WEBFormation

[Info-Mac]

Download: http://archive.info-mac.org/inet/web/webformation.hqx

What's in a Bookmark Manager

The basic way to store an URL is as a browser bookmark. This gives you a single list containing the URL and its name, but no additional information. You can comfortably store up to 20 URLs this way, though you probably will remember each of them after a while.

Another way of storing URLs are hierarchical Bookmark Managers. For instance with the Favorites Menu of System 8.5 you can at least group some URLs together. More sophisticated tools offer more information for an URL like date of last visit, a comment or a rating. 200 - 300 URLs can be stored, before you lose track of them.

The third type of Bookmark Manager is the linear list. Those do not necessarily contain more information than the hierarchical list, but sorting URLs by different fields is an added bonus. Around 500 URLs is the maximum for the linear list, before things start getting messy.

And that is all?

In the last few years we have seen the development from handcoding html to sophisticated WYSIWYG tools like Dreamweaver and GoLive. Bookmark Managers, however, have seen no development at all.

I see the following two areas, in which a Bookmark Manager needs to be improved (meaning, what WEBformation offers):

More information for a single URL

Very important is the possibility to store more text than a simple sentence as a comment. Then there are: date, when URL was entered; has URL been visited yet; date of last visit; number of visits; when do you want to visit again; frequency of planned visits; was URL downloaded; levels of download; validation; date of validation and so on.

Data management tools

In a linear list you can sort the URLs, find text in one URL and at most you can find exact duplicates. WEBformation offers four methods of finding similar URLs (automatically marking them). Then there are: finding predefined URL sets like URLs to download; sophisticated searching capabilities including adding to a find or finding subsets; integrated URL downloading, URL validating and so on.
System Requirements

WEBformation is a Filemaker 4 template, not a standalone program. The font Trebuchet MS is installed with System 8.5 as part of Internet Explorer. WebPalette, a floating window for the browser, needs System 8.5. The Scripting Addition Sigma's Addition is necessary. To validate your URLs Big Brother is used and WebDevil or Anarchy for directly downloading URLs. Sigma's Addition and BigBrother are enclosed. I have included the full documentation of BigBrother. It is now public domain and no longer shareware, but the author has not changed the documenation.