreau, The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, The Thoreau Edition, Elizabeth Hall Witherell, Thoreau bibliography, Thoreau biography, Thoreau correspondence, Thoreau FAQ, Thoreau handwriting, Thoreau manuscripts, Thoreau Journal, Cape Cod, Early Essays and Miscellanies, Excursions, The Maine Woods, Journal 1: 1837-1844, Journal 2: 1842-1848, Journal 3: 1848-1851, Journal 4: 1851-1852, Journal 5: 1852-1853, Journal 6: 1853, Journal 7: 1853-1854, Journal 8: 1854, Journal 9: 1854
Downloads: 1 Last Download: 5/26/2004 4:12:15 AM Date Created: 4/24/2004 2:00:53 AM
Downloads: 1 Last Download: 5/26/2004 4:12:15 AM Date Created: 10/21/2002 2:10:42 AM
571 Keywords: PoliticsEdit Delete
Downloads: 57 Last Download: 9/20/2004 1:47:38 AM Date Created: 1/16/2004 3:05:54 AM
iteam5.net - francesco passantino - Atom Client in ASP
http://www.iteam5.net/francesco/atom
Description: addestramento del personale, basi dati, claudio lo piccolo, client server, commercio elettronico, comunicazione multimediale, daniele costa, desk research, documentazione tecnica, formazione a distanza, francesco passantino, franz vozza, hot line, maggio marco, marco maggio, marco maggio palermo, maggio marco palermo, market research, marketing on line, mobile business, new economy, off site, office automation, on line, on site, portatile, ricerca di mercato, ripristino software, salvataggio software, secur
Document Keywords: amministratore, amministratori, apparecchiature, asp, assemblaggio, assistenza, avviamento, aziendale, business, collaudo, computer, concerto, conoscenza, consulenti, consulenza, datamining, dati, ecommerce, education, esercitazioni, esperienza, esperto, geomarketing, helpdesk, imprenditore, informatica, informazione, informazioni, innovazione, installazione, internet, intranet, inventario, investimenti, italia, iteam5, logica, palermo, palmari, passione, pc, pda, periferiche, prestazioni, professionista, p
Downloads: 0 Last Download: Never DateCreated: 6/9/2004 3:02:48 PM
The link checking page shows all of your Favorites like in the above sample. When it encounters a link of questionable status, then some of the information is displayed in red; if there was no response, then the record is displayed in green. Click the Delete link to delete the link. When a link is deleted, it actually is stored in the folder Deleted in Favorites. If you want to undelete it, then just select from the menu. Go to the Deleted folder, and move the deleted links where you want them. However, once WebSpeedReader is closed, the deleted links will then be permanently deleted.
| ! | r |
Note, however, that each link record shows you the previous status code. This is to help you determine whether the error status is temporary or permanent. Even 2 error codes doesn't mean that the site is no longer available, but it does increase the likelihood that the status is permanent. Remember, too, that you can click any of these links, which will download automatically in the background, if you are in WebSpeedReader mode—the default—or Research mode. Then, as you examine each page, the Edit and Delete toolbar buttons will appear in the top toolbar (you can see them displayed in the upper-left corner of this paragraph—hover the mouse over them to see the tooltips), allowing you to easily edit the Favorite, or delete it right there. Deleting the Favorite will then automatically display the next document. This is a very quick and convenient way to go through a lot of Favorites that may not be your favorite anymore, and deleting them.
Do not, however, edit or delete links while the link checker is running. When it is running, it is best to minimize WebSpeedReader, and work on something else that doesn't require Internet access. Sometimes, WebSpeedReader will seem to hang as it is checking a link—indeed, Windows might even report that the application is not responding—however, just give it a few minutes. It will come back to life again! Another reason why it is best just to minimize the application. After link checking is done, a short menu will appear in the sidebar that will allow you to see all Favorites, which is what it will 1st display, or to see just the questionable Favorites, which greatly reduces the number to examine, although because of color-coding, it is easy enough to pick out the questionable links from the good links which are displayed in black, as you see in the above sample.
Version 8.7 - To optimize WebSpeedReader for different tasks, 3 different modes of operation have been introduced.
