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WebSpeedReader and Internet Explorer
Quick StartUsing WebSpeedReaderOpening LinksEntering URLs manually.Form FillingNavigating in Framed Pages - Submitting Forms - Open In Same Window
SearchingText SizeWebSpeedReader OptionsMenu Item DescriptionsToolbarWebSpeedReader requires Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 5 or above, and Windows 98 or above, and scripting must be enabled.
Although WebSpeedReader uses the full power of Internet Explorer 5 or above, it doesn't make any changes to IE.
WebSpeedReader maintains separate options and files for each user, thus each member of a household can use WebSpeedReader without interfering with anyone else.
Because WebSpeedReader uses Internet Explorer as its rendering engine, the options set in Internet Explorer (in IE, select Tools - Internet Options from the top menu) apply to WebSpeedReader. This includes security and cookie settings, and the home page.
The shortcut menu, which is brought up by right-clicking on a web page in Internet Explorer is the same. Both the home and search button work similarly in IE and WebSpeedReader.
This is the help file. It is one document that you can read just like a book, or instantly access any portion of it by using the Help submenu, or the table of content links directly above this section. (The table of contents can also be accessed anytime within this document by pressing the Home key. Press Enter to return to where you were, or click on a link to go directly to that section.) It is important that you read at least this section to understand how WebSpeedReader works, since it works a bit differently than most other browsers.
WebSpeedReader downloads most pages in the background. Thus, when you click a link, it doesn't seem to be doing anything, but it is. You just don't see it yet. WebSpeedReader automatically downloads all pages in the background so that you can keep reading the current page. Then when you go to the next page, in most cases, it will display instantly, images and all. Keep your eye on the status bar as you use WebSpeedReader, since it displays a lot of information about what it is doing.
To conserve memory, WebSpeedReader uses only a certain number of windows. The default is 12, but you can specify a different number that must be greater than 1 and less than 50, by selecting Tools - WebSpeedReader Options (Alt+T,W) from the menu. Open the WebSpeedReader Options dialog box now to see what it looks like.
If you click on more links or schedule more pages than the available windows, WebSpeedReader will queue the links for later downloading, thereby removing any limitation on the number of links you can click, or the number of pages that you can schedule. As you read each document, and move to the next, the next queued link will be downloaded in the window that you just read. This conserves memory. If there are no more links to be downloaded, then selecting Next repeatedly will take you back through the currently loaded pages.
Note: You can select Next 4 different ways: (1) Click on the rightmost toolbar button: u ; (2) press F12 on the keyboard; (3) menu: Navigation - Next Window (Alt+N,X); (4) if the scroll lock key is on, then you can press the decimal point on the numeric keypad. Although you can, DO NOT CLOSE WINDOWS to move to the next document, unless a document is giving you a problem, because WebSpeedReader reuses the windows to conserve memory. After you finish reading a page and move to the next document, WebSpeedReader downloads a new document in the window that you just left. As you continue selecting Next, you will eventually come back to the same window, but it will have a new document. There are 2 important points to remember about Next: (1) WebSpeedReader takes you to fully downloaded documents first, which may not be in the order that you clicked them, since some documents download faster than others. However, priority is given to clicked links over scheduled pages, or multiple download options such as OpenLinks - Download All Links on This Page. If all windows are already loaded with scheduled pages, then clicked links will be at the top of the queue. They will be loaded next as each window becomes available, in the order that you clicked them. (2) You don't have to wait until pages are downloaded to go to the next document. If no document is finished downloading, then WebSpeedReader will simply present the next document. If you want to go through the windows sequentially, regardless of download status, then press Ctrl+F6.
To go back to a previous document in the current session that is no longer loaded, select View - WebSpeedReader Report. While you can click the Back toolbar button to go back through the history list of any given window, or look at the drop-down menu of the address bar, this will only take you through the history of the current window. Generally, you will not know which document appeared in which window, so the back button will not be useful in most cases. By loading the WebSpeedReader Report, you can look at the history of all windows, and see all currently loaded documents, and all queued documents. To return to a document no longer in memory, just click the link, and it will be reloaded in a background window. If you click on a link that is already loaded, you will be taken to that window immediately. If you anticipate that you will be returning to a page, you can keep that page in memory by selecting Navigation - Keep in Memory from the menu, or clicking K on the toolbar. You can also access this page, as well as any other loaded page, by clicking on its title in the Window submenu, which maintains a list of all loaded documents.
