Web Assistant

From the Pittsburgh Pebbles PDA Project

by Rob Miller

• Purpose
• Downloading and Installing
• Using Web Assistant

Purpose

Web Assistant is a Pebbles application designed to make hub-and-spoke style of navigating the World Wide Web easier. Web Assistant stores a list of links from a "hub" web page (such as a list of search results), so a user can quickly switch between the links on the hub page without having to constantly be retracing steps.

Web Assistant works only with Microsoft Internet Explorer (not with Netscape, for example).

Web Assistant stores the links associated with a page in a category. Each category holds the links for one category.

Downloading and Installing

1. Web Assistant is downloaded with the rest of the Pebbles applications in one big zip file. See the main downloading instructions.
2. Make sure the plugin Clipboard.dll is in the same directory as the PebblesPC program on your PC. Click on the Plugins button in PebblesPC to make sure Clipboard is displayed in the list of loaded plugins.
3. A Perl script, Clipboard.pl must also be placed in the PebblesPC directory. To use clipboard.pl, you will need Perl. If you do not have Perl installed on your machine, information and links can be found at www.perl.com. A version for Win32 is located at: http://www.ActiveState.com/.
4. Install WebAssist.prc on your Palm.

Using Web Assistant

Web Assistant stores the links from a web page for easy navigation from a "hub" page, such as the results page from a search engine. However, since there are often many extraneous or uninteresting links on web pages, Web Assistant allows the user to select the links that should be displayed on the PDA.

To use Web Assistant:

1. Open Internet Explorer to the desired page.
2. Highlight the desired links with the mouse cursor, then copy the highlighted region to the clipboard.
3. Press the Refresh button on the PDA. A list of links will appear on the Pilot. The links may take a few seconds to download.
4. To open a link on the PC, tap on the link's name in the list on the PDA.

Note that Web Assistant does not update the list of links unless the Refresh button is pressed. A link to the "hub" page is provided at the top of the list on the PDA.

The lists generated by Web Assistant for the PDA can be saved. Each list has a category displayed in the upper right hand corner of the screen. One list of links can be saved per category. Pressing the Refresh button will replace the current list of links with a new links from the PC.

New links can be added to the list by clicking on New Link in the Link menu. Existing links can be edited by double clicking on the link name or by clicking on Edit Link from the Link menu. When creating or editing a link, the link title is the first line and the last line must contain the Web address of the link to open

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