The mode is changed by clicking a tab in the top toolbar. Each click of the tab moves to the next mode, and the modes are arranged circularly thus: WebSpeedReader mode → Research mode → Tabbed Browser mode → WebSpeedReader mode. The mode is indicated by the letter in the tab: W R T. The mode can also be changed by pressing Numeric keypad: 9.
You can now specify any number for the maximum number of windows that can be opened at 1 time in the Options page, except that the number must be > 4, because some allowances have to be made for links that are targeted to new window.
In WebSpeedReader mode, you rarely have to close windows, because the windows are re-used as the documents in the windows are read. Research mode and Tabbed Browser mode will generally require more closings of windows, and so 2 new shortcuts have been added to make it easier.
Mnemonic: Remember that in WebSpeedReader mode and Research mode, clicking a link downloads that link in the background, and right-clicking a link downloads the link in the same window. The opposite is true for Tabbed Browser mode—clicking a link downloads the link in the same window; right-clicking it downloads the link in the background. This may seem confusing at first, but you will see—if you take the time to learn it and become accustomed to it—that the different modes are most expedient for different situations.
Version 8.6.98 - RSS pages that were downloaded by clicking a Favorite were not showing the Edit, Delete this Favorite buttons when it became the active document even though it was a Favorite.
The Check Links feature now checks the links a little bit slower to allow enough time for some servers to respond, thus making it more reliable.
| ! | r |
Version 8.6.96 - There were times, like after adding a Favorite, that the Edit this Favorite and Delete this Favorite buttons weren't showing even though the current web page was a Favorite.
Version 8.6.86 - There is a serious bug that was recently introduced that causes WebSpeedReader to crash when Favorites is loaded. If this happens to you, the database for Favorites has become corrupted. You need to download this new version, and delete the WebSpeedReader Application Data directory, which is typically located at C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\Application Data\WebSpeedReader. Be sure to substitute <your username> with your actual username, which may be Owner for many systems. This version of WebSpeedReader will recreate the directory with new databases when it is run. If you can load the Favorites form successfully, then you don't need to do any of this. You will most likely encounter this problem only if you have installed WebSpeedReader for the first time within the last couple of weeks. You will not have this problem if you only installed upgrades within the last couple of weeks. I apologize for this problem.
Version 8.6.84 - Some of the less common fonts have been changed to more common fonts, so that the correct characters are displayed on more systems. Minor style improvements have also been made.
Version 8.6.80 - You can now hide the Links Bar and show only the Windows Bar in the sidebar by pressing W or NumLock+6. Note that, like all short-cut keys that don't use Ctrl or Alt, this works only when not in a textbox or textarea; in those cases, the keys become just regular keys, placing the appropriate character in the edit field.
Removed the record navigation menu from the Add to Favorites form, since it was not needed when just adding to Favorites rather than editing more than 1.
Version 8.6.78 - When the Favorites form is loaded, and the user selected Show 1st Level or Show All from the context menu, WebSpeedReader crashed. This has been fixed. A few minor enhancements have also been added to this edition.
Version 8.6.76 - All of the forms in WebSpeedReader have been redone for a much better look, more help, and Windows XP Themes support. Note that everything is now saved in Unicode. If you have saved a forms filler file, selecting from the menu, you may see bizarre characters. You can delete the characters and type in the information again, or you can load your old forms data file (on most systems, it would be located at C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Application Data\WebSpeedReader\FormData.txt. Substitute <Username> with your username; on many systems, it will be Owner) by clicking on it in Windows Explorer, which will load the text into default text editor, in most cases it will be Notepad. Press Ctrl+A to select all of the text. Open the Edit Form Data form, then press Ctrl+V to paste the text into the form. Click OK to save the changes.
A few minor bugs have been fixed, and the history is displayed much faster when selected.
Version 8.6.52 - Select to load the new Options page. The new page has a better look, but more importantly, it now has all of the help directly on the page. Thus, you can read the help directly below the option, and set it accordingly. You can toggle Help on or off for the whole page by pressing F1. You can toggle the Help for any individual item by right-clicking the label for that item. The page is saved simply by unloading the form. You can clear any textbox by pressing F5 or by double-clicking it. Setting options has never been easier!
Version 8.6.35 - Select to learn what particular version of WebSpeedReader that you currently have. Although you could check before by loading Quick Help, this is more intuitive and standard. The message box is convenient because you close it by clicking anywhere, either in the message box or outside it.
