NCSA Mosaic for MS Windows User Guide: Advanced Features

AutoSurf

Mosaic AutoSurf was designed to let you easily download a number of documents linked to a specific HTML document and save those documents in the disk cache. AutoSurf is particularly useful if you are limited by a slow connection or if you pay per-hour network access fees. Using Autosurf, you can cut your online time down significantly.

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.

AutoSurf Setup

General

Maximum Depth
defines how deep AutoSurf will go before it moves to the next link (Depth First Search) or the maximum depth it travels during its total search (Breadth First Search)
Maximum Number of Documents
a number from 1-1000. Only download a useful number of documents.
Follow All Links button
follows all links, on both the local and remote servers
Only Follow Links On Initial Server button
restricts the AutoSurf to the initial server
Don't Follow Links on Initial Server button
restricts links to those on remote servers (not the current server)
Load Inline Images
downloads the inline images associated with each document AutoSurf loads
Display Documents (faster when off)
displays the documents as they are being downloaded. For best AutoSurf performance, disable this feature and view the documents from the cache.

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.

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:

HTML Format
writes the data as an HTML-formatted document
Text Format
writes the data into a simple ASCII file
Log File
defines the directory path and file name to the log file

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.

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.