The fastest way to get started using WebSpeedReader is to load the Start Page (Menu: Navigation - Start Page; Toolbar: 1), if it is not already loaded. This page has all of your Favorites on 1 page. Click the Favorites links that you want to schedule. Remember, clicked links download in the background; therefore, you can click as many links as you want, and still remain on the same page.
Note: If you click on a link, and WebSpeedReader downloads the page in the background right away, you will generally hear the navigational sound that Internet Explorer makes when a link is clicked, but if the link is queued for later downloading, then you will not hear this sound.
As you cycle through the windows to read each document, WebSpeedReader will load the next URL in the queue to replace the one you have just read. By loading URLs this way, you can click as many links as you like, or schedule any number of pages without worrying about running out of memory or bandwidth.
Although clicked links 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). If you want to scroll in a particular frame, you have to click the frame first, to select it, then you can scroll it, if it is longer than 1 screen.
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.
Cold Fusion pages, those that end in .cfm (which may be followed by a ?and submitted data), are, to prevent errors, also downloaded in the same window if the current page is also a cold fusion page.
Navigation in the same window can also be selected by activating the Open In Same Window option (Menu: File - Open In Same Window; Keyboard shortcut: F2 ; toolbar button: S), causing all navigation to occur in the same window, just as it does in Internet Explorer. If you click a link, however, whose target frame is a new window, then that navigation will occur in a background window.
If you are having any problems that might be due to WebSpeedReader, or you want to take advantage of 3rd-party software that only works in Internet Explorer, you can easily load any current page in Internet Explorer quickly (Menu: Navigation - Load in IE; Keyboard shortcut: F8; Toolbar button: L ).
You will find that reading web pages is much faster with WebSpeedReader than with any other browser, including tabbed browsers, not only because you can schedule the pages, but also because all clicked links, with the exceptions noted above, download in the background automatically, without the need to shift-click, allowing you to continue reading the current page. You go from 1 page to the next by pressing the F12 key, or clicking on the rightmost toolbar button. Note, however, that when you move to the next document, it may not be in the order in which you clicked it. This is because some pages download faster than others, and WebSpeedReader, in selecting the next page to be read, chooses fully downloaded pages first, for obvious reasons. Remember that you can also use the Window submenu or the sidebar to access any page in any order.
Sometimes, however, you come across an article that is divided into several pages. In most of these cases, all of the links to these pages are near the top of the introductory page. If you have other pages to read, and you want to read the current article sequentially, then the best thing to do, is not read the current introductory article right away. Instead, click on each of the links that compose the article, including the current one. Or select all of the links by highlighting them with the mouse, then choosing File - Open All Selected Links. Then WebSpeedReader will present the articles, once you reach the 1st in the series, in the order that you clicked them. You will find, however, as I have, that reading different parts of an article interspersed with other articles that you have downloaded already is not as confusing as it might first seem, especially since the introductory section consists mostly of easily remembered generalities. The remaining parts of the article will be presented in the order that you clicked them.
A new option to make WebSpeedReader even more convenient is 3 clicking modes:
If you have a modem connection, WebSpeedReader can connect to the Internet automatically when needed.
There are many ways to open links in WebSpeedReader, most of which are under the OpenLinks menu. Download Scheduled Web Pages opens all pages that are scheduled for today. Download Pages Scheduled Since Last Download opens all pages that were scheduled within 6 days of the last scheduled download. If the last scheduled download was more than 6 days, then this option still limits the scheduled downloads to the last 6 days; otherwise, there may be too many pages to catch up on. For example, if you downloaded scheduled pages yesterday, then choose Download Pages Scheduled Since Last Download today, then it will just download today's scheduled pages. If today is Thursday, and your last scheduled download was Monday, then this option will download all pages that were scheduled for Thursday, Wednesday, and Tuesday--in that order--and any monthly schedules that were valid on those dates. However, pages that are scheduled daily or weekday are only downloaded once, since these pages presumably change every day or every weekday, and thus, need only be downloaded once for each. The weekday schedule will also be downloaded if the current day is Saturday or Sunday, and the last scheduled download was on Thursday, or before. (Of course, the weekday schedule will also be downloaded if it is currently a weekday.)