A bug has been fixed, where under certain circumstances, the drop-down menu for the address box would not appear.
Version 8.6.27 - When a user tries to log onto Ebay, Ebay gives an error message that the browser is not accepting cookies, and suggests various ways of changing it. However, it is not a cookie problem, because not only does WebSpeedReader use the same cookies and settings as Internet Explorer, it stores them in the same place. Furthermore, you can find the Ebay cookie in the Cookies subfolder in Windows. This is a problem with Ebay's programming, which seems to be using programming that is conditional on the user agent string in trying to retrieve the cookie, even though getting and setting cookies is standardized (See the HTTP State Management Mechanism specification at http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2109/rfc2109), and thus, does not require consideration of the user agent. Nonetheless, this edition fixes that problem.
Version 8.6.25 - In WebSpeedReader, when a user clicks a link that downloads right away, the user would hear the same sound that Internet Explorer makes when a link is clicked; however, if the link was queued, the user would hear nothing. This has been changed so that even if the clicked link is queued, the user will hear the usual sound to provide feedback that the click was successful.
A few minor bugs have been fixed in this edition.
Version 8.6.21 - Under certain circumstances, selecting Add to Favorites would cause WebSpeedReader to crash. A few other minor bugs have been fixed in this edition as well.
Version 8.6.17 - The Add to Favorites form has been redone so that it looks better and fully supports Unicode. Numerous bugs have been fixed in this edition, including narrowing the initial width of the sidebar. The sidebar can be resized by clicking on it, then pressing Alt+Left Arrow to decrease the size and Alt+Right Arrow to increase it. Make sure that the mouse pointer stays inside the sidebar or it will lose focus. If that happens, just click on the sidebar again, and continue.
Version 8.6 - The new address box is now fully Unicode-enabled, and comes with autocomplete. Type in any part of an URL, and the drop-down box will display all matches from your Favorites. Select any match to download in the current browser window. You can select an entry by clicking it, or by using the keyboard.
If there are no matches, just continue typing, and the window will disappear after there are no matches. You can also continue typing to reduce the number of matches for quicker access. To select a match, you can press Tab or ↓ to select the 1st entry. If there is only 1 entry, then WebSpeedReader will navigate to that URL right away. If there are more entries, you can continue to press either key to go down 1 line at a time. You can also press Page Up or Home to go to the 1st entry, or Page Down or End to go to the last entry. Press ↑ to move up 1 line at a time. Once the desired entry is highlighted, just press Enter, ←, or → to navigate to that page.
The autocomplete window will display a maximum of 25 entries to make it easier to choose. If there are more than 25 matches, then the autocomplete window will not be displayed until the number of matches <= 25.
You can set focus to the address box either by clicking it, or pressing Shift + Ins. You can clear the address box when it has focus by pressing F4.
History - The drop-down list, which can be displayed by clicking q right next to the address box will show all history entries from all windows. Remember also, that you can check all loaded windows in the sidebar, and you can get a more complete picture of all documents by displaying the WebSpeedReader Report.
Tip: Type that part of the URL that will yield the fewest matches for quicker choosing. If there is only 1 match, just press Tab to go to that page.
Contrast: You can also filter Favorites in the sidebar by typing in the Filter box above the sidebar with the F tab selected. The advantages to doing it this way, is that all matches will be displayed, clicking the links will download the URLs in the background, and you can click as many links as you like. The Favorites list will stay open until you replace it with something else. Also the typed characters are matched not only against the URL, but also against the title, document keywords, and document description. Because this takes increased processing power, the list will only be displayed after you press Enter.
Version 8.5.12 - RSS, RDF, and OPML file are now saved to disk before being displayed, making it easy to go back. Also fixed a bug that prevented the download of more than 1 RSS, RDF, or OPML file per page. Sometimes, when displaying the History page, WebSpeedReader would lock up when it encountered illegal characters in text areas such as document descriptions and keywords. This has been fixed. The readability of the Help file has been improved, and numerous minor bugs have been fixed.
Version 8.5.8 - Fixed a few bugs regarding the display of RSS and OPML files. Also added highlighting for most of the toolbar buttons.
