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WebSite Watcher Question

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Perry Mowbray:
Perry - that was Martin Aignesberger, the developer...  I think he has most likely tested it!!  ;D
-J-Mac (May 29, 2008, 01:51 AM)
--- End quote ---

 :-[ :-[ :-[ :-[ :-[ :-[

Thanks Jim (said removing egg from facial regions)

In my defense I was at work and in a rush, and it sort of sounded third person?

But I think I'll just shut my mouth now before putting the other foot in as well...

J-Mac:
No problem.  You wouldn't know otherwise - I have been at his forum a number of times so I would know.

And if you're reading fast at work you probably don't look at signatures or might even have them turned off.

It does seem that he keeps an eye out here for questions and tries to post answers when he can.  Pretty admirable.

Jim

J-Mac:
By the way, Website Watcher is an excellent program; very comprehensive.  However it does have a bit of a learning curve, at least for non-coding types like me.

I liked the idea of a program that could keep an eye on web pages and notify me when they change. Of course it isn't quite that simple! Most pages, for example, have a Date element that changes daily, and there are usually a number of other elements that change more often than you realize at first blush.  When you get notified of ALL changes it is sort of like the boy who cried wolf -- you stop paying much attention to that page and then invariably miss a big change that you were hoping to catch.

In those cases - which is most pages - you can create filters to only be notified of changes that are important to you. Some filters are pretty basic and don't take a lot of learning. Others require that the filter be composed - like writing scripts for some applications. That's where Website Watcher can be more difficult, IMO.  There is not much information at all as to how to compose filter scripts.  I have tried some that get real complex very quickly, and more often than not I end up getting changed pages where there's a warning saying that my filter is no good.  Occasionally I get it worked out, and a lot of times I just give up!

The program could really use better documentation regarding filters IMO.  Although at the forum many users seem to have less problems with filters, so it may just be that you need to have a better background in coding.  At least that's how it appears to me.

Jim

Perry Mowbray:
Thanks Jim: appreciate your comments.

Actually, I did recognise Martin's login when I looked: it was his language that made me not look in the first place  :-[

Yes, I've got the trial installed at the moment in lieu of some testing for some of our principals... unfortunately ran into the 3 directory limit of the trial a bit quickly :( But it's all good: I'm monitoring a couple of sites with 5-600 bookmarks in each  :Thmbsup:

Thankfully the sites that require monitoring are pretty basic and filtering is not required, but follow is ;)

I can see if we do go down this path (which is pretty sensible), that I'll need to manage a lot of the bookmarks for these fellows.

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