Finish Last Session - Continue Last Session. Sometimes, you download more pages than you have time to read. If you don't finish all of the pages in 1 session, you can simply close WebSpeedReader, and WebSpeedReader will save all of the unread links that were either scheduled or clicked on. If you want to read these pages, simply select either of the 2 menu options, and the pages that you didn't read will be downloaded again. The difference between the 2 options is that Continue Last Session finishes the last session and also downloads all scheduled pages since your last scheduled download. These options will remain available until you choose either one of these options. However, once one of these options is chosen, neither will be enabled again until you close WebSpeedReader with pages that you didn't finish reading. Note, however, that if you close WebSpeedReader with unread pages, and you had a previous session with unread pages, then the new batch of unread pages will replace the last batch.
Open All Links does just that. It opens all links on the current page. This is a great way to explore someone else's world, to see what they link to, what interests them. This a great way to explore blogger's pages. Image links are links that are images rather than text. Although most image links link to larger images of themselves, they can also link to text. By selecting Open All Image Links you get a slide show without any programming. Just keep selecting Next to go from one image to the next, instantly. Open All Internal Links opens all links to the current domain. Open All External Links opens all links outside of the current domain. Use your mouse to select any part of a web page, then you can open all links within that selection by Open All Selected Links. This is a fast way to open multi-part web pages. You can also open the home page of any site by selecting Go To Home Page of This Site, or if you are navigating using the numeric keypad (with scroll lock on), then you can accomplish the same thing by pressing 7. This is easy to remember because when the Numlock is turned off, then the 7 key becomes the Home key.
WebSpeedReader now has a new sidebar that displays all of the open windows. There are 2 tabs at the top of the sidebar. The default tab is the Links Bar. 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 (Menu: Favorites - Add to Favorites; toolbar button: A ; keyboard: Shift+F6) dialog box. For links that you already have saved as Favorites, simply select Organize Favorites (Menu: Favorites - Organize Favorites; keyboard: Ctrl+F6), 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.
Sometimes you read about web sites in print publications, or hear about sites from friends, that interest you. These URLs must be typed, either in the address bar or the Open box (OpenLinks - Open; Alt-O,O; or Ctrl-O), just as in Internet Explorer. WebSpeedReader also has a Multi-Open box (OpenLinks - MultiOpen; Alt-O,M) where multiple URLs can be quickly typed in and downloaded. The box stays open after each URL is submitted until you press ENTER twice, or press Esc, or click the Cancel button on the form box. Each URL submitted starts downloading while you type in additional URLs. When you're ready to start reading them, select Next from the top menu or the toolbar, and you will see the first loaded document. You may also type the URL directly in the address box. These URLs will open in the same window. If an URL doesn't have a colon or period, then http://www. will be prefixed and .com/ will be suffixed to the URL. This will save you some typing when accessing dot-com sites.
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.
View Favorites (Menu: Favorites - View Favorites; toolbar button: F ; keyboard: F6) displays your favorites in a separate form. The Favorites form has 2 modes, download mode and organize mode, which you can toggle between the 2 modes by clicking on 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 for instant access. 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.
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 treeview 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 in this folder, then moving them to another folder. When WebSpeedReader is closed, then the links in this folder will be deleted permanently.
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 treeview, and select Quick Links from the context menu.
Add to Favorites (Menu: Favorites - Add to Favorites; toolbar button: A ; keyboard: 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 treeview 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 treeview 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 OpenLinks - Download Scheduled Web Pages from the menu, or press 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 can also access your password-protected sites, effectively logging on as you. Therefore, do not use this feature if security is a potential problem! Saving these Favorites requires a special procedure.
Set Capture by selecting the menu item Favorites - Set Capture.
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.
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 treeview 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 select Edit this Favorite or Delete this Favorite from the Favorites submenu. If the current page was not downloaded by clicking on a Favorite, then these 2 options will not be enabled.
Besides being able to logon or submit forms automatically by clicking on a bookmark (see Add to Favorites Form Submissions above.), you can now save a list of items that can be entered into any textbox by right-clicking inside the textbox, and selecting the text that you want to add from the popup menu. The item will replace anything already there.
To create the menu, just select Edit - Edit Form Data 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.
Warning: The information is not encrypted, so you should not store sensitive information if security is a potential problem.
Clicking a link that is targeted to another frame on the same page will cause the navigation to occur in the same window in the respective frame. If you want the link to open in a background window, then shift-click it. 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 view the main page unframed, you can also select View - View Source to see the name of the framed page that you are interested in, then type its URL in the address box. This will load the page unframed, then clicked links will download in the background.