Version 8.5
There are 3 new toolbar buttons at the top concerning forms: The 1st button—0 | Ctrl + 0—resets all of the forms on the current document. The 2nd button—- | Ctrl + -— saves the form data to a database. This data is NOT ENCRYPTED presently! So don't save any confidential information if security is a concern! Thus, you can fill out the information that you want to save, then save the data, then fill out any more fields that you didn't want saved, or that changes with each submission. The 3rd button—= | Ctrl + =—will fill any form field that it recognizes. It works by first comparing the document's URL with any in its database. If it recognizes any fields associated with the current URL, it fills it in with that information. If the URL is new, then it will search its records for any form field name that it has stored previously. It will fill any fields where it can find a match. If it happens to fill in a field with the wrong information, then you can double-click it to clear it and set focus to it to enter what you want. The advantage of associating the URL with the form data is not only better accuracy, but also allows you to use aliases on different sites, which some people do to protect their privacy. As you use it more, it should become more accurate, even on new sites. This will continually be improved, so look for updates.
Tip: Remember, you can also log onto any password-protected site or submit a form without even going to the page with 1 click, if you saved it previously as a Favorite. You can also fill any form field with a context menu of any information that you desire. And you can clear any form field and set focus to it by double-clicking it. Read the Help for more details.
There have been many minor improvements and bug fixes to this edition.
Version 8.4.37
Added the Internet Movie Database, both to the main search page and as an address bar search. To download search results in the current window, for instance, type in the address box "i Dodgeball"; to download in the background: "i/Dodgeball".
It is now easier to copy any note to a form field. Just select the note, click the Copy Note to Clipboard tab, and then right-click the form field where you want to paste the note, and select from the context menu.
Version 8.4.33
Search from the address bar - You can now search using the address box any of 16 search engines. You can also choose to download the search results in the current window or in a background window. Each search engine is designated by the 1st character (case insensitive) in the address box. You can follow that character by either a space or by the forward slash (/), and then your search terms. If you use the space, the download will occur in the current window; if you use /, then the search results will be loaded in a background page.
Example: to search Amazon's A9 for "business", type "9 business", then press Enter, to download in the current window, or "9/business" to download in the background. Downloading in the background is beneficial when you want to keep reading the current document, or you want to search more than once.
These are the current search engines:
| 1 | Firstgov | Search for United States government information. |
| 9 | A9 | Amazon's new A9 search engines that also searches books. |
| a | Audio - AltaVista | Search for audio files. |
| d | Dogpile | A good meta-search engine. |
| e | Ebay | Search the biggest auction site. |
| f | Froogle | Google's comparison shopping service. |
| g | Google - 'nuff said. | |
| i | Internet Movie Database | Search here to find out anything about movies, actors, actresses, etc. |
| j | Ask Jeeves | Another good search engine. |
| l | Law | Search for things legal using Findlaw. |
| m | MSN | Microsoft's search engine. |
| n | News | Search Google news. |
| o | Find Articles | LookSmart's search engine for articles. |
| p | Pictures | Search for images using Google. |
| v | Vivisimo | This search engine clusters search results into categories. |
| y | Yahoo | Another great search engine. |
Right-click a link to download in the current window - WebSpeedReader downloads clicked links in the background, so that you can continue reading. You can right-click the link to download in the current window. Read the Help for many more options.
A few minor bugs have been fixed in this release.
Version 8.4.29
The font size for the sidebar has been increased to 10 points, making it more readable, which keeping it small enough to display a lot of information. The Help file has also been enhanced.
Version 8.4.25
Bugs:
Enhancements:
Version 8.4.19
If WebSpeedReader downloads a page in the background that has script that sets focus to one of its elements, it can cause WebSpeedReader to lock up. Download this version to fix this. Also, sometimes the status bar was not displaying the correct window number or total number of windows. Both of these problems have been fixed.
Enhancements:
Version 8.4.13
New Feature and Enhancements:
| 1 |
| t | Z | < , | Shift + F12 | ||
| u | X | > . | F12 | Ÿ Del | |
Scroll Lock key on. If you are editing a document or form, the keys will work as usual. When browsing, then certain keys will have a special function to make browsing much easier. The new short-cuts are for moving to the next or previous windows. These have been added for notebook users, who may not have a numeric keypad. Note that, because the X key is now being used to move to the next document, you can no longer close windows by holding down the X key while clicking on them. You can still close all read windows or all windows except current from the context menu on the Windows section of the sidebar.
