This chapter describes how to use OmniWeb to navigate the web, how to track your browsing history, and how to search the entire web by keyword.
Information is accessed and viewed through the browser. It's possible to have many browsers open during a single session. To create a new one, choose New Browser from the Document/Browser menu, or type Command-n. Entering a URL in one browser has no effect on other browsers. OmniWeb supports true multithreading, which allows concurrent operations; you can load two documents at once, or continue browsing as you download in the background.
Typing a URL
To display one of an organization's web pages, type or paste its URL into the browser's text field and press Enter, or the Load button. OmniWeb will search for the URL.
Loading a Web Page
Once it locates the site, it will load the web page. A progress bar will appear in the Current URL field, indicating how much data has been loaded. After the data transfer is finished, OmniWeb must convert the data into a readable format. On the right-hand side of the progress bar area you will note text messages that change during the load, indicating which portions of the page's code are currently being interpreted by OmniWeb.
In addition, the Load button to the left of the button ribbon will become a STOP sign. To stop the transmission at any time, simply click the STOP sign (or choose Stop Load from the Document/Browser menu).
[Note: When loading a file whose size is unknown, the progress bar's behavior will change. Instead of a growing bar that indicates what fraction of the file has been loaded, it will appear as a short bar that bounces back and forth as data is transferred. This will happen on some FTP servers, gopher servers, and older HTML servers.]
The Processes Panel
The Processes Panel panel (click the button to raise it) allows you to view the loading status of individual components of the page. For example, if a page contains text and a single image, these two components will be listed separately: the text URL preceded by a text icon, the image URL by an image icon. You can stop any component from loading by selecting its URL to highlight it, then clicking on the STOP button inside the Processes panel.
The Status field indicates which portions of the page's code are currently being interpreted by OmniWeb.
The Address field is identical to the Current URL well.
Loading Text and Images
The contents of the page will automatically display as it's being loaded. Graphics may initially appear as boxes containing alt tag text which expand within seconds to the full image size, after which the pictures will display incrementally as they load.
[Note: You can set your Preferences so that the page waits to be displayed until all of the text is downloaded. You can also specify that images are not automatically loaded when you download a page. See HTML Display Preferences for more information.]
If you stop individual images from loading using the Processes panel, the symbol will appear in place of the image.
[Note: The
When a symbol is over the well, the cursor will turn light-green. When dropped into the currently displayed URL well, the browser will automatically begin to load the new web page.
When dropped into the selected URL well, the document will not be loaded immediately. Instead, the text of the URL will be entered into the selected URL text field, which gives advanced users an opportunity to edit it before downloading. When ready, press Return or click the Load button to start downloading.
[Shortcut: URL symbols can also be dropped directly on a browser's main window. Dropping them here has the same effect as dropping them into the currently displayed URL well.]
A URL can also be dragged from the browser and dropped into an open bookmark window, another browser, or even another application. The same can be done with images displayed within the browser.
Link color and whether links are underlined is controlled in the Preferences panel. To learn how to change these settings, see Color Preferences.
Clicking a link will follow that link. To go back to your previous page, click the
To scroll through a page's links without following them, press the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard, or select the Next Anchor and Previous Anchor commands in the Navigate menu. This will highlight the link and display the URL in the selected URL text field, without loading it.
You can also examine a link without following it by clicking it while holding down the Alternate (or Control) key on your keyboard, or clicking it with the right mouse button. To add it to a bookmark window, hold down the Alt key, and drag and drop its symbol into the window.
Clicking a link while pressing the Command key will transfer the link, without following it, to your download directory. This would be useful, for example, if the link refers to a program you want to save, but not run immediately.
To follow a selected link, press Return, choose the Follow Anchor command, or press the Load button. Once a link has been followed, its contents are temporarily stored in your machine's virtual memory (cached). If you view it again before your cache expires, it will not need to be reloaded from its remote location. You can regulate the amount of time that pages are kept in the cache using Cache Preferences. To empty your entire current cache, select Flush Cache from the Tools menu.
