HyperBK - User Manual

 

 

Welcome to HyperBK, a new and innovative bookmark and history manager for Mozilla Firefox. The HyperBK extension is designed to be used by anybody as a better way of maintaining the bookmarks and an easier way of locating past visited pages.

 

 

1.1 Installation

Installation is very easy; the only prerequisite is that you have Firefox 1.5 installed on your system being it Windows, Linux or MAC. To install the extension simply visit http://hyper.iannet.org and click on ‘Install Now’. This will popup a dialog like Figure 1 and after a delay of four seconds the Install Now button will become active making it possible click it and install HyperBK.

 

Figure 1 Install Caption Dialog

 

Firefox will need to be restarted in order to complete the installation.

1.2 Welcome Wizard

 

Figure 2 Welcome Wizard Page 1

 

Once HyperBK has been installed, the first time Firefox is run, a wizard (Figure 2) will pop up. This wizard will be used to set some initial parameters for HyperBK. Pressing on next will open the next page (Figure 3).

 

Figure 3 Welcome Wizard Page 2

 

In this wizard page enter a Google developer key. This can be obtained from www.google.com/apis. This key is used in the see also and bookmark relocation. If no Google developer key is available then just leave this entry empty. It can also be entered from HyperBK preferences later on. The second option is required if you want to still view the standard Firefox bookmark menu.

 

Please note that in no way HyperBK will tamper with the original Firefox bookmarks. All new bookmarks will be stored in separate files, and if the necessity arises uninstalling HyperBK will regain normal Firefox operation.

 

Figure 4 Welcome Wizard Page 3

 

Figure 4 shows the final wizard page. The option to export the Firefox bookmarks is useful in case you want to import them into HyperBK. Unselect it if you do not want to export the Firefox bookmarks.

 

 

1.3 Import Bookmarks

To import bookmarks from an html file do the following:

  1. Go to Tools…HyperBK Other…Import Bookmarks

 

  1. Select the file you want to import. This file will be shown in the browser window
  2. Select Yes to import the bookmarks

 

For HyperBK to use its full capabilities then each bookmark must be visited at least once. This can be done using the First Bookmark Tour available from Tools…HyperBK Other…First Bookmark Visit Tour.

 

Figure 5 Tour All Bookmarks  Prompt

 

When the tour is selected a dialog (Figure 5) will be popped up. Click on OK to tour all bookmarks that have not yet been visited. Image loading is disabled throughout the tour to make the webpages load faster.

 

Figure 6 Stop Tour Window

 

The tour can be stopped by clicking on the ‘Stop Tour’ button in the window shown in Figure 6. Clicking to stop the tour will automatically reset the image loading so that images will now load once again. You can easily stop and resume a tour, as in this tour only bookmarks that have not yet been visited will be actually visited.

 

 

 

1.4 Adding Bookmarks

 

Figure 7 Add Bookmark Dialog

 

To add a bookmark press Ctrl-D, click the ‘Bookmark This Page…’, or click on ‘Add Bookmark’ on HyperBK toolbar.  On clicking any of these commands the dialog shown in Figure 7 is displayed.

 

This dialog consists of the following:

 

Using the classification algorithm the most ideal matching category will be selected. In case that the classification yields to no result then the last category a bookmark was added to will be selected. There is a button which will be used to bookmark in the last category bookmarked in. Clicking on this button will automatically bookmark in the category displayed in the button name.

 

 

1.5 Bookmarks and Fast Bookmarks

Bookmarks are forever, fast bookmarks are not. This is the main difference between the two. If a page needs to be bookmarked for the next 2 or 3 sessions just add it in the fast bookmarks, no need to fill the bookmark file with useless bookmarks.

 

The fast bookmark is a linear list of bookmarks, no categories, no thumbnails, and the name of a page cannot be changed. The only thing to take care of is that the list can only contain a limited number of bookmarks and if this limit is exceeded the first page in will be removed. The number of bookmarks that can reside in the fast bookmarks can be adjusted from the HyperBK Preferences (see section 1.12).

 

1.5.1 Top Bookmarks List

This is a list of the top 10 accessed bookmarks. This list is located in the HyperBK bar.

 

 

1.6 HyperBK Browser Components

 

1.6.1 HyperBK Bookmark Menu

 

Figure 8 HyperBK Bookmark Menu

 

This menu (Figure 8) contains all the bookmarks that are available in HyperBK. Each submenu is a unique category which has these three commands at the top:

Add the currently loaded page to this category. (no dialog is displayed)

Start a tour of the bookmarks that reside in that category. The tour can be moved to the next/previous webpage from the ß and à on HyperBK toolbar.

Perform a search query to Google to retrieve a set of similar pages to the current ones in this category. (See section 1.13)

 

1.6.2 HyperBK Sidebar

The browser sidebar (Figure 9) displays the bookmarks and history and has search features to search from the bookmark or history. Views can be changed by clicking on the View button and either selecting bookmarks or history. Double clicking on any entry of the tree will open the bookmark in the browser window. This sidebar can be displayed using the Shift-F2 key sequence.

 

For bookmarks it is possible to right click and select one of the following commands from the context menu.

Open the bookmark in the current window

Starts a bookmark tour, the tour can be moved to the next previous from the ß and à on the HyperBK toolbar.

Sorts the entries in that bookmark folder

Renames the bookmark

Deletes the bookmark

 

1.6.3 HyperBK Toolbar

Figure 10 HyperBK Browser Toolbar

 

The HyperBK toolbar (Figure 10) can be displayed using the Shift-F1 key sequence or else by View…Toolbars…HyperBK Toolbar.

