InfoPicker v1.0 Home Page
The problem:
In many sites you have to go through pages and pages to get all the information
you want, if you visit the same site on a regular basis you end up wishing
this could be automated.
Bookmarks are a good way of solving this problem, but some sites don't
like you pointing directly to their inner pages (they want you to read
a bunch of ads!), so they change the URLs on a regular basis, therefore
invalidating old bookmnarks
The solution:
To write a program that will do the surfing for you!, the concept is quite
easy. A JavaScript program can compose an HTML page on the fly with only
the information you want. In order to do this, the program has to download
pages from the site that interests you and gather the appropriate information.
Most of the programs will be very "site dependand". InfoPicker is really
just a bit of code in JavaScript plus a Java applet that will help you
do your own program for a specific site.
How to write an InfoPicker for a specific site:
You need to write some JavaScript and save it either in a local file or
on the web. The applet can be pointed to remotely, so you don't need to
store it with your page.
More explanations needed (for now just look at the code of the demo)
...
Demonstration:
In order to see this demo of InfoPicker you first have to trust
the authority that certifies that Diego Moriarty is a good guy. Usually
this authority would be some trusted third party like VeriSign or Thawte,
these authorities are know to Netscape and their certificates are already
in Navigator.
For this demonstration I created my own Root Certification Authority.
When Netscape asks you, be sure to Accept this Certificate Authority
for
Certifying software developers, ok?, ready? click here to
add
Diego Moriarty Root Certificate Authority to your browser's list.
Usually applets are not allowed to connect to other computers (except
to where they come from), now that your browser knows about my certification
authority, it will give YOU the option to grant or deny such action when
infopicker asks.
Needless to say, to see infopicker running you should grant the
privilege, ok? ready? Now you can see
the demo.
Good surfing!
Done by Diego Moriarty