The results of submitted forms will be downloaded in a background window for each submitted request, unless you select Open In Same Window (Menu: File - Open In Same Window; toolbar button: S ), which will cause all navigation to occur in the same, current window until it is either unchecked, or you move to the next window.
All secure transactions, using the https protocol, will automatically occur, by necessity, in the same browser window.
You can also restrict all navigation to the same window by selecting Open In Same Window (Menu: File - Open In Same Window; toolbar button: S ). This will cause all form submissions and clicked links to download in the same window. Open In Same Window is a toggle that is either in the on or off state. It is turned off when you move to another browser window. You can also load any current page into Internet Explorer (Menu: Navigation - Load in IE; Key: F8; Toolbar button: L ).
Holding the Control key down as you click a link will also cause that link to download in the same window.
I have included a new search page for WebSpeedReader that uses its advantages (Menu: Navigation - Search; Key: Ctrl-E; Toolbar button: S ). This page has a search box at the top, with the best search engines listed below. To use it, type in your search terms, then click which search engines you want to use. The results will download in separate windows for each engine. To search again with new terms, click in the box, which will clear the previous terms, then type in the new terms, repeating the same procedure as the first time.
You can also search by typing a ? in the address box followed by your search terms. A Google search will be displayed in the current browser window. You can click on any number of links; each will download in separate browser windows.
(Menu: View - Source Toolbar: V). View Source shows the source code for the current HTML page, including ALL FRAMES, in color-coded format so that you can quickly identify the various elements that make up a web page, such as the head, forms, scripts, styles, and tables. HTML tags are coded blue to provide contrast to the black text that is actually displayed in the browser when just browsing.
Additional information that is presented in the 1st section includes the numbers of frames, iframes, links, images, and forms. It also shows when the document was last modified, and whether the document has a security certificate.
If there is a cookie associated with the document, then this will be shown. Sometimes cookies are readable, but oftentimes they have cryptic codes that are processed by the website's server. Cookies usually store identifying information. You can delete all cookies by selecting Tools - Internet Options, then clicking the Delete Cookies command button. Note, however, that many sites that require registration, store the registration information in a cookie. If you delete these cookies, then you will be prompted to enter a user name and password at each site, every time you access these sites.
You can manage cookies by selecting the Privacy tab of Internet Options. You can accept all cookies, no cookies, or you can accept 1st-party cookies, but not 3rd-party cookies. 3rd parties are usually advertisers with banner ads that are downloaded from websites other than the main document website. If you specify the maximum privacy setting by accepting no cookies, then this will NOT delete any cookies, but no website will be able to read any cookie on your computer. You can set different settings for cookies for different sites, by selecting the Edit command button on the Privacy tab.
By using WebSpeedReader's View Source, you will never get that annoying message box that IE displays to tell you that "This file is too large for Notepad to open? Would you like to use WordPad to read this file?"
After viewing the source, click the Left arrow for the history list in the toolbar (the 1st button on the toolbar) to return to the document.
View the source code of all style sheets. By selecting View - Source Code for Style Sheets, you can view the source code of all style sheets of the current document, including imported, external, and embedded style sheets. This is a great way to learn about style sheets, so when you see a web page with a great format, you can see how it was done. Some external style sheets are not viewable because the web host doesn't allow it. In this case, you will see a Permission Denied statement after the filename.
As in IE, you can select text sizes, from the View submenu, which range from 1 for smallest text to 5 for largest. However, this will only affect text sizes that are formatted as relative sizes in HTML code. Most web pages specify precise text sizes rather than relative sizes, so this setting will not affect much of the text on the Web today.
You can, however, make the text size selection (zoom setting) work all of the time by accessing Menu: Tools - Internet Options - General tab - Accessibility command button at the bottom of the property page, and checking Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages. In most cases, you will see most of the text sizes increase, even at the medium-size setting. However, some text, especially headlines on some pages, will be scrunched, although in most cases, still readable. If the text is too scrunched, then select a smaller zoom setting. This will still be more readable than the original text. When you change the text-size setting it will affect all browser windows that are loaded hence, and it will also affect Internet Explorer. You can also use your own style sheet which you can specify on the same property page. The accessibility features will make some pages look different from what the web designer intended, but for those of us who have high-resolution screens, or who have visual impairments, a larger font size is almost a necessity. Even websites that you would think would know better, such as pcmag.com , uses font sizes too small to read comfortably on high-resolution screens. Accessibility options also apply to the Outlook mail client.
