10. Hotlist

10.1 About Hotlist

Hotlist is an application for managing your collection of Internet addresses. As you visit various sites around the Internet, you will want to save their address for quick access on return visits.

You can organise your collected addresses in hierarchical folders to suit your requirements.

Each address is shown along with an icon representing the type of address it is: Web (HTML), FTP, Gopher, Email or news. As the pointer passes over each entry, the actual address is shown at the bottom of the window.

Because the Internet uses a standardised address system, known as Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) to denote addresses, you can save several different types of Internet addresses in your Hotlist, as shown in the following table.

Address stored Software used to access URL format

Web page Fresco http://www.riscos.com

FTP directory Fresco or FTP client ftp://ftp.demon.net

Terminal service ANTterm telnet://lambda.xerox.com

Email address Marcel mailto:support@riscos.com

Newsgroup name Marcel news:comp.sys.acorn.misc

Gopher Fresco gopher://gopher.cam.ac.uk

Local file Fresco file:/ADFS::HardDisc/page

Hotlist helps you remember the addresses you have stored by displaying their title rather than the address. This is usually more descriptive. You can edit the title using the Edit feature (described below).

You can access any address in your Hotlist simply by double-clicking on it.

• You will need to be online to access entries in your Hotlist which are not stored on your computer, such as Web pages or FTP sites. If you are not connected to your service provider, the Internet Suite cannot fetch the pages.
• For news and email address entries, you will need to be connected to Marcel (with the red pillar box or the news icon displayed).

10.2 Adding entries to your Hotlist

You can add entries to your Hotlist from the following Suite applications:

• Fresco: Web, FTP and Gopher site addresses, email addresses and newsgroup names
• FTPclient: FTP site addresses
• ANTterm: Telnet terminal and remote login addresses

You can also enter addresses manually into Hotlist.

Adding addresses from Fresco

There are several ways to create Hotlist entries from Fresco.

Using the Add to hotlist button

The simplest way is to add the address of the page you are currently viewing. This can be either a Web page, FTP directory or Gopher directory or file. To add the page to the Hotlist:

• Click the Add to hotlist button in the Fresco button bar.

The page's address will be added to the last folder in your Hotlist. If you regularly add pages in this way, it is a good idea to create a folder at the end of your Hotlist called `New' or `Unsorted' so that you can find new additions and sort them correctly.

Using the menu

You can also:

1. Display the page you want to add to the Hotlist.
2. Click menu inside the Fresco window and display the Misc menu, then the Hotlist menu.
3. Choose Insert from the Hotlist menu.

The URL will be added to the Hotlist.

Exporting all addresses from a file

To add all the URLs contained in a page to the Hotlist at once:

1. Display the page you want. Open the Hotlist window
2. Click menu inside the Fresco window and display the Save as menu.
3. Choose HTML from the Save as menu. The Save as dialogue will appear, containing an HTML file icon.
4. Drag the file icon to a suitable location or straight into the Hotlist window.
5. Hotlist will read the file and add any addresses within it to to the Hotlist in a folder with the name of the page which was saved.

Note that not all entries will have useful names: for example links to `Home' or `Here' may need to be edited so that their contents are obvious when viewed from Hotlist.

Adding addresses from FTPclient

To add addresses to the Hotlist from the FTPclient:

1. Click Menu in an FTP display window.
2. Choose Add item from the Hotlist sub-menu.
3. The FTP address of the current directory will be added to your Hotlist.

Adding addresses from ANTterm

To add addresses to the Hotlist from ANTterm:

1. Open a connection to the required site using ANTterm.
2. Choose Connect from the ANTterm icon bar menu (or click Select on the ANTterm icon).
3. Type the address of the site in the New session dialogue.
4. Click the pop-up list button at the right side of the dialogue.
5. Choose Add item from the Hotlist menu which appears.
6. The address will be added to the Hotlist.

Adding addresses from files

You can add entries to your Hotlist by dragging any HTML file into the Hotlist window. Any addresses within the file will be added to your Hotlist in a folder named after the file.

Hotlist files are saved as HTML but also include details of the folder and hierarchical format. If you import a Hotlist file which has been saved by !Hotlist it will include all this information as well as the addresses.

Adding addresess manually

To add an address manually:

1. Open the main Hotlist window.
2. Click Select on the folder to which you wish to add the new entry.
3. Click Menu and choose Create URL from the Hotlist menu.
   You can also press F2 or click the Create URL button.
4. The Create URL dialogue box will be displayed, with the name of the folder into which you wish to add the URL:
   If no folder is selected, the dialogue box title will read `Please select a destination folder'. Click on a folder in the Hotlist window and the dialogue box title will change, allowing you to enter the URL.
5. Type the name you wish to appear in the Hotlist window in the URL title box.
6. Type the URL itself into the URL box. You must use the correct format:
   http://www.riscos.com
   ftp://ftp.demon.net
   gopher://gopher.cam.ac.uk
   telnet://cix.compulink.co.uk
   mailto:support@riscos.com
   news:comp.sys.acorn.announce
   news:article_id
7. Note that mailto and news URLs have a slightly different format.
8. To quickly enter http://www, press Tab. Press Shift-Tab to enter ftp://ftp.
9. Click OK. The new URL will be added to your Hotlist.

