WEBJUMPER(1)WEBJUMPER(1)NAMEwebjumper - tool to make URL icons (jumpsites) for the World Wide Web
SYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/webjumper [ jumpsiteFile1 ... jumpsiteFileN ]
DESCRIPTION
The WebJumper tool lets users create and modify "webjumper" or "jumpsite"
icons. A jumpsite is a three-line text file containing an SGI
designator, an optional description, and an URL. Opening (double-
clicking) a jumpsite will cause a specific World Wide Web site to appear
in the user's default Web browser, such as Netscape or Mosaic.
WebJumper can be launched from the toolchest (Internet > Create a
WebJumper) or from a Unix shell command line. Like most applications,
WebJumper's icon can be found in the icon catalog. It resides on the
WebTools page, along with icons for WebMagic, Netscape, and some preset
jumpsites to interesting locations. To access these icons, type iconbook
at the command line and click the WebTools tab or, from the Find
toolchest, select WebTools.
CREATE WEBJUMPERS BY PASTING
Users can create webjumpers without using the WebJumper application.
Webjumpers can be created simply by selecting and pasting URL text. Use
the mouse pointer to select any URL, then paste it to the desktop, a
dirview, or iconbook.
For example, select the following URL by clicking the first mouse button
and dragging across this text:
http://www.sgi.com
Then click the middle mouse button on the desktop background. A
webjumper icon named PastedURL will be created. The IRIX 6.3/6.4/6.5
Interactive Desktop must be running to see this behavior. See the IID(1)
man page for more information.
CREATE WEBJUMPERS USING THE WEBJUMPER APPLICATION
The old (pre-IRIX 6.3) method for creating webjumpers uses the WebJumper
application. In the main WebJumper window, the user can type a
description of a Web site (ex., Silicon Surf at SGI), the Uniform
Resource Locator (URL) for the site (ex., http://www.sgi.com), and the
name of the jumpsite to create (ex., surf). The Location text field
ignores newline and space characters, so users can paste into the
Location field without needing to edit the pasted text.
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Pressing the Save button creates the jumpsite in the user's default
jumpsites directory, which is initially a directory called web in the
user's home directory. (If there already exists a file called web,
WebJumper will prompt the user for a new name for the default jumpsites
directory.) A line of text above the icon panel updates to provide
feedback indicating success or failure of the save.
Note: Jumpsite icons should not be created with ".html" at the end of the
filename because this may cause the desktop to identify the icon type as
an HTML document instead of an SGI jumpsite. These icons will not behave
as normal jumpsites. WebJumper will suggest a new name if the user tries
to create a jumpsite whose name has an ".html" suffix.
The icon for the new jumpsite also appears in the WebJumper panel. It
can be dragged out onto the desktop, or opened in place. The icon will
not appear in the WebJumper window the next time the user runs webjumper,
but the icon will still exist in the user's default jumpsites directory.
Pressing the Options button brings up a panel that allows the user to
choose a default Web browser, to specify a default directory into which
their created jumpsites should be placed, and to toggle on or off the
optional description field in the main WebJumper window. Initially,
WebJumper uses Netscape as the default browser, and a directory called
web in the user's home directory as the default jumpsites directory.
This directory is like an iconic hotlist. By changing the default
jumpsites directory in the Options panel, users can create another
hotlist directory or choose an existing other directory to which they
want to add new jumpsites.
Pressing the View button (available in WebJumper 1.0.1 and later
revisions) will bring up an IRIX Interactive Desktop directory view of
the default jumpsites directory, showing all jumpsites the user has
created. Users can then create folders and drop jumpsites into the
folders to organize their jumpsites. From the directory view, the
jumpsites can be viewed as icons, in a list, or in columns. They can
also be removed, renamed, copied and otherwise manipulated.
When jumpsite icons are dropped on the WebJumper icon, webjumper launches
and allows the user to view or edit fields for each of the selected
icons. WebJumper can be opened for editing icons in two other ways as
well: (1) Select a set of jumpsite icons, press the right-mouse button
and select Edit off the menu. (2) At the IRIX command line, type
webjumper followed by the filenames of the jumpsites to edit. To edit a
jumpsite icon in the WebJumper panel, click on it, modify its fields,
then press Save.
When jumpsite icons are dropped on the netscape icon, Netscape launches
and downloads the World Wide Web sites specified in the jumpsites. With
SGI's point-and-click HTML editor, WebMagic, users can create links to
Web sites in their HTML documents by dropping jumpsite icons representing
those sites into an open webmagic window (see WebMagic documentation for
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more information).
In IRIX 6.2, opening a jumpsite icon that points to a VRML or Inventor
location will cause the 3D data to be downloaded directly into the
WebSpace viewer. In IRIX 6.3 and later releases, VRML or Inventor
jumpsites will load through Netscape using the Cosmoplayer plug-in.
In releases after IRIX 6.2, WebJumper has the ``runonce'' feature,
meaning only one instance of the application will run at one time.
Attempting to launch the application a second time will have the effect
of deiconifying the application window or popping it to the top on the
current desk.
For more information about the entire IRIX Interactive Desktop
environment and about the XUSERFILESEARCHPATH environment variable, see
the IID(1) man page.
FILES
$HOME/.desktop-<hostname>/Webjumper
$HOME/.desktop-<hostname>/desktopenv
$HOME/web/
WebJumper reads and writes resource information to $HOME/.desktop-
<hostname>/Webjumper (note the lowercase "j") where $HOME is the user's
home directory and <hostname> is the name of the host machine. WebJumper
has two resources: showDescription (True or False) controls whether the
description field appears in the WebJumper window, and
defaultJumpsitesDir (set to some path) controls the directory in which
jumpsites will be created.
The user's choice of default Web browser is applied to a desktop
environment variable called WEBBROWSER. The value of this variable is
recorded in the file $HOME/.desktop-<hostname>/desktopenv so it will be
remembered between sessions. Users can also choose their default Web
browser from the Utilities customization panel, available from the
Desktop toolchest, then Customize. For more information about how the
Utilities panel interacts with WebJumper, see the dtUtilities(1)
reference page.
New jumpsites will be placed in the default directory. This directory
will be $HOME/web/ until the user changes it from the Options button.
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WEBJUMPER(1)WEBJUMPER(1)NOTES
Because Netscape 2.X and later releases use locked caches, jumpsite icons
attempt to open their URLs through a running Netscape process, using
Netscape's -remote "openURL(URL, new-window)" interface. However, it is
possible for Netscape to quit or to not be fully started at the same time
a jumpsite is attempting to load its URL. In this case, Netscape will
fail to load the URL because the -remote interface does not start a new
Netscape process if one is not already running. A second try to open the
jumpsite will usually succeed. If users never quit Netscape during their
login session, they can minimize the possibility of seeing these errors.
If users run webjumper remotely, icons they create will be placed on the
remote machine in their default directory.
AVAILABILITY
In the WebFORCE and Desktop Special Edition releases, webjumper is in the
netscape.sw.webjumper subsystem. In other releases, it is in the
desktop_eoe.sw.envm subsystem.
SEE ALSOwebmagic(1), netscape(1), IID(1), webspace(1), dirview(1X), iconbook(1),
dtUtilities(1)AUTHORS
Steve Yohanan, Rebecca Underwood
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