For example, you could initiate AutoSurf from the NCSA What's New page and let Mosaic download all the first level documents while eating your dinner. After dinner you could view the files off-line using Mosaic's built-in stand-alone option, mosaic.exe -s (see "-s" on page 5-14 for more information).
The disk cache must be enabled to use AutoSurf.
The log file contains the information about the starting document, the maximum depth, the surf algorithm, the document addresses, the number of documents loaded, the number of errors, total elapsed time, and total number of bytes downloaded.
Mosaic can report the AutoSurf information in one of two formats:
Breadth First
Suppose you select a Breadth First search with a Maximum Depth of 2 and a Maximum Number of Documents of 100. Mosaic downloads the first page (L0), then goes to the first link (L1) and downloads that page. Returning to the first page, AutoSurf goes to the second link (L1) and downloads that page. After all links are downloaded on the first page, Autosurf goes to the first document on the second level (L2) and begins to download the documents linked to that page in the same fashion. Mosaic continues to download documents until all of the second-level deep documents have been downloaded or the maximum number of documents has been met.
Depth First
Suppose you select a Depth First search with a Maximum Depth of 2 and a Maximum Number of Documents of 100. In this case Mosaic downloads the first page (L0) and then goes to the first link and downloads that page (L1). It then goes to the first link on L1 and downloads that document (L2). Next it goes to the second link on L1 and downloads that document. AutoSurf continues until all links are exhausted and then proceeds to the second link on the first document and downloads the documents associated with that link. Mosaic continues to download documents until the end of the search is reached or the maximum number of documents is met.
AutoSurf Setup
General
Output Log
Mosaic can maintain a log with detailed information about the results of a search. You choose whether the log file is kept (select the None button if you don't want a record of the search) and, if maintained, how it is presented.
Surf Algorithm
You select the "surf method" that Mosaic uses when it downloads documents. The search may be handled initially in breadth first or depth first order. Consider the first document downloaded as level "0." How the search is conducted from level 0 is explained in the examples below.