10.3 Using Hotlist

Hotlist contains as few features as possible to concentrate on providing the essentials of Hotlist management.

Running !Hotlist

To open the Hotlist program:

1. Display the Internet Suite panel.
2. Double-click on the Hotlist icon.
3. The Hotlist icon will appear on the righthand side of the icon bar.
4. Click Select on the Hotlist icon to open the Hotlist window.

Saving the Hotlist

Whenever you make a change to your Hotlist, an asterisk appears in the Hotlist window title bar.

To save changes to your Hotlist:

• Click the Save button in the Hotlist button bar (or press F3).

To throw away changes to your Hotlist and revert to the previously saved version:

• Click the Reload button in the Hotlist button bar.

Displaying entries

Hotlist items can be organised in folders (see Organising entries below). You can open and close these folders as required to display their contents.

To open or close a single folder:

• Double-click on the folder's icon in the Hotlist window.

To open all folders:

1. Make sure that no folder is highlighted (click anywhere in the window to deselect any selected folder).
2. Click the Open folders button.

To close all folders:

1. Make sure that no folder is highlighted (click anywhere in the window to deselect any selected folder).
2. Click the Close folders button.

If any folders are selected, clicking the Open folders or Close folders buttons only affects the selected folders.

Displaying URL details

To display detailed information on a selected URL:

1. Select the URL in the list.
2. Click Menu inside the Hotlist window and slide off the URL `name' entry.
3. Choose Info from the Select menu (or press F5).
4. The Info window will appear, listing the name and path of the URL and details of when it was added, last accessed and the number of times it has been accessed from the Hotlist:

Accessing addresses

To access any address held in the Hotlist, simply double-click on it. This will launch the required application and load the requested page.

1. Press Tab to launch any selected URLs in the Hotlist window.
2. With mail and news addresses, you should have Marcel loaded and connected to an email or news server. This is because Marcel can be opened by different users and Hotlist cannot perform the log-on process automatically.

10.4 Organising entries

The main use of the Hotlist utility is to enable you to sort your Hotlist entries to suit your own requirements.

Organising entries in folders

Use folders to organise your URLs. You can nest folders within folders if required:

• New folders will be created as close as possible to the position of the pointer when the Hotlist menu was opened.
• Folders work on a drag and drop principle. You can drag a URL to a folder icon, drop it on to the icon and the URL will be placed within the folder.
• You can also drag a folder into a folder.
• Folders are automatically created if you add an existing HTML file to your Hotlist.

To create a folder:

1. Click Menu inside the Hotlist window.
2. Slide off the New folder menu option.
3. Type in the name of the new folder you want to create and press Return.

To edit an existing folder name:

1. Select the folder by clicking on it.
2. Click Menu within the Hotlist window and slide off the Directory option.
3. Choose Edit from the Selection menu.
4. Edit the name in the Edit folder dialogue box.
5. Click OK.

Moving and sorting folders

Folders are not sorted automatically by !Hotlist. You can sort them manually by dragging and dropping them in the desired location. This includes moving folders to and from sub-folders.

Sorting entries

You can choose the way in which the contents of folders are sorted.

1. Click Menu inside the Hotlist window and choose Display from the Hotlist menu.
2. Choose a sort option from the menu:

• Sort by name sorts in alphabetical order
• Sort by date sorts according to the date the URL was added to its folder.
• Sort by access sorts URLs by the number of times they have been accessed from the Hotlist application.
• Reversed sort reverses the order of sorting, ie Z..A.
• No sorting leaves entries unsorted. New URLs will be added to the bottom of folders.
• Entries can be sorted manually by dragging Hotlist icons within the Hotlist window.

Finding Hotlist entries

The Search facility lets you find URLs within your Hotlist. Because it searches both titles and the URL path, you can use it to search both parts of the Hotlist record.

To search the Hotlist:

1. Click the Search button.
2. Type in the search text in the Search for URLs dialogue box:
3. Click Search. Hotlist will search for any entries which contain your search text and highlight the first one found, as well as displaying a dialogue box listing the number of matches found and some options:
4. Click Next match to see subsequent items found, or Last match to go back to the previous match.
5. When the URL you require is selected, click either:

• Launch URL to launch the URL.
• Close to close the Search dialogue box.

Editing Hotlist entries

You can edit both the entry which is displayed in the Hotlist and the underlying URL.

To edit a Hotlist entry:

1. Select the entry which you want to change.
2. Choose Edit from the URL menu. The Edit URL dialogue box will be displayed.
3. Change the descriptive text or the URL as required.
4. Click OK.
5. The dialogue will be closed. Save the Hotlist to save the changes you have made.

Deleting Hotlist entries

To delete entries from the Hotlist:

• Select a URL which is no longer required and click the Delete URL button, or choose Delete from the Selection menu.
• Select a folder and click the Delete URL button, or choose Delete from the Selection menu. If the folder contains URLs, a warning will appear. Click OK to delete the folder and its contents.