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(Note: This page lists the most commonly used features and functions to help get you started as quickly as possible in using WebSpeedReader. For a complete reference to WebSpeedReader's many capabilities, read the complete help and tutorial (Menu: Help - Help & Tutorial | Shift+F1).
Tip: You can delete any local file directly in WebSpeedReader by selecting | Ctrl+D. This option will not be enabled if the document in the current browser window is not from your computer. Also note that, because only the file is deleted, the document will still be loaded in the browser window until it is replaced with another document or WebSpeedReader is closed.
The following items can be selected from the menu under submenu or from the context menu by right-clicking on any window in the sidebar.
Windows can also be managed from the sidebar:
You can scroll with the usual keys: Page Up, Page Down, the arrow keys, Home to go to the beginning of the document, End to go to the end of the document.
Rotating mouse wheel over the document scrolls the page up or down 1 page for each notch (requires Internet Explorer 6).
Holding the right mouse button down while turning mouse wheel scrolls the page the default number of lines, which is usually Window's default value, 3.
While holding the right mouse button down, click the document to scroll to the top of the document or double click it to go to the end of the document.
Alt + mouse wheel scrolls the page a few lines at a time up or down.
Click mouse wheel on blank area of document: Turns on auto-scroll, which scrolls the document continuously until it reaches the top or bottom. Creates 2 marks, a center mark and a scrolling mark. Dragging the scrolling mark up, scrolls up; dragging it down, scrolls down. The farther the scrolling mark is moved from the center mark, the faster it scrolls. Clicking any mouse button stops it.
Tip: With the mouse only, you can scroll up or down 1 page at a time, a few lines at a time, go to the top of the document, or go to the end of the document. You can move to the next document by right-clicking the mouse, if the document doesn't have selected text, and the focus isn't a textbox.
On the numeric keypad with Scroll Lock on (the 1st column shows the numeric keys as they appear on most keyboards, a close simulation, anyway):
| 0 Ins | Pages Down |
| Ÿ Del | Go to the next document. |
| 1 End | Pages Up |
| 2 â | Go to top of document. |
| 3 PgDn | Go to bottom of document. |
View Favorites ( | F | F6) displays your favorites in a separate form. The Favorites form has 2 modes, download mode and organize mode, which you can toggle 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.
Quick Links is shown in the sidebar under the Links tab ( L ). 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.
Sidebar - Quickly Filter Favorites or History to Display in Sidebar - In the textbox at the top of the sidebar, you can type in a few characters and click F in the second toolbar at the top, just to the right of the textbox to filter your list of Favorites, which will be displayed below, in the sidebar. This selects all favorites that have the typed characters in the title, URL, or keywords. Some tips: (1) type in a domain to select all Favorites with that domain; (2) enter "file://" or "c:\" to select all files on your disk; (3) enter "foldername\subfoldername" to display all links in that subfolder. Remember to press Enter after typing in your letters to display the new list.
Special Filters - There are special filters that will display particular links. All the special filters start with a letter, which is case insensitive and designates the type of filter to apply, followed by a space.
L tab - Displays your Quick Links in the sidebar. If you want to remove a link from the Quick Links bar, just right-click on the link, and select Remove from Quick Links from the context menu.
S tab - Shows all links that are scheduled. If you don't want to read all the links scheduled for today, then the next best thing is to show all scheduled links, and click on the ones that you want. If you want to unschedule any links, simply right-click the link, and select Unschedule from the context menu.
Tip: If you want to schedule a link or add a link to the Quick Links list, then simply select Edit from the context menu. You can also delete any link from the same menu.
H tab - Type some characters in the filter box, then click the H tab to display all history entries with the typed characters in the title or URL, if you maintain history. Thus, law will show all history entries that have law in the title or URL. Entering yahoo.com will show all of your history entries that have the domain yahoo.com. Note that maintaining history is on by default, but you can turn it off, and it will erase all history entries. However, if you do this, then the history filter will obviously have no effect.
F tab - Clicking the F tab will filter your Favorites list. Thus, entering "blog" in the filter box will display all links with "blog" in the title, URL, or keywords. Enter "science\history" to display all links in your science\history subfolder, assuming that you have such a folder (probably not). Remember to press Enter after typing in your letters to display the new list.
Note: WebSpeedReader maintains its own history list. Therefore, filtering the history list will show few or no results when you first start using it.
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 links in this folder, then moving them to another folder. When WebSpeedReader is closed, then the links in this folder will be deleted permanently.
Add to Favorites ( | A | Shift+F6) - Add the current page to Favorites. This form will load with the title and URL of the link, and also the document keywords and description if available. If it is not available, then you can add your own. You can also select a category from the 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 | Shift+F2.
