KWebWatch v0.71
Stephen Hutton <shutton@kde.org>
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DESCRIPTION:
KWebWatch is a utility designed to run in the background and periodically
poll a user's favorite web sites, looking for changes.  Additionally,
KWebWatch serves as a launching pad for viewing favorite web sites,
using whatever browser is preferred on a URL by URL basis.   

REQUIREMENTS:
KWebWatch requires KDE v1.0, and the QT libraries, v.1.33
It has been tested only on Linux.

FEATURES:
* Docks to the KDE panel if desired, with docked icon changing color
when an updated URL is found.

* Polling interval can be adjusted for each URL - between 10 minutes
and 24 hours.

* Specify a particular browser for each URL, with X geometry arguments
if the browser supports them.

NOTES:
The method KWebWatch uses to determine whether or not a particular
URL has been updated is not 100% accurate.  This is because not all
web servers are configured to support the If-Modified-Since header.

If the program encounters such a server, it makes a "best guess"
attempt to determine if the url's content has been changed since
the last visit.  The default method for making the best guess is
currently a simple byte count of the html content.  This can return
"false positives" for urls that serve up random graphics (e.g. ads)
with each visit.

A configurable option can be tried for such URLs - "Ignore tags when
making best guess" will cause only the text of the page to be compared,
solving the problem in some cases.  It is not foolproof, though.
Ignoring tags may also cause false negatives in some cases. 

The bottom line is that user experimentation is required to determine
the reliability of a "BEST GUESS" result.  If false positives are
common, it is worth trying the "Ignore tags" option, but there will
be some URLs that "defeat" KWebWatch by altering their content slightly
each time the page is requested. 

Some larger commercial sites even configure their servers to support
If-Modified-Since, but cause a fresh page to be loaded every time by
returning a Last-Modified date equal to the current time.

Still, the program should provide reliable results for many small
and mid-size sites.  It may prove particularly useful for sites that
are only updated once every few days or once every few weeks.

LICENSE:
KWebWatch is released under the GPL, with NO WARRANTIES.
See the file COPYING for details.

FEEDBACK:
Please send me your comments, suggestions, reports of success/failiure
under varying environments, and BUGS ;-)

shutton@kde.org