A link that has been followed during your current OmniWeb session will change color so that you can distinguish it from other links that have not yet been viewed.
[Note: Links do not always appear as text, but sometimes as graphics or buttons. An image that is a link will be outlined with a border whose color is the same as hyperlinked text, unless you have changed the default setting, or the page's author has used the <border=0> option. If an image has no associated link, clicking it will have no effect, although it can be dragged it into another application, or into its own browser window.]
A relative URL is a pointer for a document that is located on the same site as your current URL. To visit a relative URL, you need only enter the directory and filename portion of the URL.
Hit "g" to jump to the URL text field. In this field, entries preceded by a slash (/) are assumed to be on the same site of your currently viewed URL. To use our previous example, if you are currently viewing http://www.omnigroup.com/Software/OmniWeb and you wish to see the OmniWeb mail archive, you can enter /MailArchive/OmniWeb-l/ in the text field. The browser looks for that document on the site www.omnigroup.com.
If your entry in the text field is not preceded by a / (slash), OmniWeb looks for a file or directory matching your entry within your current directory. For example, if you were viewing the Software page above, you need only enter "OmniWeb" in the URL text field to view the OmniWeb file, which is located on the same site and in the same directory (Software).
You can jump back a directory on any site by entering "." in the textfield. Two dots jumps back two directories, and so forth.
If your entry in the text field begins with "ftp" or "www", OmniWeb looks for a remote site of that name, automatically adding the proper protocol to the beginning of the URL.
You can click the arrow buttons on the button ribbon to navigate back or forward a page at a time. However, if you want to view the entire path of where you've been or want to review a document you loaded 10 pages ago, use one of OmniWeb's two history panels.
Each panel tracks your browsing history in a different way, described below. Each panel displays a
[Note: Each browser's history is tracked separately. When either of the two history panels are raised, they will display only the selected browser's history.]
If you visit a page you have already seen, the URL will not be repeated in the list; rather, it will move up to the top of the list, to indicate it's the most recent page you've viewed.
[Note: Some URL symbols that you see are "hollow", or white. This means that they have been generated, usually from a CGI script. Generated pages change every time they are loaded. These pages will not refetch from the cache when you enter or click on the same address multiple times &emdash; however, they will refetch from the cache if pulled from the History panel.]
Each frame has its own URL, each scrolls independently of other frames on the page, and in OmniWeb, the history of each frame is tracked separately. If you click anywhere inside of a frame, that frame will be bordered in red to indicate that it has been selected. Its URL will appear in the current URL well, and, if you raise a history panel, you will see the history of that frame only. You can use the Page Forward and Page Back buttons within a frame, or drag URLs into a frame out of its history panel, just as you would with an unframed web page.
To switch to the URL and tracking history of the frameset page, click in the textfield above your button ribbon.
Above is the default search page, from which you can access eight URL databases. Click on the icons of the search engines you wish to use (shift-clicking allows you to select more than one.) Enter your keyword in the Search for field and press return or the Search button.
The results of your search will be displayed below, in a hierarchical style similar to that of your bookmarks panel, with documents listed by their titles and marked with draggable zaps.
You can customize this search panel by dragging URLs from other search engines into the Engine field at the top of the Search panel. Some engines have options allowing you to tailor your query; for example, Alta Vista can search either the Web or recent Usenet articles, as well as enabling you to look for words in conjunction with one another. In these cases you might wish to have more than version of the engine available in the top field. To do this, load the engine's URL with all the options you want to include. Drag the
The symbol for a search panel URL is
Selecting one of the search engine icons from the Search Panel and pressing Command-shift-I (or
From here you can rename the search engine's title, reset its URL, and choose an icon that will visually represent the engine in the search panel.
