Upgrade file for Windows 98 and ME: http://WebSpeedReader.com/ftp_user/wsrUpgrade.zip

Upgrade file for Windows 2000 and XP: http://WebSpeedReader.com/ftp_user/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.

What's New with WebSpeedReader

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 What’s New under the Help menu in WebSpeedReader.

April 9, 2004

Bug Fixes  - Version 8.2.66
Important Bug Fix: When downloading many pages simultaneously, WebSpeedReader would become locked temporarily, and be unresponsive to keystrokes or mouse clicks. This has been fixed.

The help files have been improved, and a bug that displayed the history menu even after another document has been loaded in the current window has also been fixed.

April 7, 2004

Bug Fixes and Enhancements  - Version 8.2.58
A tab has been added to the notes tools to add a line feed. Thus, you can click a tab to insert the current date, title or URL of the current document, or a line feed, to start a new line simply by clicking on the appropriate tabs. You can select text in the current document, and append it to the current note by right-clicking the selection for the context menu and selecting  } Append Text to Current Note  from the menu.

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        .

April 4, 2004

Bug Fixes and Enhancements  - Version 8.2.24
The most serious bug that has been fixed caused a textbox to lose focus when it is clicked. This prevented the user from entering any text unless the user tabbed to the textbox. Other fixes:

March 31, 2004

Notes - Serious Bug Fix  - Version 8.2.12
You can now write notes and copy text from a web page to a note. The notes area display at the top of the sidebar. Click on the notes tab ¯ on the 2nd toolbar. There are numerous tabs below the textarea that do the following:
¦Append current date to note. 
TAppend title of current document.
UAppend URL of current document.
¥New note. Save the current note, if any.
rDelete note.
56Hide 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 Delete to delete the note. You can select text on the current web pages, right-click on the document for the context menu, and select Copy text to current note. 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.

March 24, 2004

Serious Bug Fix  - Version 8.1.32
Version 8.1.26 had a serious bug that prevented navigation in click links in framed documents, which this version fixes.

March 22, 2004

New Mouse Commands - Better Help - Toolbar Display Fix  - Version 8.1.26
Some new mouse commands have been added to WebSpeedReader. Hold down the right-mouse button and (1) rotate the mouse wheel to scroll a few lines at a time, instead of a page at a time; (2) click the document to go to the top of the document; (3) double-click the document to go to the end instantly. Thus, using only the mouse, you scroll up or down a page at a time; a few lines at a time; go to the top of the document instantly; or go to the end of the document. You can also just right-click the document to go to the next document. See the new, improved Help for more options for both scrolling and for mouse commands.

The Help files have been greatly improved and made more readable.

The 2nd toolbar at the top of WebSpeedReader was scrunched in low-resolution monitors. This has been fixed.

March 12, 2004

More References - Headings Displayed in Outline Form - Sidebar Bug Fixes  - Version 8.1.6
On the new 2nd toolbar, you can now search specific references by entering search terms in the textbox, and clicking the appropriate following tabs:

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.

March 10, 2004

New Second Toolbar - More Room to Display Info in Sidebar - Version 8.1
A new toolbar has been added below the main one, which has mostly links dealing with the sidebar. The tabs that were at the top of the sidebar have been moved to the second toolbar. There is now only 1 textbox, on the left side of the toolbar, that is used to do searches, highlight terms in documents, and to filter the Favorites or History list. Enter some terms or characters in the textbox, then select the appropriate tab to the right. Just hover the mouse over any tab to the get a tooltip. Read the Quick Help for more complete information. Moving the textbox and tabs to a new toolbar at the top makes more room in the sidebar to display information, and if you have to scroll down in the sidebar, the new toolbar remains visible.

February 29, 2004

New Context Menu - Bug Fixes - Version 8.0.46
A new context menu has been provided. By selecting text in a document, then right-clicking the document, or by pressing Ctrl + right-clicking a word (no need to select first in this case), brings up the following context menu:

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

February 29, 2004

Window Management Enhancement - Bug Fixes - Version 8.0.38
  • Right-clicking one of the window captions in the sidebar will bring up a context menu with the following menu items, that are mostly self-explanatory:

    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.

  • The following bugs have been fixed.

    February 27, 2004

    New Context Menu for Easier Highlighting and Searching - Minor Bug Fixes - Version 8.0.34
    A new context menu has been added. Select text in a document and right-click for the context menu, which consists of the following menu items: Open URL, Highlight Selection, Google Search, and Vivisimo Search. If the selected text is an URL, then select Open URL to open that URL in the background. You can also search the selection with Google or Vivisimo, or you can highlight the selected text in the current document and subsequent documents until you turn it off by clicking on the H tab in the sidebar. A few minor bug fixes have also been included in this release.

