Browser PA, your personal assistant on the Internet

Welcome to Browser PA
Browser PA will be your personal assistant to many different tasks you perform on the Internet, whether you are searching the Web, gathering RSS News Feeds, organizing your Favorites or History items, analyzing your Website or Surf sessions, Browser PA will be there to assist you.
The different sections of the program are easy to reach using one of the six tabs on the mainform. Each section will be explained in details in the Helpfile.

Browser PA supports all MSIE based browsers. You can set the Browser or Browser TAB (when you use i.e. Avant-Browser or MyIE2) to be used as output by selecting it from the combobox on the third row on  the mainform. When Browser PA is first started your default Browser will be started as well.

General remarks 
The program uses context sensitive help, so when you are in need for help just press the F1 key to get help about the selected item. When nothing is selected this page will be shown, once you have selected one of the tabs, like i.e. Session Tracker help about that subject will be shown.

The mainform can be docked to the left- and right side of your screen by clicking the buttons on the top of the window. The progam will be automatically hidden when the mouse leaves the program and you click on another window or on the desktop. To unhide the program click on far left- or right side of the screen. To force hiding the program click on the Windows taskbar.

We hope you will enjoy using Browser PA.

Download Browser PA
See also: RSS, Favorites, History, Tools and Menu  

Browser PA with Desktop Search support

Multi-engine Web Search


MSN search using the superior Google interface

 

New: Google Print and Google Blog Search

New: Featuring advanced Google Video search

RSS News Feed Generator based on oogle News Groups

Select one of the pre-installed Search-engines or add one of your own

Search queries can be saved and executed against all the different searchengines

RSS News Feeds

Browser PA provides you with all the tools to maintain your own list of RSS News Channels, organize your RSS News ItemsNews_Feed_Items and keep them archived as well. Read the following lines carefully and you will up and running in no time.

RSS News Feed Settings

Click on the orange XML button to open the RSS News Channel database where you can insert, modify and delete your RSS News Feed Channels.
Each Channel has its own URL. Most of the time you do not know that URL, but you often do know the name of the News source for example BBC News. To find out if BBC News has a RSS Feed online you can click on the second tab called Channel Search. Select the NewsIsFree search engine in the combobox on the right in the middle of the window, click the Goto button. Next enter BBC News in the search field on the NewsIsFree site and click on search. In the result list click on the orange XML button next to “BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition”. This will open the XML version of the news channel in the browser. Now go back to the first tab and click on ‘+‘ button to insert a new record. Click on Insert URL and finally click on Get Information. The last action will get information about the Channel from the news server using the inserted URL. Add a category, if you want to able to group the Channels. Placing a checkmark in the subscribe field will update the channel automatically and list the Channel in the Feed combobox. Finally set how often - in minutes - the server must be checked for news updates and set the default View for the Channel. That’s all there is to it…. Now Save and Close.

You can add as many Channels you like, but do not subscribe to too  many Channels since you will be overloaded with information again and that is what we did not want in the first place.

Add News Items to Archive database:

The current news items are added to the Archive database. All News items are deleted. In this SQL-query the Received DateTime Field is converted in a  Received Date Field because grouping on days will more useful in the Archive database.

RSS News Feed Items
In this panel the News- and Archived items are displayed using the selected View and/or Filter. When the items are grouped just click on the ‘+’ sign in front of the first column to open the group.
To view the complete original News item in the RSS News Viewer just doubleclick on the item. Pressing Enter will mark the item as read.

Feed
You can select all the Channels or select one from the Feed combobox (preferred way). When you select a Channel the preferred View is automatically applied.

News- and Archived Items
You can toggle between the News items and Archived items by clicking the Archive checkbox.

Collapse and Expand
When the News items are grouped you can collapse or expand all groups with one mouseclick.

Forced or Auto update of Channels
Forced: The Refresh button forces an update of all (when Feed field is empty) or just the selected RSS news feed channel.

