WebTool

WebTool provides two main services: Before you use these features, you may need to set the proxy server through which web references pass. Otherwise, WebTool may be unable to find documents.

   Check document references

The contents of HTML documents are checked for all "href" references in links, "src" references in "img", "script" and "frame" tags, "action" references in "form" tags, and "code" references in "applet" tags. WebTool attempts to establish whether the document, file or program actually exists, and produces a report listing the problems it encountered.

The document being checked can be a web document accessed with a URL, or a file on the local disk.

There is an option by which, as well as checking all references in a given document, WebTool will also examine the contents of all web pages referred to with relative links from that page, and follow through similar checks on those documents. This means that the contents of many documents at the one web site will be checked that their references are valid.

Because a web server may not immediately respond to a request to connect to a document at that site, provision is made for a timeout period to be set. By default this is seven seconds. If an attempt to connect to a document does not succeed within that period, the lack of response will be reported in the log of results.

It is also possible to request more detail in the report that is produced. This will indicate every file or document which is accessed, and the actual web address used.

If the checking is proving too time-consuming, it is possible to click on the "Dismiss" button in the main window to stop any further checks being performed.

In practice, some FTP servers are not handled as well by WebTool as they are by web browsers, and WebTool will report documents that are to be accessed with the FTP protocol as unavailable, when in fact the links to them are sound.

   Copy a set of documents

This enables a file or document to be copied from a remote machine, along with a copy of every file referenced in it as a relative link. The contents of a file are only examined if it is an HTML file. Optionally, it is possible to limit copying to just the chosen file.

The destination directory (folder) on the local machine must be given.

Some files contain incorrect links, and sometimes remote machines fail to respond to a request. A time-out period can be specified to limit delays waiting for a response. By default, this will be seven seconds.

If the file copying is proving too time-consuming, it is possible to click on the "Dismiss" button in the main window to terminate copying.