[Promotion-technology] Tutorial on downloading a list of URLs with TextPal (fwd)

[David Andrews]

>
>For some time I've been wanting to make batch downloading of files more
>convenient and efficient.  I've tried various spider programs and
>registered a few of them.  Usually, more work is involved than what I'd
>prefer for accomplishing common tasks, and their user interfaces have some
>accessibility challenges.
>
>I've now been able to add functionality to TextPal that does much of what
>I typically want in a few keystrokes.  The download directive is simply a
>list of URLs in the current editing window, one per line.  You can
>manually type the URLs, copy and paste them from elsewhere, or retrieve
>them as a file previously saved on disk.
>
>TextPal also helps you create a list of URls via the Grab URLs command on
>the File menu, Alt+Shift+G, which extracts the link references from the
>HTML of a web page.  The command prompts you for the address of a web page
>to analyze.  The default is the current value in the AddressBar of
>Internet Explorer if that program is open.  So, you can browse to a web
>page to analyze by whatever means, then press Alt+Shift+G in TextPal,
>accept the address it gets from Internet Explorer, and generate a list of
>URLs.  These URLs often refer to files on the same web site, but not
>necessarily so -- TextPal lists whatever URLs it found in a new editing
>window.
>
>Once you have a list of URLs, you can use the Web Download command,
>Alt+Shift+W, to download the referenced files onto your computer.  TextPal
>gives you a chance to narrow the download by presenting an edit box with
>the file extensions it finds in the list.  For example, you might be
>prompted
>
>Extensions: doc htm pdf
>
>To accept all file extensions, just press Enter.  Otherwise, delete any
>you want to skip before pressing Enter.
>
>TextPal counts how many files match the extensions you chose, informs you
>of this number, and gives you a last chance to cancel the process by
>pressing Escape.  If you press Enter to confirm, TextPal downloads the
>files to a "download" subfolder of the TextPal program folder.  The
>location in the default TextPal installation is
>C:\Program Files\TextPal\download
>
>TextPal announces each file it downloads, or indicates if there was a
>problem.  When done, TextPal opens Windows Explorer in the download folder
>so you can examine or move the files you retrieved.
>
>Here is an example to illustrate this capability.  With Internet Explorer,
>browse to the web site
>http://web.onetel.net.uk/~fromthekeyboard
>
>Activate TextPal and press Alt+Shift+G to Grab URLs.  Press Enter to
>accept the default address of that web site.  After the list of URLs is
>generated, press Alt+Shift+W for Web Download.  Press Enter to accept all
>file extensions.  Several free and quality guides to using software
>applications from the keyboard will be downloaded to your computer!
>
>Cheers,
>Jamal