Quick Link - Add any page to the Quick Links sidebar by checking the Quick Links box.
Add to Favorites Form Submissions - Because WebSpeedReader now uses a database to store Favorites, it is now possible to not only save links as Favorites, but also any type of form submission, including password logons. Thus, any kind of form submission can easily be automated with WebSpeedReader. Now submitting data or logging onto password-protected sites is just a click on a Favorite. However, a warning: anyone who has access to your computer and can log on as you can also access your password-protected sites, effectively posing as you. Although the form data is not encrypted, passwords cannot easily be found, but they could be found by someone with enough knowledge and time. Therefore, do not use this feature if security is a potential problem! Saving these Favorites requires a special procedure.
Set Capture by selecting .
Fill in the form, then submit it.
When you press the submit button, the Add to Favorites form will load. 2 textboxes will be filled with the information from the form submission. This includes the URL and the post data. It is very important not to change either the URL or the post data unless you know what you are doing; otherwise the submission will not work properly!
Note: For security reasons, any form containing file upload information cannot be captured. These are forms that allow you to upload a file on your computer to a server. It has what looks like a textbox with a Browse button next to it. Very few forms upload files, and so this shouldn't be much of a problem.
Tip: In the Add to Favorites form, quickly clear any textbox by pressing F4 or double-clicking it.
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.
Overview - The bookmark manager stores your Favorites in a database, instead of using the lame file system approach that Internet Explorer uses. Much more information can be stored in it than would otherwise be possible. Additional information that can be saved includes document keywords, description, posted data, and notes. Bookmarks can also be scheduled in the Edit form, including being able to set more than 1 home page. The rest of this section will cover features of the bookmark manager that have not be covered in the Favorites section above.
Filtering the display of links - In either download mode or organize mode, you can filter the links by typing in letters in the text box in the upper-right corner of the Favorites form. Thus, typing in "law" will show all links that have the "law" in the keywords, title, or URL. You can either download the links or organize them.
Folders - To create a new folder, you can either type in new keywords when you add a favorite, or you can select a number of files, then select copy or move, then select New Folder, then click on the folder in the 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 selecting . If the current page was not downloaded by clicking on a Favorite, then these 2 options will not be enabled.
You can schedule pages for download by filling in the scheduling information in the Add to Favorites form, or by editing the Favorite links you want scheduled. You can schedule pages for daily, weekday, Monday - Sunday, or monthly. Check 1 or more of the boxes for Week of Month to download monthly. for instance, check Monday in the Day of Week frame and check 1 and 2 in the Week of Month frame to schedule a page for the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month. However, to download a page every Monday, just check the Monday checkbox in the Day of Week frame, and leave the checkboxes in the Week of Month frame unchecked.
Downloading scheduled pages - The submenu has a number of options to download pages. downloads the pages scheduled for today. Thus, if today were Monday, May 3, it would download all pages scheduled for daily, weekday, Monday, and the 1st Monday of every month. downloads all scheduled pages since you last downloaded scheduled pages, up to 6 days past. So if today is Thursday, and your last download was Monday, then this option will select all pages scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Note, however, that pages scheduled for daily and weekday will only be downloaded once.
Continuing Sessions - Sometimes you can't finish reading everything. You can close WebSpeedReader, then continue later by selecting from the submenu , which loads the documents that you haven't read yet. loads the same pages, but also downloads all pages scheduled for today.
Address box search - Type a ? in the address box, with the search terms following it, to display a Google search in the current browser window.
Select text in the document, then right-click and select either Google Search or Vivisimo Search from the context menu.
Sidebar - Google Search - A search box is always at the top of the sidebar. Just enter your search terms and press Enter to submit search. By default the G tab is highlighted, and thus, the search will be submitted to Google. By clicking the V tab, then the search will be submitted to Vivisimo, a search engine that clusters search results into categories. The results will download in a background window. Thus, you can submit searches as you read. Click the U—"U" for underscore; "H" is used for History—tab to highlight those terms in all documents, including all frames.
Search Page - ( | S | F7) Displays a search page of more than 50 search engines of different specialties, allowing you to quickly find just about anything. Enter your search terms in the textbox at the top, then click on any number of search engines; results from each search engine will be downloaded in separate browser windows in the background.
Find text in document - Ctrl+F display a textbox that allows you to search in the current document. This is the same dialog box that Internet Explorer uses.
Find files on your computer - ( | Shift+F3 ) - displays a Windows Explorer dialog box allowing you to search for specific files on your computer.