The OmniWeb search panel lists search results in a format similar to the result of a browser page being Viewed as Bookmarks &emdash; that is, hypertext and hyperimages from the top and bottom of the remote search results page are assumed to be document titles. To avoid seeing these URLs in your search results field, you can instruct the search panel to ignore a specified number of the first and last links on a page.
[Note: To select the contents of an entire page, click anywhere in the page body and type Command-a (Select All).]
Please send comments, corrections, and suggestions regarding this documentation to OmniWeb-docs@omnigroup.com. Omni always welcomes your feedback!
symbol may also appear if there is an error during transmission, if the image format is invalid, if the page's author has not yet inserted the image, or if there is a problem with the installed filtering services. Clicking the symbol will attempt to reload and display the graphic. If the image is a link, it will appear as a dual image: a
and a
. Clicking on the former will attempt to reload the image; clicking on the latter will load the linked document.]
Dragging and Dropping a URL
URLs can also be entered in a browser by dragging and dropping a URL symbol () into a URL well. URL symbols, nicknamed "zaps", appear next to URLs in browsers, bookmark windows, search results panels, and history panels.
Button Ribbon
The button ribbon is located beneath the browser's text field. The button ribbon provides convenient access to several navigational features, which are described in detail throughout this chapter.
Working with Web Page Links
Once a web page is displayed, you can click that page's links to take you to other destinations. Links are displayed as colored text (or shades of grey if you are using a B&W monitor), and are underlined, by default.
button on the button ribbon or press the left arrow key on your keyboard. To go forward again, click the
button, or press the right arrow key. These arrows turn light grey if navigation in the indicated direction is not an option.
Relative URLs
A URL has several components. The first is the protocol notation: usually ftp, gopher, or http. Following that is the name of the site, which often begins with the prefix www for WorldWide Web. The simplest URL has only these two components &emdash; for instance, http://www.omnigroup.com. Most sites contain not only this top page, but also a number of sub-pages located in different directories. If you add /Software to the URL above, you can see Omni Development's Software page. If you enter http://www.omnigroup.com/Software/OmniWeb, you can see Omni Development's page about OmniWeb, located within the Software directory. In turn, there are files in the OmniWeb directory, such as features2.html, which lists features that are new in version 2.0.
Keeping Track of Where You've Been
During an OmniWeb session, you may visit many different web sites, all over the world. It's easy to lose track of where you've been and how you got to your current location.
symbol next to every URL listed, which can be dragged and dropped into a browser (or double-clicked) to return you to that site, or into a bookmark window to save for future reference.
Recently Viewed Pages
Click the button on the button ribbon to raise the Recently Viewed Pages panel. This panel lists all of the URLs you have visited during the current session by page title, with the most recent page visited at the top of the list.
Linear History
Choose Linear History from the Navigate menu to see a chronological listing of the sites you have visited during the session. The most recent site will appear at the top of the list, while the first site you visited will be at the bottom. This panel records every site you have seen during the session, and will repeat a URL if you have seen it more than once.
Navigation on Pages that Use Frames
Frames are a means of breaking up web pages into subsections. Activity in one frame can affect the contents of another frame. For example, on this page, selecting a section title in the left frame (the table of contents, or toc.html) will load that chapter in the right frame.
Searching the Web
OmniWeb now features a built-in Librarian that allows you to simultaneously search multiple databases by keyword. Click the
button to raise the following panel:
from that page into the Engine field. You can relabel the engine URL, and choose its icon, using the Search Engine Inspector Panel.
. Like the bookmarks zap, it can be dragged into a bookmark panel or browser. You can also drag and drop the entire list of your search results into a bookmarks window, if you wish to save it for later reference.
Search Engine Inspector
) will raise the Search Engine Inspector panel, which allows you to control the components of your Search panel.
Copying/Pasting Text and Graphics
To copy the contents of a web page, click and drag to select text and graphics and choose Copy from the Edit menu, or type Command-c. To paste the selection to another browser or application, select it and choose Paste, or type Command-v.
Click here to continue to the next chapter, Bookmarks.