Another method to make text more readable without changing or ignoring specified sizes is to select a new font for web pages and plain text that will be displayed whenever a specific font is not specified, which is frequently. Click on the command button Fonts (Menu: Tools - Internet Options - General tab - Fonts command button at the bottom of the property page). This will present a dialog box that will allow you to select a new font for web pages and plain text. I find that Tahoma for web pages is much more readable than IE's default text font, for instance, but you can select any font available on your computer.
WebSpeedReader has yet another option for increasing text sizes. Select Tools - WebSpeedReader Options - Automatically Enlarge Small Fonts by checking the box, and every page that has small fonts will be enlarged, so that not only is the text readable, but it will also be responsive to the zoom setting that you have. Pages that have an adequate font size will not be affected. You should, however, keep the text as small as possible while still readable, because if the text is too large, there will be some scrunching depending on how the page is set up. You can also enlarge the fonts of any page by selecting View - Enlarge Fonts on This Page, or, if you are using keypad navigation, just press the + key on the numeric keypad. This will force the enlargement of fonts regardless of style settings, and, again, how large the fonts will be will depend on the zoom setting.
You can close any window in WebSpeedReader by clicking the small x in the upper-right hand corner of the document, but only if it is NOT the last window. Closing a window displays the next unread document, or, if all documents have been read, then the next document. WebSpeedReader needs at least 1 window open to function properly. If you try to close the last window and you are NOT closing the application, then this section of the Help file will be displayed, to explain why the last window will not be closed. If you want to close WebSpeedReader, then either click the x at the top-right of the program or press Alt+F4 to close the program. You can also close all read windows except the current window by selecting from the menu: File - Close All Read Windows (Alt+F, C). Any windows containing unread documents or documents specified as Keep In Memory will remain open.
You should not, however, close windows simply to move to the next document, especially if you have queued links, or you are going to download more pages, because WebSpeedReader reuses the windows for the new documents.
Menu: Tools - WebSpeedReader Options; Keyboard: Alt+T, W
All WebSpeedReader options can be specified with this dialog box.
Load Scheduled Web Pages at Startup - Checking this option will automatically load scheduled web pages, if you have any web pages scheduled; otherwise it will do nothing. There will always be a link on the WebSpeedReader Start Page to load scheduled pages, whether there are any scheduled or not.
Load Unread Web Pages at Startup - If you downloaded numerous pages in your last session, but didn't finish reading them, then checking this option will automatically reload them.
Tip - If you have Windows XP, then you can keep WebSpeedReader open, then choose Hibernation when you shut down. When you log onto Windows again, WebSpeedReader will be open, and all of the pages that were downloaded will still be fully loaded in memory, enabling you to start reading right away. Any queued links will be downloaded as you read more pages.
Maintain History of Visited Websites - If checked, then WebSpeedReader will maintain a history of visited websites for the last 30 days. If unchecked, then no history will be saved, and if any history list exists, it will be deleted. Note, however, that only unique sites are saved in the history list. This is because most people use the history list to go back to a site that they didn't bookmark, and so, WebSpeedReader doesn't clutter the history list with duplicate links. The history list shows the date of visit and the title of the page. To reload the page, just click on the link, and it will download in the background. To view the history list, just select View - History from the menu.
Automatically Enlarge Small Fonts on Web Pages - You will often come across sites that specify fonts using points or pixels. If you view pages at low-resolution, this usually isn't a problem, but if you view pages at high-resolution, it will be a problem. This creates fonts of widely differing sizes depending on the resolution of the monitor. A font that is 10 pixels will be readable at 800 x 600, and unreadable at 1600 x 1200. In printing, there are 72 points to an inch, and, thus, it would seem safe to specify points, because it would seem an inch is an inch regardless of resolution. However, I can assure you that in Microsoft Windows, fonts specified in points are not rendered with such precision, and thus, suffer the same malady that pixel specifications do. By checking this box, WebSpeedReader will enlarge small fonts so that they are readable, AND also change them to a relative size so that changing the zoom setting (View - 1-5) will affect the size of the fonts. (Changing the zoom setting does NOT change font sizes that are specified in pixels and points.) Web pages that are specified using relative font sizes, or large font sizes will not be changed. In some cases, where the font is enlarged, there may be some scrunching of text, but most of the time, the page will look good.