Highlight search terms - By entering characters in the textbox at the top of the sidebar, then clicking the U—"U" for underscore; "H" is used for History—tab, all occurrences of the characters will be highlighted, including all occurrences in frames. You can enter multiple terms that are highlighted separately by separately the terms or phrases with the backquote character ` . This is the unshifted tilde key located next to the 1 key on the top row of most keyboards. The backquote key was chosen as a separator because it is rarely used in text. Click OK to highlight the text; click Cancel to stop highlighting. When highlighting is in effect, the menu item will be checked. The text will be highlighted for any active window, and for any downloaded documents in the active window (after the document has downloaded completely). Thus, to search for 2 presidents, you would enter in the textbox: "George Washington`Abraham Lincoln" without the quotes. The current document, if it contained only 1 sentence would look like this: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were two of the greatest presidents of the United States. Note that case is unimportant; so you could have entered "george washington`abraham lincoln" to get the same highlighting even though the text in the terms are capitalized.
Another option is to select text in the document, right-click and select Highlight Selection from the context menu. To turn highlighting off, just click the U tab in the sidebar.
Another advantage is that you can also click the G for a Google search of the terms or a V for a Vivisimo search of the terms, in addition to highlighting the terms on all documents. Very convenient!
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 on the U tab again.
There are tabs on the second toolbar for more restricted searches. To use this, enter terms in the textbox on the second toolbar, then click one or more of the following tabs.
D - Define the word or phrase.
T - Look up synonyms and antonyms in the thesaurus.
M - Look it up in the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia.
C - Look it up in the Columbia Encyclopedia.
You can use more than 1 reference at a time for the same terms. Just click the tabs for the information that you want. Each page will download in the background. If you use the same reference for more than 1 word or phrase, then you can just press Enter after typing in the search terms to submit that search.
The textbox can be quickly cleared, either by double-clicking in it, or, if the textbox has focus, by pressing Esc.
You can also select any word or phrase in a document, right-click the document to bring up the context menu, which includes most of the options in the second toolbar that uses the textbox.
Tip: If you want to select a word, then double-click it, or press Ctrl + click a word to look it up in any reference in the context menu, or to just highlight by selecting the highlighting command.
The Columbia Encyclopedia has more concise entries than Microsoft's Encarta, but Encarta is more complete and better illustrated. Encyclopedia uses Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia. Most of the major articles are available to nonsubscribers (anything with a red asterisk beside it is restricted to subscribers). The Columbia Encyclopedia is not as good as Encarta but all of the articles are available and free of charge.
With this same context menu, you can also open an URL if the selected text is an URL, highlight the selected text, or search for it using either Google or Vivisimo.
Note: If nothing is selected in the document, then right-clicking a document takes you to the next document.
Note: The headings that are displayed are enclosed with the H1-H6 HTML tabs in the code of the page. This is usually the way headings are formed in web pages; however, it is easy to make a short paragraph look like a heading by formatting it as larger, centered text, but this is not a real heading in HTML, and thus, won't be displayed in the sidebar. Also, the sidebar will not display any documents that have frames. Most framed documents are short, and those that are long, generally have their own sidebar for navigating the document, which is a common use for frames. This feature is best for long documents that have headings.
Tip: Pressing the Esc key will clear the textbox. Double-clicking either textbox will also clear it, and set focus to it. This is a quick and easy way to delete what's in the textbox to start over.
You can now automatically log onto any site or submit form data automatically by saving the form data as a bookmark. (See Add to Favorites Form Submissions, above.)
You can also save a list of items that can be added to any textbox by right-clicking the textbox, and selecting the text from the popup menu. The item will replace anything already there. To create the menu, just select from the menu. In the textbox type any sort of information that you wish to have available in separate lines. The first 120 characters of each line will appear as a caption in the menu, but you can store any amount of information on any given line, and it will be inserted if it is not limited by the textbox or textarea itself. You might want to include such info as first name, last name, full name, etc. You can also easily include multiple identities, when you want to stay anonymous. However, if a number of people are using WebSpeedReader in your household, there is no need to add their identities, since the file that stores the information is different for each user.
Warning: The information is not encrypted, so you should not store sensitive information if security is a potential problem.
Note: For security reasons, any form containing a file upload textbox or a password textbox must be entered manually. Forms containing file upload textboxes allow you to upload a file on your computer to a server. It has what looks like a textbox with a Browse button next to it. Very few forms upload files, and so this shouldn't be much of a problem, but unfortunately, password textboxes are more common. However, you can still log onto password-protected sites automatically by capturing the log on information in a bookmark. With this feature, you can log onto any website automatically by scheduling the page, or you can just click on a bookmark, just as you would any other Favorite.
The zoom setting will remain in effect until it is changed. WebSpeedReader retains the value between sessions.