Mnemonic: Next Window is a frequent command, so there are several keys that select it. The X and . have been selected because they are close to the space bar. Thus, you can easily page down with the space bar and select next by pressing the X or the . , depending on whether you want to use your left or right hand. This feature is particularly useful if you are using a notebook computer without a numeric keypad. Naturally, the keys to go to the previous window are to the left of the Next Window keys. If you have a numeric keypad, you will probably find it most convenient to use the 0 to page down and the . to move to the next document.
If you have a lot of documents downloading in the background, the space bar sometimes doesn't page down—click the document to regain focus, or just press the Space Bar again.
Bug Fixes:
Version 8.4
Quick Folders are your favorite folders that can be displayed in the sidebar by clicking the
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tab on the toolbar above the address box. Clicking on any folder downloads all links in that folder. You can designate any folder in your Favorites as a Quick Folder. Adding and removing links is the same as you would add and remove links in any folder in the Favorites form. You can also quickly add any current page to a Quick Folder by right-clicking the folder and selecting . You can also remove a folder from the Quick Folder list using the same context menu. Click here to see the Quick Folders entry in the online Help file for more information.
Enhancements:
Bug Fixes:
Version 8.3.31
Enhancements:
Bug Fixes:
Version 8.3.21
Enhancements:
Bug Fixes:
Version 8.3.17
To conserve memory, WebSpeedReader re-uses windows to download more documents as they are read. To prevent a page from being replaced, you could toggle Keep in Memory for a particular window, but oftentimes a user would forget to do this. The Keep in Memory toggle now not only toggles the Keep in Memory property, but it also displays the next document, thereby eliminating an extra move. Therefore, the user can use this to move to the next document and preserve the page that was just read. Accordingly, you should not select this feature until you are done with the page for the moment. There are several other possibilities for preventing a page from being replaced as well. Read the Help file for more details.
A few minor bugs have been fixed in this release.
Version 8.3.11
Enhancements:
The toolbar buttons Edit and Delete this Favorite have been added to the top toolbar. If the page that you are currently viewing is a Favorite then you can edit or delete the Favorite right away by clicking on the appropriate button. Clicking the Delete tab will delete the Favorite and move to the next document, although the deleted Favorite document will still remain in memory. (Important Note: these toolbar buttons will NOT BE VISIBLE unless the current page was a Favorite that you clicked on. This includes anything from the Quick Links or Scheduled Links sidebar.)
Tip: an easy way to get rid of Favorites that you never use is to View Favorites, then click a folder to download all Favorites in that folder, or Ctrl + click a folder to download all Favorites in that folder and all subfolders. Then view each page in WebSpeedReader. If you want to keep the Favorite, just select the next document. If you don't want it, simply Delete the Favorite by clicking on the toolbar button, and this will move you to the next document automatically. You can continue to do this until you have reviewed all of the Favorites that you downloaded. You can also edit any Favorite to add notes or to change the title, description, keywords, or anything else.
Bug Fixes:
) that you want to read, just click on it, and read it like any other page on the Internet. Load this page, http://www.extremetech.com/article2/1,3973,869830,00.asp into WebSpeedReader, and click on the various links that you see on the page. Read the articles that explain RSS and its history. Be amazed at how much faster the XML pages download than the corresponding home pages of the sites! And when you download these pages, click the § tab in WebSpeedReader to display the headings in the sidebar. Click on any heading to go that entry immediately. Numerous bugs have been fixed in this edition, and the user interface has been made more intuitive. The document can now be scrolled down more reliably by pressing the space bar .
| ¦ | Append current date to note. |
| T | Append title of current document. |
| U | Append URL of current document. |
| ¥ | New note. Save the current note, if any. |
| r | Delete note. |
| 56 | Hide or show note links. |
Below these tabs are the links to any note that you have saved previously. Click on the link to display the note. Right-click any note, and select to delete the note. You can select text on the current web pages, right-click on the document for the context menu, and select . You can do this even if the notes area is not displayed! Read the help for more information about this new feature.
Serious Bug Fix: A serious bug caused WebSpeedReader to crash when the user tried to change the size of the sidebar. In addition to numerous minor bug fixes, this has been fixed.
