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1046
Developer's Corner / Re: Desktop Forum Reader
« on: February 10, 2007, 08:24 AM »
I don't know if there's anything server side, but there may be something helpful on the browser side. For Firefox, there is an extension called Fasterfox, which loads all links in the background. The improvement is perceptible on simpler pages, like Google's search results, but on large pages with lots of content and links, the chance Fasterfox preloads the link you're eventually going to click is rather small. It would help if you could configure the links you want preloaded, e.g. grab only links containing words such as "next", "page", or "more" etc., but Fasterfox doesn't support that.

A long time ago I was using a http proxy called Naviscope, which had exactly that feature, and it speeded up page loading very nicely. (Its basic feature was scrubbing ads.) It was freeware and it performed flawlessly, but it got abandoned after a while, and I had to drop it when it became necessary to run an actual firewall. Perhaps there are other proxies now that have the preload feature.

1047
Developer's Corner / Re: Desktop Forum Reader
« on: February 09, 2007, 07:30 PM »
Every page view on a forum for me tends to involve having to redownload headers and images over and over.

Images shouldn't be redownloaded, since the browser would normally pull them from the cache. Or you could disable downloading images, though it may make some sites unnavigable.

A generic application like you describe is not really possible, I think, since each forum has a different layout and slightly different functionality. There is no common "protocol" to follow. A minor change in the layout of a forum would require updating the application. Also, if a forum depends on JavaScript, for example, that application would have to have JavaScript built in, etc. It would have to support authentication (cookies), encrypted connections... In effect, it would almost have to be a fully-featured web browser, with only a different interface and the added storage functionality.

What you may want to try, instead, is a program that will download a whole website (or parts of it) to disk. Years ago I used a program called Teleport Pro for this, but there are probably newer offerings available now. Reget Deluxe can also download websites recursively, and I know there's at least one freeware app, but can't recall its name. This is worth a try, although this solution works best with static websites, where pages don't change between views. With dynamically generated sites, such as discussion forums, recursive download may take a long time (or, if URLs change dynamically, may never stop, because the downloader keeps seeing "new" links every time it grabs a page - I've seen it happen often with Teleport Pro).

Also, without cookies, you'll be downloading content as seen by a user who is not logged-in, so no Reply links, for example.


1048
(Moved message from the contest thread where it didn't belong)

im still finalizing what the plugins will be able to do and hope to have an api in about a week.  they will be able to do several things - suggest results, affect scoring, take over actions on results, and even use the output window for arbitrary display of info.

One great piece of functionality would be to let plugins search against sources other than the filesystem. I once started a project I called Sling; the idea was to scan for matching executable "items" much like FARR does, except I wanted to scan for anything that was vaguely executable. I.e. not only files, but also Firefox bookmarks, telephone numbers stored in my PhoneDeck addressbook (or Outllok contacts), etc. That project never made it out of planning, but I would still love to have FARR run against my Firefox bookmarks. If the plugin API supported that, I'd try writing that plugin.

This has potential issues - in all likelihood it would not be as fast as FARR's "native" operation. Also, you might need to expose something like an IExecutable interface, since FARR cannot possibly know how to execute everything a plugin might find as a match for user's input. (Or just delegate launching the matching item to the plugin).

1049
What can a FARR plugin do? COuldn't find anything about plugins in the current version help. Mouser, could I try the latest dev release? I'd like to make a suggestion or two, mostly regarding the UI, but don't want to speak about a version that's going to become obsoleted soon.

1050
Silly me, of course!

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