 

The toolbar contains the following elements:

 

1.7 HyperBK Bookmark Manager

 

Figure 11 HyperBK Bookmark Manager Window

 

This bookmark manager (Figure 11) contains all the required features that a simple bookmark manager has, which include:

 

Available Filters

Enter the score of the number of times a bookmark has been visited. This is useful if the top bookmarks need to be viewed.

Perform a search for a bookmark that matches the keyword. This keyword can match anything from page title, page URL, and page keywords.

Enter the date to view pages that were visited on a specific date.

 

1.8 HyperBK Bookmark Manager with Page Thumbnails

 

Figure 12 HyperBK Bookmark Manager (with page thumbnails) Window

 

Figure 12 shows another bookmark manager. It is much more user-friendly and contains the features as the previous one. It takes a different approach to the bookmarks as this time there is a page shot of the bookmark. The features offered are like the previous bookmark manager, which include Delete, Rename, and Move.

 

 

1.9 Verify Bookmarks

This is a tool to verify which bookmarks are still active, which have been updated and those that are offline. To open this utility goes to Tools…HyperBK Verify. This will open a window like the one shown in Figure 13.

 

Figure 13 HyperBK Bookmark Verify Utility Window

 

Pressing on the Verify button will initiate a check of all bookmarks to and see the result of each bookmark. The operation can be stopped at any time using the Stop button. The other functions that are available are

 

1.10 Divide Category Wizard

Whenever the bookmarks found inside a category exceed the allowable limit, then the Divide Category Wizard (Figure 14) will be popped open. This will divide a particular category into two. You can set the limit that a category can hold in HyperBK Preferences.

 

Figure 14 Divide Category Wizard Page 1

 

Click on Next will open the next wizard page (Figure 15) to be able of creating a new category.

 

Figure 15 Divide Category Wizard Page 2

Enter a folder name and select the location where the folder will be created. You can opt for automatic or manual division. In both cases the changes can be adjusted to match your wishes.

 

Figure 16 Divide Category Wizard Page 3

 

Use the à and ß arrows to move the bookmarks from the old category to the new one.

 

Figure 17 Divide Category Wizard Page 4

 

Click on Finish will save all changes done and divide the category into two new categories, having a bookmark file much more organized.

 

 

1.11 History Viewer

The history viewer window (Figure 18) shows the list of visited sites in the past 20 days (or more, according to the value set in preference. see section 1.12).

The history viewer divides the web pages visited according to the bookmark categories that one has. Search Pages results are classified automatically in a special category named “Search Pages”, the rest uncategorized sites are placed in a special category named “Unclassified”.

 

Figure 18 HyperBK History Window

 

There are a series of filters that can be applied to the history in order to reduce the number of entries. These filters include:

This filter will show all pages that were visited since the date specified.

Only one category is shown in the history tree.

Filter by the number of visits to a particular page.

Search for any pages that match the given keyword. The title, page URL and page keywords are used.

This filter is available by right clicking on any history entry. It will filter out and show only pages that were visited 2 hours before and after visiting that particular page.

 

These filters can be applied by selecting the filter from the Filter menu in the toolbar and entering the parameter that is required in the drop down box. Pressing on the View button will enable the filter and showing all items that match the specified criteria.

 

Right clicking on a menu will display a context menu which has the options of Opening a history page, or highlighting the page Referrer. The Page Referrer refers to the page that leads into the page.

 

1.12 HyperBK Preferences

The preferences window opened from Tools…HyperBK Preferences has a number of parameters which can be set to make HyperBK adjust to the user’s requirements.

 

Figure 19 HyperBK Preferences Page 1

 

The preferences that can be set are the following:

Use this option to disable toolbar tips.

Hide the original Firefox bookmark menu.

Show Fast Bookmarks Menu on the window menu bar.

Maximum time that a script is allowed to run.

 

Figure 20 HyperBK Preferences Page 2

 

Be allowed to re-bookmark once a bookmark is already present. This will not result in a new duplicate bookmark but a move and update of the already present bookmark.

Instead of having the bookmark name as the title this is automatically reduced.

Maximum number of bookmarks that are allowed in a folder, the default is 30.

Maximum number of fast bookmarks that can be hold in fast bookmark list, the default is 30.

Maximum number of days to keep in history, the default is 20 days.

Offer tooltip suggestion on links by marking links that have already been bookmarked.

See also algorithm to use. There are two:

 

Figure 21 HyperBK Preferences Page 3

 

This is the Google developer key which is required to use some of Google services (specifically in See Also). To apply for one please go to www.google.com/apis

This is a list of search engine pages URLs. The default value will match Google, Yahoo and MSN Search. It is a ; delimited string where each part consists of two pieces. The first being part of the search URL while the second delimited by , is the query variable.

 

1.13 See Also

            This option will perform a search to a particular search engine and retrieve a set of URLs that are similar to the category. There are two ways this search query is computed. The first one uses the page keywords that are automatically picked out of a page while the second method uses search terms that were used to find the bookmarked pages in the first place (from the SE Referrer).

 

Figure 22 No SE Referrer Prompt

 

If none of the pages in a particular category have an SE Referrer than the method will be switched to the other automatically. If the dialog shown in Figure 22 appears click on OK to generate a query out of the automatically picked keywords.

 

The automatically picked keywords will search Google directory instead of the whole WWW (Figure 23).

 

Figure 23 See Also Window (top keywords)

 

On the other hand the see also using the SE Referrer (previous search terms) will perform a search in the whole www as shown in Figure 24.

 

Figure 24 See Also Window (SE Referrers)