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.
These tabs are directly to the right of the tabs for searching and highlighting. 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.
Headings Displayed in Outline Form - WebSpeedReader can display in its sidebar the headings of any current document. Just click the § tab to display the headings. It can now display these headings in outline mode, where H2 - H6 headings are displayed with increasing indentations. H1 headings are not indented at all. You can see an example of this simply by pressing F1 to load the Quick Help. As before, you can click any heading to go to that heading in the document instantly. As the current document changes, any headings will be displayed in the sidebar until you click another tab. Clicking the W tab, for instance, will close the headings tab, and just display all the open windows.
Note: many documents on the web don't have any headings, so the Headings block may not show anything for the document. The Headings sidebar is best for long documents that have actual headings.
A few bugs related to the sidebar and the tabs have been fixed. There was also a minor change. The tab for highlighting terms has been changed to U, for underscore, since H is being used for History. The highlighting still works the same way. The H tab will filter the history list, restricting the list to any entry that has the characters in the textbox in the title, URL, description, or keywords. If history is being displayed, then it will display the list in the main document, but if history isn't being displayed, then the list will be displayed in the sidebar. If history is not being maintained, then nothing will be displayed in either View - View History or trying to filter the history list, since there will be no list.
One excellent advantage of using WebSpeedReader with these sources, is that you will see many cross references. You can click as many as you like, as you read. WebSpeedReader will download them in the background while you continue reading.
Bug Fixes and Changes
The last 4 menu items can also be selected by clicking the appropriate menu item in Navigation - Windows Management.
Note: although you have several options to close windows, you don't have to, and in most cases, shouldn't. Unlike tabbed browsers, WebSpeedReader re-uses those windows, replacing read documents with new ones when you move to a new window, thereby eliminating the need to close windows.
There have been a few minor bug fixes with this version, the most notable is that terms can be highlighted in any frame as well.
Highlight search terms - (Important Note: a few details have been changed, so this entry has been modified to reflect those changes.) 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 the H tab to highlight the text; click it again to stop highlighting. 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 search box at the top of the sidebar "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 are 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 in the text the terms are capitalized.
Note: This feature takes some processing power, so if you are highlighting many terms in a long document, or very common terms, it could take several seconds or more to see the effect. So when you are done with highlighting, be sure to turn it off by clicking the H tab again. If you want to highlight new terms, click the H tab to turn it off, enter new terms in the search box, then click the H tab again to highlight the new terms.
Bugs:
If you want to display all links in any particular folder and its subfolders in your Favorites in the sidebar, then add an "\" as the first character of your filter text. This will display only those Favorites that have those keywords (foldernames). Example: typing "blog" + Enter in the filter box (2nd textbox at the top of the sidebar) will display any Favorites that has "blog" in the keywords, title, or URL. However, typing "\blog" will display only those Favorites that have the word blog in the Keywords field. Thus, if you have 3 folders named "Blogs", "Law\Blogs", "Writing\Blogs", then filtering with "\blog" will display all Favorites from those 3 folders. Of course, you can enter "Writing\Blogs" to list all Favorites under those keywords, but the backslash restricts the search to keywords.
Important Bug Fix - WebSpeedReader was not downloading some pages scheduled for a given weekday, such as Monday or Sunday, or the second Wednesday of each month, for instance, when it was the appropriate day. This has been fixed.
Minor Fix - Sometimes when going to a Microsoft site, it displays a warning that you need Internet Explorer to view its pages properly. WebSpeedReader uses IE for displaying web pages, and thus, can display any page Internet Explorer can display, but the user-agent is modified when going to a Microsoft site so that Microsoft's website recognizes WebSpeedReader as Internet Explorer.
The zoom setting will remain in effect until it is changed. WebSpeedReader retains the value between sessions.
Note: WebSpeedReader maintains its own history list. Therefore, filtering the history list will show few or no results when you first start using it.
Bug Fixes
1. View source wasn’t displaying source code properly.
2. Selecting a website from the popular list sometimes didn’t work.
3. Re-enabled day of week schedule, when changing from home, weekday, or daily schedule.
4. View source wasn’t showing the source for iframes.
For earlier changes, you can read the archive of What's New.
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