    February 23, 2004

    Bug Fixes - Version 8.0.30

    February 18, 2004

    Minor Enhancements - Version 8.0.12
    The history page now has better headings, and if you hide or show descriptions and keywords, then that setting will remain in effect even if you change the sort. WebSpeedReader now prevents the loading of the same URLs. Sometimes, when selecting Open All Links, Image Links, Internal Links, External Links, or Selected Links, there will be more than 1 link pointing to the same page, and thus, that page will be loaded multiple times. This is now prevented.

    You can now access the OpenLinks menu by right-clicking on any hyperlink in the main document. You can click on the desired menu item, or just keep the right-mouse button depressed, highlight the item you want, then release the button.

    February 16, 2004

    Major History Enhancement - Version 8.0
    History has been greatly improved, and also uses a new file format, so when you download the new version, a new history will be started anew. You can prevent WebSpeedReader from saving any history by unchecking Maintain History of Visited Websites in the WebSpeedReader Options dialog box. If history is enabled, which it is by default, then WebSpeedReader will store the date, title, URL, number of visits, and if available in the document, the description and keywords. View history by selecting View - History from the menu. A new history menu will be displayed in the sidebar that will allow you to hide or show descriptions and keywords, sort by date, domain, title, or number of visits, and the list can be filtered by entering characters in the history filter box in the sidebar, then pressing Enter. Thus, to show only those history links that have the word health in the title, URL, description, or keywords, just enter that word in the history filter box and press Enter. To re-display all history links, just select Show All History Links in the sidebar. Furthermore, when you select sort by date or domain, the dates or domains appear in the sidebar. Just click on a date or domain in the sidebar to go to that section of the main history document. Dates or number of visits is sorted in descending order, with the most recent date or largest number of visits at the top of the document. If you hide descriptions and keywords for a more compact view, then you can click Show Description and Keywords in each history entry that has this information to see the information for that particular link. When you move to the next window, the history sidebar will be replaced by the open window links.

    February 13, 2004

    Minor Enhancement, Bug Fixes - Version 7.9.28
    The minor enhancement is that WebSpeedReader now uses a new history format. Consequently, when you download the new version, the history information will be richer, including keywords and description, but your history will restart from the day that you install the upgrade. Also, there was a bug in the history filter in the sidebar that didn't include the first 2 characters in the filter. The filter has been enhanced to search for all typed characters not only in the title and URL, but also the document description and keywords, if the document had them. Many don't, but this upgrade makes the filter far more useful. Another bug was caused by the closing of windows. The status bar sometimes did not reflect the actual number of windows or the current window correctly. Also, new windows sometimes popped up to replace the ones that were closed, which also occasionally created duplicates. This has been fixed, but remember, you do not have to close any windows because WebSpeedReader re-uses the windows for new documents, unless you select Keep in Memory for individual windows, although you can close windows if you want to.

    Paging with the mousewheel - scrolling with the mousewheel often didn't work properly. This has now been fixed.

    February 6, 2004

    Minor Enhancements, Bug Fixes - Version 7.9.22
    A few minor enhancements have been added in this addition, including slightly faster link checking, and a Windows sound signifies when the link checking is done. However, the focus to window was eliminated, and a bug was fixed for flashing the window after the link checking was done. Also, whenever focus was given to the search textbox at the top of the sidebar, it was cleared. This has been eliminated to enable easier editing, and to easily submit a search, then clicking the H tab to highlight the search terms. To quickly clear either textbox on the sidebar, just press the Esc key. A bug—pressing the X key cleared the document—has been fixed.

    February 2, 2004

    Sidebar Redone - Bug Fixes - Version 7.9.2
    The sidebar has now been redone to make it easier to use. At the top of the bar is the search box, but with 3 tabs beneath it. The G tab submits your searches to Google; the V tab submits your searches to Vivisimo. Any new terms can be submitted to the same search engine by pressing Enter. The 3rd tab is the H tab. Click on this to highlight any terms on any documents loaded in WebSpeedReader. The terms will continue to be highlighted until you click this tab again to toggle it off. Thus, you can enter some search terms, submit to Google or Vivisimo, then click the H tab to highlight the terms on any and all documents, including frames. Very convenient! You can highlight multiple terms at 1 time by separating the terms with the backquote key (see the entry directly below for more details). However, the dialog box for highlighting has been eliminated, since using the sidebar will be much easier and quicker.