Advanced Filter
You can aslo create some very advanced filters to browse through your news items as you never did before. See the example on the left. Do not forget to save the filter, otherwise the filter will not be visible in the filter combobox.

XML
On this panel you can examine the original XML-file as it has been downloaded from the News-server.

Log File
During the newsfeed download a logfile is created which you can examine on this panel.

Browser PA: RSS News Item Viewer and Full Story Browser



 

Favorites

Organize Favorites
When you bookmark a page, you create a direct link to that page and add the link to your Favorites in the Internet Explorer. The default way to organize your favorites is very limited indeed.
Now you can organize your Favorites using a file organizer with two panels: click on button 4 on the toolbar.
Select links while holding down the CTRL- or SHIFT-key. Next drag and drop the selected links from one panel to the other or Copy, Move or Delete links using the buttons at the bottom of the window.

Fast Favorites
Just another listing of your Favorites, albeit a very fast one, with direct access to Export- and Import functionality.

Search Favorites
Enter part of the URL or Title of the bookmarked website in the searchfield, next click on the Search Favorite(s) button.
Click on the desired link in the result list to navigate to the Webpage.

ToolBar

1. GoUp.

2. Show Properties of bookmark.

3. Go directly Favorites.

4. Open Favoritesmanager

5. Add to Favorites.

Organize your Favorites using this two panel Favoritesmanager

 

History

History New

Browser PA uses this information to generate a History Database on the fly.
To View the History item in your Browser doubleclick on the item or press Enter.

Each record contains the following fields: Title, URL, Sitename, Last Visited, Expires, Last Update, Location, YearMonth (YYY-MM (mmm)), Day (dd (ddd)), Hour (hh), Type. The last five fields are computed on the basis of the standard MSIE History records. These fields can be used to Group and Order your history data in anyway you like. Each Grouping or View can be saved to disc or Exported to a comma separated file (Ascii), Excel sheet, HTML-, or XML page.

Tip: Use the Export as View, which does not contain any grouping. Also set the correct Alignment and Column width using the context menu. Use Best Fit (all columns) to avoid Excel cells of more than one line.

Save/Open History Data

History Data can be saved to disc and be opened later for research or backup purposes.

Example
Every first day of the month you clear your history data in the Internet Explorer (using the Internet Options button in Browser PA) and on the end of the month you save the data to disc naming the file i.e. JUNE2004.

Filter Search
You can search for data in the History file using the criteria entered in the search field. When click on the search button the data will be filtered using your search criteria.

Tip:You can do a search/set filter before you Export the data.

Advanced Filter
You can create a very Advanced Filter using the filter builder (shown below). Click on the ‘…’ button to add more groups or conditions. Finally save the Advanced Filter using the Save As button. Once you have created and saved the filter, the filter can be selected using the Filter combobox on the History Settings panel.

Wildcards ‘%’ (string of characters) and ‘_’ (any character) can be used in combination with the Like operator.

Select a View
Open the History Settings panel and select a View - to display the History database list on screen - by clicking on the View selection combobox. 

Create a View
Open the History Settings panel and click on the Show Grouping Area button first, next click and drag the desired fields on or off the area to produce a Grouping on the selected field(s). Save the View to be able to select it from the View combobox. You can create as many different Views as you like.
N.B. Close Grouping Area before saving the View.

Context Menu
Right click on a column caption (ie right click on Title) to open the context menu. Here you set many different properties of the History database listing as shown on the left.

History Classic
Your Browser keeps track of all the sites you have visited. This Classic version is nearly identical to the one in MSIE so no further explanation need to be given here.  

Tools

IPCONFIG is a very useful utility, especially for helping you to debug network issues. It can be used to show your current TCP/IP information, including your address, DNS server addresses, adapter type and so on. This is most useful if you are using DHCP (a method to automatically assign TCP/IP information needed by a computer). Since the TCP/IP information, including the address, is assigned when the computer is booted, it is not known until boot time. IPCONFIG will show that information at any time.