There are certain limitations to this option. First, you have to wait until a page finishes loading completely. In most cases, this won't matter, because in WebSpeedReader, pages download in the background, and this will all be done before you get to the page. But if you do come to a page that is still loading the fonts may be small until fully loaded. Because this can take a few seconds for very large pages (>200,000K), WebSpeedReader will not automatically process these pages. However, by selecting View - Enlarge Fonts on this Page from the menu, or if you are using numeric keypad navigation, by pressing the + key, you can enlarge the font of any page. Keep in mind, however, that for very large pages, WebSpeedReader may seem unresponsive. You will have to wait until the process finishes. However, for most pages, you will not notice any delay.
Make WebSpeedReader the Default Browser - By doing so, you can click on any number of links in your mail program (if your mail client uses the default browser to launch links) or Windows Explorer, or any other program that uses the default browser, and if WebSpeedReader is already loaded, it will accept those links in the background, and download them while you continue to read your mail, or whatever else you're doing. No need to switch back and forth. WebSpeedReader flashes its window each time it accepts a link that you clicked, to give you feedback that WebSpeedReader has handled it. When you are all done, switch to WebSpeedReader, and all of the links that you clicked on will already be downloaded, ready for your instant viewing. If WebSpeedReader is not already running when you click the first link, then that first click will launch WebSpeedReader and Windows will give it focus. If you want, just minimize WebSpeedReader to continue reading your mail. WebSpeedReader will handle all subsequent links in the background, without taking the focus away from your current program.
Maximum Number of Windows - You can specify the maximum number of windows that WebSpeedReader uses for downloading web pages; the default value is 12. Smaller numbers allow getting started faster reading the pages, and use less memory and bandwidth. However, if you are scanning pages rapidly, or if you are viewing images that take time to download, and little time to view them, you will want to raise this number, so that there is sufficient time for a complete download by the time you get to the window. If there are more links or scheduled pages than there are windows, then WebSpeedReader will save the links in a queue, and as you move to the next window, WebSpeedReader will download another page into the window that you have just read. This way, by the time you get back to that window, the document will be fully loaded, images and all. You can increase the number of windows for current session by shift-clicking a link. Also, the number of windows will automatically increase for the current session, whenever you chose to keep a certain document in memory, or the link opens in a new window. When you restart WebSpeedReader, the number of windows used will go back to what you specified here. You can also increase the number of windows by specifying a different number at any time in the Options box. This value will persist between sessions.
User-Agent String - You can specify part of the User-Agent string for WebSpeedReader. This string, part of the header in the browser request to a server, is recorded in web logs wherever you surf. This is a good way to advertise your website, your blog, a memorable quote, or even your name. Example: Kilroy was here! Of course, only people who look at their web logs will see your message, but that's more people than you probably think, and besides, it costs nothing and you don't have to do anything, other than specifying the string in the text box. The text is limited to 100 characters; when you reach the limit, you won't be able to type any more characters.
The following is a known list of potential problems that can occur when using WebSpeedReader.
Sometimes the current window can be unresponsive to keystrokes, even though it seems to have the focus. Background operations can sometimes take that focus away. Either click on the document to regain focus, or if that doesn't work, then minimize, then maximize the application. If a document has frames, then you will need to click on the frame to select it, so that it can be scrolled. This is true even for other browsers, because each frame scrolls independently.
Internet Explorer can take considerable time responding to keystrokes when a very large document (400K or more) is loaded, and this affects WebSpeedReader also.
If a dialog box is somehow displayed modally on a background window, or a window that has lost focus, then it could cause the web page to display improperly, many times displaying only a gray background. To correct this, close the dialog box. If you still see a gray background, then either switch to another application, then switch back to WebSpeedReader, or minimize, then maximize WebSpeedReader. This usually solves the problem, but if it doesn't then close the window.
Like Internet Explorer, WebSpeedReader can handle PDF files, but sometimes the Adobe Acrobat Reader displays a dialog box asking you if you want to check for a new update. If this dialog box comes from a window that doesn't have the focus, it could cause WebSpeedReader to hang. To prevent this, when you see this dialog box, check the little box on the dialog that will prevent it from reappearing. Adobe rarely updates its reader, so this shouldn't be much of a problem.
Some of the menu items are familiar to Windows users, such as File - Open. Other menu items are self-explanatory, or have been explained previously. The Window submenu includes a list of all WebSpeedReader windows.
The toolbar has buttons for the most commonly used functions. To learn what they are, place the mouse cursor over each button, and a tool tip will pop up with that button's label. The buttons with letters correspond to the shortcut key used for that option on the submenu, with different colored backgrounds corresponding to the different submenus.