    There are now more tabs beneath the filter box. The Links bar is now displayed the clicking the L tab. Open windows are displayed by clicking on the W tab. The S tab shows all scheduled links. The F tab and H tab use the filter box to display links from your Favorites or from History. The F tab will display any links that have the typed characters in the keywords, title, or URL. The H tab displays any history links that have the typed characters in the title or URL. Note that the history filter will not display anything if you are not maintaining history. Also, nothing will show in either tab if there are no matches.

    The function of the tabs will be easy to remember since the letter on the tab is related to its function. You can also hove the mouse over any tab for a tooltip.

    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.

    January 31, 2004

    Highlight multiple terms in documents - Version 7.9

    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.

    January 27, 2004

    Important Bug Fix - Version 7.8.120
    A serious bug was crashing WebSpeedReader at various times. This has been fixed. Please download this new version. I apologize for any inconvenience.

    January 27, 2004

    Link Checker Improved - View All Links that point to files on your computer - Bug Fixes - Version 7.8.118
    The link checker has been improved. Any links that have a description, document keywords, or notes, will display that information in the link check, thereby allowing you to make a better decision as to whether to keep the link or not. It will also check all local links, links that point to files on your computer. If the file does not exist, then the link is automatically deleted. All local links automatically deleted will be listed at the end of the Check Links document. Also, any Favorites that does not have an URL will be deleted automatically. These will not be listed, since often, they are simply empty records.

    View, Organize Local Files - In viewing Favorites or organizing Favorites, you can select all local links—links that point to files on your computer—by right-clicking on the background of the Favorites list, and selecting Show Local Links to Files on your Computer from the context menu. This will display only links to files on your computer.

    This edition has minor bug fixes and improved error handling.

    January 21, 2004

    Main Help Updated, Bug Fixes - Version 7.8.88
    The main WebSpeedReader help has been upgraded to make it more readable, and to reflect recent changes made to the program itself. There was a bug that sometimes prevented a user from scrolling a window unless they scrolled the document by using the scrollbar. Sometimes the document wouldn't scroll even after clicking on it to give it focus. None of the scrolling keys works; only the scrollbar. This has been fixed.

    January 19, 2004

    Enhancements, Bug Fixes - Version 7.8.70
    Enhancements:
    1. Delete file from hard disk (File - Delete this File; Ctrl+D) - If you are viewing a file from your computer in WebSpeedReader, you can select this option to delete the file. A good way to manage your HTML files on your computer is clicking on them in Windows Explorer; if you selected WebSpeedReader as your default browser, then each file clicked will be loaded into WebSpeedReader. You can then switch to WebSpeedReader, look at each file, and if it is something you don't want, just delete it directly in WebSpeedReader.
    2. New Window - To conserve memory, WebSpeedReader re-uses windows that contain documents that have already been read. However, if you press Alt+click a link, that link will force the creation of a new window. Doing this will prevent WebSpeedReader from re-using any windows.

    Bugs:

    1. Right-clicking a form textbox presented a menu of items that you can insert by selecting it. These items are created by entering the items as lines in the Form Data textbox (Edit - Edit Form Data). However, selecting the 1st item didn't enter it in the form textbox. This has been fixed, and now the 1st item is Edit Form Data so that you can quickly add or delete items from the context menu.
    2. Pressing Shift while WebSpeedReader starts up causes it to load a blank page instead of downloading home pages. The key to do this has been changed from Ctrl to Shift to keep it to a Windows standard. For instance, loading a CD while pressing the Shift key prevents the CD from running automatically.

    January 16, 2004

    Bug Fixes  and Minor Changes -  Version 7.8.66
    Numerous bugs have been fixed with this new version, the most important of which selecting Close All Read Windows from the File menu, also closed all windows that were designated as Keep in Memory. This has been fixed. Closing all read windows will close all windows that have been read, except those that are toggled as Keep in Memory. The shortcut key for Keep in Memory has also been changed to F3 ; the shortcut key for finding files on your computer has been changed to Shift+F3. A document can also be kept in memory by pressing the * on the numeric keypad if numeric keypad navigation is selected. Increasing image sizes has been moved to the 8  key on the numeric keypad. The upward pointing arrow on this key makes it easier to associate the key with increasing image sizes. Each time it is pressed, it increases all images on the current document by 10%.

    January 14, 2004

    Window Management Enhancements - Filter Enhancement - Important Scheduling Bug Fix -  Version 7.8.58
    Windows can now more easily be managed from the sidebar. If you can't see the open windows in the sidebar, then just select the Windows tab at the top of the sidebar. You can now do the following:
    • Press the X key down, and while you hold it down, click any open window in the sidebar to close it.
      Mnemonic: The top-right part of most forms in the Windows operating system have a little box with an X in it. When you click it, it closes the form. Thus, holding down the X while clicking a window in the sidebar closes that window.
    • Press and hold the K key down and click any window that you want to Keep in Memory. Windows that are kept are underlined in the sidebar and will not be replaced by other documents. This will allow you to save and compare documents easily.