DNS Query  The DNS Query utility enables you to query records from a Domain Name Server (DNS) about the domain you have entered.

Finger Fingering a host: To get information about a computer system on the internet, enter its name preceeded by an @ sign, like " @mit.edu". Many hosts will return information about its current life, how busy it is, and who is logged in.

· Fingering a user: To get information about someone on the internet, try their E-mail address, like "smith@mit.edu".

Example 1:  

Enter @mit.edu and press Execute Finger.

Example 2:

Enter smith@mit.edu and press Execute Finger.

Host Lookup This utility resolves the Name for an IP-address or the IP-address for a given Name. It also returns the name of the service associated with certain ports. Just enter the IP-address or given Name and press the Host Lookup button.

MSIE Logging This utility will help you monitor the events triggered by your Browser while surfing the Net. First you have to set the events you want to monitor.
As an example we set the BeforeNavigate2 and DocumentComplete events by checkmarking them in the Events combobox. Finally we click the Start Logging button. Now go to your Browser and surf along. Both events will be logged now until you click the Stop Logging button. The logs can be saved to disc and opened later for close examination. This way you will be able find many problems and bottlenecks on your website or intranet.

Trace Route The Trace Internet utility determines the route taken to a destination by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo packets with varying IP Time-To-Live (TTL) values to the destination. Each router along the path is required to decrement the TTL on a packet by at least 1 before forwarding it, so the TTL is effectively a hop count. When the TTL on a packet reaches 0, the router should send an ICMP Time Exceeded message back to the source computer.

Trace determines the route by sending the first echo packet with a TTL of 1 and incrementing the TTL by 1 on each subsequent transmission until the target responds or the maximum TTL is reached. The route is determined by examining the ICMP Time Exceeded messages sent back by intermediate routers.
Enter the address or hostname and click the Execute Trace button.

WhoIs The Whois internet utility allows you to query a WHOIS Server for domain registration information. There are a couple of servers already in the database. Enter the domain you want to query, select a WHOIS server and press WhoIs.

Menu

The Menu utility consists of 10 different panels. Each panel is mapped to a (Special) Folder of the Windows operating system. By default the first panel is mapped to the Control Panel. Use the Backspace key to go up one folder if you want to navigate between folders in a panel.Set New MenuRight click in a panel and select Set Menu. A new window will open where you can set one to ten mappings. Enter a description, path or special folder, a file filter and select a View style. For each panel you determine whether or not to show Folders and/or hidden files. A special folder is one of the pre-defined folders within the Windows namepsace, like Controls, Desktop, Fonts or Cookies etc. Path and Special Folder can not be both set. 

Tip: Novell users can use the ZEN-folders as well (look in your Start Menu folder).Cleaning up the DesktopYou can create shortcuts in a panel just by dragging an existing one from your Desktop area into the panel. 

Example
Suppose you have a couple of shortcuts to Excel sheets on your Desktop and want to organize them by placing them on one of the Menu panels.First: Click on the Menu-Tab and select the Menu Panels. Map one of the panels to a newly created folder called Project X. Second: Click on the panel called Project X. Now clean up your desktop just by first selecting the links with several ShiftKey+Left mousebutton clicks and drag them into the Project X folder holding down your Right mousebutton. In the pop-up menu select Move. That´s all.

New Shortcut
Right-click on an empty space in a panel and select New ShortCut from the menu. The dialogbox, shown below pops up. First select a file, then if desired change the displayed Icon using one of the Icon-files (not available on all computers). Fill-in the other standard options and click Ok. 

Menu Toolbar (left to right) 

1. Go Up one level. 
2. Show properties selected item. 
3. Create a New Folder in panel. 
4. Show panel context menu. 
5. Open Windows search utility. 
6. Execute program. 
7. Open DOS-box. 
8. Format discfloppy in A-drive. 
9. Execute DiskCopy utility.
10. Map network drive.
11. Disconnect mapped drive.
12. Edit, modify or create Shares.
13. Manage Windows users.
14. Show detailed PC information.