Aignesberger Software GmbH

The Update-On-Keywords functionality allows you to monitor pages for specific keywords. You can enter single words or regular expressions and WebSite-Watcher notifies you when at least one of the entered keywords is available. But it is not possible to combine keywords with logical operators or exclude keywords.

WebSite-Watcher 5.1.0 Beta-9 introduces the new Event function Wsw_CheckKeywords to the Plugin system that can be used for advanced keyword monitoring. Here is a small example that looks for “Website” and “Watcher”, but not for “Weight” and “Watcher”.

Sub Wsw_CheckKeywords(Handle, sMemChanges, ByRef sStatusMessage, ByRef iKeywordFound)

 Dim s = LCase(sMemChanges)

   ' Look for WebSite Watcher but exclude weight watcher
   If (InStr(s, "website") > 0) And (InStr(s, "watcher") > 0) And (InStr(s, "weight") = 0) Then
      iKeywordFound = 1
      Return
   End If

End Sub

Typical functions that can be used in Wsw_CheckKeywords are InStr, FindString, FindWildcard and FindRegex.

In previous versions of WebSite-Watcher, PDF, Word and Excel documents were always handled as binary files. It was not possible to monitor the content of these files nor to highlight text changes. Version 5.0 already introduced a way to monitor the text content of PDF files, but you had to install a tool from another vendor to get it working.

WebSite-Watcher 5.1.0 Beta-7 comes with 3 new plugins to make content monitoring of these documents possible by default:

1. PDF documents

WebSite-Watcher has now a new, integrated PDF Plugin to monitor text changes in PDF files, the additional tool “pdftotext” is no longer required but still supported. New in the internal solution is that WebSite-Watcher also shows a screenshot of each page:

2./3. Word and Excel documents

Absolutely new is the possibility to monitor Microsoft Word and Excel documents by content. Two new Plugins will convert Microsoft Office files into web pages, then they can be checked and handled as normal web pages and WebSite-Watcher is able to highlight changes in the text. The only requirement is that Microsoft Office 2003 or higher must be installed on your PC.

Automatically use these Plugins

All three Plugins can be assigned to new bookmarks automatically (enabled by default, can be turned off in the program configuration). If you disable this option, then the appropriate Plugin is suggested in the Browser Information Bar.

Have you ever tried to monitor the keyword definitions of a competitors page? It was always a very tricky and nearly impossible task, also the presentation of monitored keywords was not really possible.

WebSite-Watcher 5.1.0 Beta-6 includes a new Plugin that solves this job. Once this Plugin is selected, all keywords are extracted from the page, sorted and displayed in alphabetical order. When you open the bookmark, you will see this keyword list instead of the page.

This Plugin is not selected automatically, you have to select it manually:

1. Open bookmark properties
2. Select the “Advanced” tab
3. Select “Plugin” on the left side
4. Click the button “Select Plugin”
5. Select “Compatible”
6. Select “Keyword definitions (META tag)” from the Plugin list

If you monitor for example the AM-DeadLink web page, then this plugin will produce and monitor the following page:

Some time ago a user tried to monitor google maps what was not possible with WebSite-Watcher. He also made the interesting suggestion to monitor a page by screenshot which should make these kind of pages trackable.

Here’s the concrete suggestion that was posted in the forum:

to compare pages by ‘screenshot’

I would like to be able to watch the Google Maps maps:
- for looking at when the details of my zone are improved
- for looking at when the Street View (orange man) is added to my zone
- for looking at when new places are “tagged” for example on this map: http://www.portel.it/mappe

All these tasks could be performed by WW easily by taking and comparing screenshots of the page, or of a given rectangular part of the page.

WebSite-Watcher 5.1.0 Beta-5 has now a new checking method to automatically load a page in a hidden Internet Explorer window, make a screenshot and save it to a PNG file. When you open the bookmark, you will see this screenshot that can be used to detect updates.

To use this new method, open the bookmark properties, click the button “checking method” and select “Screenshot”.

You can optionally define a custom window size and/or the region you want to capture. By default, WebSite-Watcher uses a window width of 1024 pixels and calculates the height automatically.

But that’s not all, WebSite-Watcher is also able to highlight changes in a screenshot as shown in the following picture.

This new functionality to highlight changes in images will also work if you monitor a GIF/JPG/PNG graphic file directly by entering the image address into the URL field of a bookmark.