    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.

    January 11, 2004

    Headings Tab Bug Fixes -  Version 7.8.50
    The headings tab, described below, was not updating properly when moving from 1 window to the next. Also, if a user was at a window that did not contain the document for the headings, and clicked on one of the headings, WebSpeedReader would crash. This has been fixed. Also, the background of the headings tab has been changed to while to distinguish it from the panels below it.

    January 10, 2004

    Headings Tab in the Sidebar -  Version 7.8.48
    The headings tab is symbolized by the special mark for sections of documents: §. Headings divide up a document into sections, so this makes sense and is easily remembered. If you do forget, just hover the mouse over it momentarily to read the tooltip. By clicking on this tab, all of the headings in the current document will be displayed. You can click on any heading, and the current document will scroll to that place in the document. New headings will show if other documents are loaded or by moving to different windows, until you select another tab. You can see a demonstration of this simply by pressing F1 for Help. You will see the headings in the sidebar automatically. This is an easy way to navigate large documents, or to get a quick overview, and, of course, that's where this would be most useful. If a document has no headings or if it has frames, then nothing will show.

    The wording on the Check Links tab has now been replaced by , a check mark. Clicking on this tab will still check links, but this conserves some space. It's like a toolbar button, but it is a font, and so is scalable, unlike the images in toolbars. You can also determine the purpose of a tab by hovering the mouse over it momentarily and reading the tooltip.

    January 7, 2004

    Special Filters for Displaying Links - Context Menu for Managing Links in Sidebar - Bug Fixes - Version 7.8.46
    In addition to the history filter or entering any sequence of at least 2 characters + Enter to filter your Favorites to display only those links that have the characters in the title, url, or keywords, you can now display special links in the sidebar by typing the letter for the filter + Space+Enter. Thus, typing "s " + Enter displays all scheduled links and "L " displays the Quick Links.

    A new context menu has been added for better managing the links displayed in the sidebar. By right-clicking on a link in the sidebar, you edit or delete any link by selecting the appropriate menu item from the context menu, and you can unschedule a scheduled page, or remove it from the Quick Links list from the same menu. You will only see the Unschedule menu item if it is a scheduled link, and the Remove from Quick Links if it is a Quick Link, but the Edit and Delete options are presented for every link. If you want to schedule a page or add it to the Quick Links list, then just select Edit from the context menu.

    Numerous bugs have been fixed in this edition, including a bug that crashed WebSpeedReader when using the keys to navigate the records in the Edit Favorites form.

    January 6, 2004

    Font and Image Sizes - Bug Fixes - Version 7.8.44
    If you have a high-resolution screen, you have undoubtedly encountered many websites that use pixels to specify font sizes, resulting in tiny, unreadable fonts on your screen, and images are also small. Or maybe you have a vision impairment. To automatically increase font sizes and images for every page, select View - Zoom Setting, and enter a zoom level. Normal size is 1.
    Examples of possible values of zoom setting for changing font, image and other element sizes:
    • .9 = 10% smaller
    • 1.1 = 10% larger
    • 1.25 = 25% larger
    • 2 = twice as large.

    The zoom setting will remain in effect until it is changed. WebSpeedReader retains the value between sessions.

    Individual pages can also be zoomed 1.4 times by selecting View - Enlarge This Page from the menu, or press the + key on the numeric keypad if using numeric keypad navigation.

    Bug Fix - When clicking in the address bar or clicking in one of the textboxes in the sidebar, the boxes would lose focus if the user moved the mouse over the document. This has been fixed.
     

    January 1, 2004 (Happy New Year!)

    Filter History List - Bug Fixes - Version 7.8.38
    At the top of the sidebar of WebSpeedReader are 2 textboxes. The 1st textbox can be used to enter search terms for Google or Vivisimo. The 2nd textbox can be used to filter Favorites or History, or redisplay the Links Bar. If you type "h " (that's h—case insensitive—followed by a space), anything you type in afterward will filter your history list if you maintain history. Thus, typing h law then pressing Enter will show all history entries that have law in the title or URL. Entering h 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. Entering "L " will redisplay the Links Bar, which are the 1st links shown when WebSpeedReader starts up. Entering anything else will filter your Favorites list. Thus, entering "blog" will display all links in your Favorites 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 that you can switch to the other tabs, such as Windows in the meantime. When you go back, the list will remain the same until you specifically change it. And as always, you can click on any number of links. Each link will download in the background.

    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.