Monday, June 10, 2002		Downloads of the week

Zigzag Cleaner is an easy-to-use program that lets you clear the desktop with just one move of the mouse. Usually, it is necessary to click the desktop icon. But what if the whole desktop is filled with windows and the toolbar is hidden. Of all the Hotkeys, you remember only Ctrl+Alt+Del. What do you do then? Just make a "Z" with your mouse on the screen and Zigzag Cleaner will hide open windows. Of course you can restore the open windows in the same easy way-just make another "Z". Zigzag Cleaner can speed up your work considerably. Additionally, the program collects mouse usage statistics, but that is just for the curious. The program recognises the "Z" symbol in the process of mouse movement. In the options dialog you can assign recognition parameters. To prevent accidental zigzag recognitions, set the 'maximum time of drawing' small enough. To enable/disable the zigzag recognitions, double click on the tray icon. To restore windows, move the mouse quickly enough and make another "Z". Of course, you may also restore the windows using hotkeys: Ctrl+Alt+Home, or click the right button on the tray icon, call the Zigzag Cleaner popup menu and select 'Restore all' item. To activate options dialog, click right button on the tray icon and select 'Options ...' item. The Zigzag Cleaner options dialog will appear. Select <Draw> page to set recognition parameters. Please note that the more width and height you select, the more zigzag you will need to draw; but it excludes occasional zigzag recognitions. Besides, the less time you select, the more quickly you need to draw. On <Action> page you can change the assigned the "Z" recognition action. It is possible to hide, minimize, resize windows or simply draw the "Z". Select 'Act all windows' to hide all with just one zigzag. Select 'Act only windows in Z area' to hide only the windows in your "zigzag" rectangle. Use <apply> button and test the action. On <Misc> page you can select "program interface language" and "Run at startup" to run Zigzag Cleaner at Windows startup. To let you know the statistics the Zigzag Cleaner program collects statistics on mouse movements and left button clicks. To view it, click the right button on the tray icon and select 'Statistics ...' item. To a curious mind it may be satisfying to know where the mouse was the whole day. Download available from http://www.uniphiz.com/zcleaner.htm

With SuperBot, you can copy a Website in three easy steps! Connect to the Internet, Run SuperBot, and click the Start... button and enter the address (URL) of the site you want to copy. Just click OK. The copying procedure will begin immediately. To run SuperBot, you will need: an IBM-PC or compatible computer, running Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000, a direct connection to the Internet, or a dialup SLIP or PPP account from an Internet service provider; Internet Explorer 4.01 or above and a TCP/IP stack. SuperBot will automatically set values for the following options and restrictions. The default values will create perfect copies of most Websites, so novice users may safely ignore them.

Here are the options. "Start at": SuperBot will initiate the copying procedure at this address or location. This address must be in the standard URL format. Information between [brackets] is optional. A username and password are necessary if the files you are copying require authentication (i.e. members-only Web pages). The second option is "Save files in". SuperBot will save all retrieved files in this folder. For example, if you choose C:\ Copied Sites as the save folder, and http://www.MyFavoriteWebsite.com as the starting address, the downloaded files will be saved in the C:\ Copied sites\ www.MyFavoriteWebsite.com folder. Location restrictions: "Stay in or below this directory" option will prevent SuperBot from retrieving any files from above the starting address. For example, if your starting address is http://www.MyFavoriteWebsite.com/members/index.html, this option will prevent SuperBot from following a link to http://www.MyFavoriteWebsite.com/main.html, because /main.html is above /members/index.html in the server's directory tree. The "Stay at this server" option will prevent SuperBot from following links to other servers. For example, if your starting address is http://www.MyFavoriteWebsite.com/index.html, this option will prevent SuperBot from following a link to http://www.AnotherWebsite.com/top.htm, because top.htm is not stored at www.MyFavoriteWebsite.com. If you choose no location restrictions, SuperBot will ignore the files' locations when applying copy restrictions. If these restrictions are applied to Web pages only, SuperBot will ignore the location of pictures, documents, or any other files that are linked to aforementioned Web pages. Location restrictions never apply to inline (embedded) pictures and sounds; this ensures that copied pages look and feel like their online counterparts. "Restrict copying depth": this restriction provides an alternate way to limit SuperBot's downloads. If this box is checked, the depth to which SuperBot can descend will be limited to the number you specify. Examples: a) To copy a single page and the graphics embedded within it set the maximum depth to 1. b) To copy a single page, its embedded graphics, and any files that can be reached with a single click, set the maximum depth to 2. c) To copy all files within six clicks of the starting address, set the maximum depth to 7. If this box is left unchecked, the maximum copying depth will automatically be set to 30. The max depth and max download count are completely unrelated, do not confuse these two restrictions. There's a lot you can configure in this utility to suit your needs. It is available from: http://www.sparkleware.com/superbot

Got a scanner and a printer? Why not combine those two into a copying machine? Photocopier helps you do just that. Just put a document on your scanner's glass, start Photocopier and press its Copy button. After a few moments your printer produces a copy of the document. Photocopier takes the hassle out of scanning-no difficult settings to make, very user friendly and, best of all, Photocopier is free! It requires a Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP system, a scanner that complies with the Twain standard (most scanners do) and a printer installed in Windows. Photocopier derives the area to scan from the dimensions of the page, defined for your default Windows printer. It's no use scanning areas you can't bring on paper, is it? Therefore, you must have defined a printer in Windows, and you only get copies with correct dimensions if the correct page size is set for that printer. There's little to be said about how to use this program, because it's so very simple. If you've ever used a photocopy machine (bet you have) you know how to use Photocopier. It can be found at: http://www.nicocuppen.com

— Raman Mohan