Fact200

An Internet Research Tool

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(Very, very rough and beta)

• Modes
• Menu Items
• Library Settings
• Preferences

Modes

There are four modes in Fact200: Loaded Results, Filtering Loaded Results, Filtering the Library, and Load History. Switching between these modes is done both automatically and manually. To shift modes manually, click on the mode dropdown menu located below the search box.

• Loaded results mode is automatically entered if a load is ever invoked (either by choosing Loaded Results from the dropdown menu or by pressing return in the search box).
• Use the Filtering Loaded Results mode to subsearch through the most recently loaded results in real time. Term completions are not available in this mode.Pressing the return key will execute a load and put you into Loaded Results mode.
• Filtering the Library mode is used to filter items in the library in real time. Search results will automatically appear as you type and the terms are matched. Pressing the return key will execute a load and put you into Loaded Results mode.
  Beginning with 1.0b13, loaded results are not automatically indexed by default unless they are marked permanent. Un-indexed items can still be sub-searched in the Filtering Loaded Results mode.
• Load History allows you to retrace your steps. Use this mode in conjunction with the sorting options (e.g., Last Viewed) to find recent items.

Menu Items

File

• New
  Create a new library. Fact200 uses the standard directory navigator to choose a directory to store a new library in. If a new directory is created, care should be taken to re-select the folder if you change the name.
• Open
  Open a library. Navigate to the library directory and choose the .fidx file within it.
• Optimize
  Optimize the global index of the currently open library. Over time, the global index can become fragmented. The optimization process also re-allocates space more efficiently for frequent terms.
• Batch Load
  Load all content that has default search params. This command is useful for sources that do not require query parameters such as rss and atom feeds. Sources that require query parameters can be preset using the 'terms' parameter. When this command is invoked, every source that can be loaded is loaded, indexed, and has previews generated for it. This command is most useful for grabbing large sets of data at once (when trading category files for example) or for preparing to go offline.
• Restore Last Batch
  When a batch load is done, all of the results are stored on disk so that they can be retrieved at any time by invoking this command. Batch results are presented in the 'Raw mode' and thus any regular load will wipe them out temporarily; use this command to restore them.
• Library settings
  See the library settings section.
• Load Categories from URL...
  Replaces categories of the currently open library with those located at the given URL. To share categories, you can upload them to a website and publish their URLs.
• Load Categories from File...
  Replace categories of the currently open lirbary with those in a file.
• Save Categories...
  Save the categories of the currently library into a file.
• Preferences
  See the preferences section.
• Quit

Edit

Most of these operations only apply within the search field. Select All operates on the search result list.

View

Note that Raw results are always presented in the order that sources return them in and are thus not sortable. Switch into Library Filtering mode to sort.

• By Score
• By Content date
• By Load Date
• By Last Viewed (Read)
  Sorts in descending order so that the most recently viewed is on top.
• By Last Viewed (Unread)
  Sorts in ascending order so that unread items are on top.
• Slideshow
  Goes into slideshow mode. In slideshow mode use the left and right arrow keys to go forwards and backwards. Esc exits and Enter will open the URL is your browser. The down arrow or page down will switch to the minibrowser.
• Tiles
  Views search results as thumbnail tiles
• List
  Views search results as a list, with or without thumbnails.

Results

The results menu operates on search results. Search results can be selected by clicking on them. Use the shift or ctrl keys while clicking to extend a selection.

• Save Results
  Save the currently listed results into a file.
• Load Results
  Load results saved with the above command.
• Open URL
  Open the currently selected results in the system browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Firefox or Opera)
• Open URL
  Open the currently selected results in the system browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Firefox or Opera)
• Copy URL
  Copy the currently selected urls to the clipboard for pasting as text.
• Reload
  Reloads/Loads the contents of the currently selected items. This causes associated preview images to be reloaded also.
• Reload Image
  Reloads/Loads the preview images of the currently selected items.
• Remove
  Remove the selected items from the library
• Mark Permanent
  Mark the currently selected items as permanent. As the library fills and reaches its maximum size, old items are removed to make room for new items. Permanent items will never be removed.
• Unmark Permannet
  Unmark the currently selected items.
• Pin/Unpin
  Pinned items are placed at the top of the results list.
• Read/Unread
  Marks items as read/unread
• Ignore
  Ignore the currently selected items. Removes them from the library. Ignored items are never automatically loaded. They may still appear in Raw mode; its the only way to Unignore them.
• Unignore
  Unignore the currently selected items.
• Load More
  Loads the contents of the next n items that haven't yet been loaded. This is applicable only in Raw mode.
• Send To
  Sends the currently selected items to a supported link sharing site. Note that these link sharing sites require you to have an account (usually free) in order to submit urls.

