BROWSE.EXE
==========
The offline testbed for YAN's online viewer and which is just beginning
to take on a life of it's own :) It has the additional ability, compared
to the online version, to follow #label references, within and across
files, but obviously lacks the various links and forms.

    Command line:
        Browse <filename>
                filename = HTML file.

Configuration is now done with a browse.rc file which is documented in
the file.

Normal links are in green and images in dark gray. Highlighted links are
in cyan and the actual URLs displayed in the bottom bar.

Enter will follow followable links. Followable means that the link is
either within the current page or is a local file (if the link is
HREF="filename.htm" and filename.htm exists in the current directory it
will be used OK.

Mailto: links can also be "followed" by generating mail to be sent when
next logged in. If you include a sig file, it is just copied onto the
end of the mail body and so it should contain the sig separator "-- "
(not "--").

F1 gives cryptic key function help.

As a sop to the benighted mouse-centric, the left button pages down and
the right button exits. This is supposedly a la List, but, naturally, I
wouldn't know.
 
If desired, the highlighted URL can be added to a script file (called
web.scr :) ready to be run by the http client. If this URL is a search
engine driver string it will ask for a search term and, if one is
entered, script the complete search engine drive command. If you  want
to build scripts, make sure that the page URL is in the top comment
line. Full URLs will always work, but to follow relative addresses
Browse needs some way to know where the initial page came from. Browse,
both online and offline, will ensure that this comment it included in
any pages they cause to be fetched, but if you fetch pages by hand or
write scripts by hand, bear it in mind. FTP scripts or BatchFTP lists
can also be created. Generated HTTP scripts will place whatever files
are caused to be collected in a cache dir under the cwd. If you use YAN
you'll already have made this under the NET root dir (eg
c:\demon\cache), but if not you'll need to make one under whatever cwd
you normally use. YAN's browse sorts itself out, but the scripts assume
that you've got this cache dir set up under the cwd. Normally, script
additions are silent, but if the sound parm is used in browse.rc, a
sound at a pitch and duration controlled by the parm is heard when a
link is successfully added to web.scr.
  
Images can be displayed with Jan Patera's PICTVIEW (the built-in default
and highly recomended) or any other suitable graphics viewer specified
in browse.rc.

Viewer can be any graphics viewer able to handle GIF and JPG files which
can be passed a filename. QPV is the best I've used, but Pictview is
almost as good, getting better and it's free. If you're pushed for
space, Lxpic is as small as a viewer can get, but it lacks the
resolution of the others. Any directory preamble in the image URL will
be ignored so that images should be viewable provided they are in the
same directory as the webpage, as they will be if Browse caused them to
be fetched.

If you get transparent (spit) GIFs of text or drawings, you may need a
viewer capable of controlling the background colour (black text/lines on
a transparent background won't show up with most GIF viewers since they
default to a black background). The only one I've found, so far, to
handle this well is Ombra. Sadly, it doesn't do JPG and it's save
function uses a weird RAW format, but Alchemy can read the output.
Lxpic, Pictview and Ombra are free, but QPV and Alchemy aren't.

Support:
No support is offered, but email may prompt me into action if I can see
the benefit and it outweighs the cost. Moans, groans and bugs will go
onto the list, but may, or may not, get addressed.
    
Contact:
If you feel the need for contact, yan@ukgateway.net will reach me.

