Internet Surfer 2.5
Copyright (c) 2000 by Jack Flacco


What's New
==========

- Added New Window spawning
- Added a configurable active view highlight
- Added Close All documents
- Added Offline mode
- Added address bar history
- Links Manager is now a dynamic dialog with auto save and restore of positions
- Separated Preferences and Paths into separate property pages
- Cleaned up the options property pages
- Cleaned up the file open dialog
- Logo Changed to Splash Screen in preferences
- Ability to specify log file path
- Bug fixes


Author's Message
================


October 12, 2000
----------------


First off, many thanks go out to all the users who have been an inspiration to me in updating Internet Surfer--keep the mail coming!  Also, thanks goes to the various users who have been so kind to provide feedback on the initial releases of the program noting improvements and defeciencies--thank you!

So what's new with this version?  A lot, but not so much that it would constitute a full upgrade number...that's why I'm calling it 2 1/2...well, 2.5 for us metric users.  The biggest improvement is Internet Surfer's ability to spawn new windows.  This is the top if not the number 1 user request since the birth of this program.  What it does is capture calls from pages requesting a new page to be spawned overtop of the main page.  This is mainly used for banner ads and links that open up new browser instances.  You'll find that this new feature can either be configured to spawn or not to spawn.  

Address bar history support is now available.  It will remember which sites you've recently navigated to and it can easily be reset by the click of the mouse.  A new "Paths" page has been added to Options.  Additionally, on the Paths page there is now support for log file path configuration.  Another big improvement is the "ActiveBorder" functionality that's been added to reflect the ever-growing need to distiguish which view is current.  The ActiveBorder feature will allow a highlight to surround the current active view.  This means that if a window is split into 2 views--the active view will be highlighted with a border.  It's highly configurable including colors and a 3D option which will give an embedded look to the border.

You can now export your links for easy transport!  The Links Manager has been changed to allow for importing and exporting of the links in the Manager.  A reset button has been provided to wipe out sites from the Manager to be later restored with the import feature.  This comes in handy when you want to use Internet Surfer on someone else's machine and you want to view your links.  By the way, the Links Manager now remembers it's size and positions itself in the center of the application every time it opens.

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot...there is now an "Offline" feature, and a "close all views" feature just in case you want to close everything very quickly but leave Internet Surfer open.  I've also fixed two bugs that crept into the last release having to do with MultiView Loading...when a view was not opened and you click on Add in MultiView Loading the program aborted because it did not have an active view to get the valid URL...and after setting Multi-View Loading to enabled a new window would redirect to a Multi-View Loading site rather than the homepage.

To wrap up...noooooo, I didn't add Explorer's Favorites or History yet...I planned it for this release but I never got the chance to put it in, hopefully next release!

Go ye now and surf!  ;)


September 1, 2000
-----------------


Thank you for downloading Internet Surfer!  This has been my pet project for quite a while now, and it has really taken off since I first had the notion of a MDI browser.  This version of Internet Surfer is the version that I've always pictured it being!  Other than Favorites or History, it has everything I wanted it to have but never had a chance to implement.  It has also a few things that some of you have requested and a few things that I thought were good ideas.

One of the major improvements is Internet Surfer's ability to have multiple views startup all at the same time.  This is great if every morning before starting your day you always go to the same sites.  Not only is it highly configurable but also optional.  Another improvement is the ability to minimize to the tray.  The tray is the part of your desktop near the clock.  Once minimized it only appears as an icon.  If you want to maximize it, just click it!  What's more?  I built a security feature around this functionality so that if you do not want to allow people from maximizing it, it will prompt for a password.

I finally had the chance to also enable the saving features of the browser.  You can save a page and all it's dependencies.  That means when you save a page all of the pictures get saved too!  

Something that nearly didn't make this release was the "Always On Top" feature.  I didn't think it useful until I combined it with the Auto-Refresh feature.  Now I have it running on my desktop constantly in view with the latest stock quotes!

The logging feature has dramatically been improved!  It now logs all navigation to a site as well as load times and session times.  There even is a handy timer option on the status bar for people who need to know just how long they spend on the internet (you'd be surprised)!  I put that in for the folks who don't have unlimited internet access.

Last but not least a lot of small improvements here and there to make it a bit more pleasurable surfing the net!

Anyways, I hope you like it!  Happy surfing!


Introduction
============

Have you ever been on a site that was so big you got lost?  Have you ever wanted to clean up the taskbar of browser windows because you kept shift-clicking sites to not lose your place?  Have you ever wanted to split a browser window so that you can see two different views of a site?  Have you ever wanted to have a page to auto-refresh a certain amount of time?

Well, Internet Surfer was designed to do all the above things and more!


Requirements
============

- Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher
- Windows 95/98/NT/2000/Me, you, him, she or it (bad joke, nevermind)


Installation
============

Unzip all files to a newly-created folder and run the program from there


Keyboard Accelerators
=====================

Links			Alt+L
Options			Alt+O
Auto-Refresh		Alt+P
Split window		Alt+S
Multi-View Loading	Alt+V
Close all windows	Alt+X
New view		F1
Go back			F2
Go forward		F3
Navigate		F4
Refresh			F5
Stop			F6
Hide tool bar		F7
Hide status bar		F8
Mail			F9
Switch between views	Ctrl+Tab


Wish List
=========

Access to IE's Favorites and History (yes--this is a carry-over from the previous versions)


Tricks
======

* You can easily switch between views by doing Ctrl+Tab
* To view links from one view to another view simply click hold drag and drop a link from one view to another
* To quickly enable/disable the Multi-View Loading feature do Alt+V
* To quickly enable/disable the Auto-Refresh feature do Alt+P
* When spliting views you can put a search engine on one view drag links over to the other view
* Get the latest stock quotes by combining Auto-Refresh with the Always On Top feature while at a stock site
* Quickly navigate to a site by pressing F4
* You can quickly navigate to a site while another site is loading by pressing F1 and F4 in quick succession


History
=======

September 1, 2000

- Startup views
- Minimize to tray support
- Security support when minimizing to tray
- Page dependency "Save As" enabled
- Always On Top support
- Session timer
- Fonts support
- Editing features enabled
- Navigation timing
- Status bar enhancements
- Versioning support
- Dialogs streamlined and standardized
- Enhanced Auto-Refresh
- Logging streamlined
- Messaging enhancements
- "New Window" redundancy deleted

July 27, 2000

- MDI (Multiple Document Interface)
- Ability to split views
- Session-logging to monitor activities
- Time selective auto-refreshing on views
- One-click access to an HTML-based mail server
- Keyboard accelerated commands
- Private Home page
- Private Links manager
- Optional address interface