Favorites

This menu is user configurable per library and allows you to store frequently used search terms.

• Organize
  Displays a dialog from where you can edit, remove, or reorder the items in the favorites menu.
• Add
  Adds the current search terms to the menu.

Help

• Check for Updates
• Uninstall

Library Settings

General

• Automatically generate image previews
• Generate all previews on batch load
  This option is useful when using Fact200 offline.
• Index all loaded content
  By default only permanent items are indexed. Thus, in Filtering Within Library mode, only permanent items will be found. When dealing with extremely relevant sources, this option is useful for indexing everything and thus having all loaded content always recallable.
• preview height
• preview width
• image format
• max history items
• max results from a single source
  The affects how many search results are obtained from each source within a category. It alsoo affects how many search results are actually loaded; the rest are displayed, but remain unloaded. The Load More command is useful if results past this limit are needed.
• disk space for content
• disk space for previews

Categories

This tab allows you to modify the sources used within each category. Each category submits searches only to those sources contained within it and also only displays results from those sources (in Filter mode).

An exception to this rule is the first category which always displays all results regardless of source.

Sources

This tab allows you to configure sources. Sources are general methods by which Fact200 receives URLs from the Internet. New sources can be created and modified through parameters in order to tailor results for specific needs.

Some sources, like Google, have a default behavior that can be further refined by creating a new source based on it. The Wikipedia source is an example of a Google source extension that uses the 'site' parameter to specify results only from the wikipedia site.

Other sources, like RSS or Atom, require a parameter ('url' in this case) in order to function. The MSN source utilizes RSS as a generic method of obtaining search results from MSN.

Prefefences

General

• Use Adjacency Scoring
  Pays attention to the order that search terms are entered in. Results matching this order are ranked higher. This usually provides much more accurate results at the expense of speed.
• Show snippets of Content Matching Search Terms
  Extracts sections of content that best match the search terms at the expense of speed. If this option is turned off, the summary text from the original source is used instead. Note that if adjacency sorting is turned off, this option should also be turned off to fully realize the speed advantage.
• Date Display
• Max Display Length of Snippets
  Certain sources like RSS feeds can return large amounts of summary text. This option limits the amount of text that is displayed.
• Display Sources for each result
• Always open urls in internet explorer
  This option yields more responsive performance if you use Internet Explorer. Launching the currently configured browser (e.g., Firefox) requires going through the Shell which is prone to lag.
• Enable Browser Style title links
  This option allows you to click on the titles to open search results in a browser. Alternate methods are to double-click the item or to use the 'Open URL' menu command from the results menu.
• Compact Tabs
  Turn this option on if you use many categories.
• Mark URLs Permanent When Sending Them
  Automatically marks items as permanent if they are sent to a link sharing site.
• Auto Complete Terms
  In addition to showing term completions at the top and bottom of the Tab view, Fact200 will automatically finish the term you are typing with the first completion. The portion that was auto-completed is automatically selected so that futher typing overrides the completion.
• Show Sponsors
  Shows the advertisements at the bottom of the window. Turn this option off to hide them. A restart of Fact200 is necessary for this option to take effect.

Previews

• Draw Preview Text Overlay.
  Full sized previews have the drawback that they look interactive (i.e., you want to click on the links in them). The preview overlay is used to differentiate them from actual browser displays.
• Preview Window Height
• Preview Window Width

Destinations

Destinations are link sharing sites. They typically require you to set up a free account before sending them URLs. Visit their sites first to obtain an account. Once an account is setup you can configure default account information here as well as default search terms per site. When urls are sent to these sites, a confirmation dialog is always presented that allows you to finalize the search terms and notes.

Library

The default library is the library that is opened when Fact200 is executed directly. You can also open alternate libraries by opening the .fidx files within them, or by opening shortcuts to these .fidx files.

Threads

Fact200 utilizes multithreading to maximize performance and maintain interactivity during processing. It's possible to increase performance at the expense of some user interactivity by increasing the number of threads.

• Content
  Content threads download webpages from the internet. Increase this to increase overall bandwidth, especially from high latency sites (like sites in foreign countries).
• Image
  Image threads generate the previews. Increasing this may have a highly adverse effect on user interactivity depending on the complexity of web pages being rendered.