Karl Dahlke karl@eklhad.net 248-524-1004 (during regular business hours)
As a special exception, I hereby grant permission to link the code of this program with the OpenSSL library (or with modified versions of OpenSSL that use the same license as OpenSSL), and distribute linked combinations including the two. You must obey the GNU General Public License in all respects for all of the code used other than OpenSSL. If you modify this program, you may extend this exception to your version of the program, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.
I would be dead in the water if it weren't for a cadres of excellent online tutorials. Their technical writing puts mine to shame. Please look through some of these web pages; you'll be glad you did.
Writing html
An html Code Tutorial
So You Want to Write some html...
Javascript for Webmasters
Javascript, the Definitive Guide
This package requires Spider Monkey Javascript, released by Mozilla under the MPL. You can download it here. Programmers and maintainers of this package should take advantage of the online documentation.
Reinventing ed seems like a complete waste of time, until you realize that this program also acts as a browser - a browser embedded inside ed. You can edit a URL as easily as a local file, and activate browse mode to render the html tags in a manner that is appropriate for a command-response program such as this. In other words, we discard most of the formatting information and retain the links and fill-out forms. This allows blind users to access the Internet via an application that is entirely compatible with the linear nature of speech or braille.
I find this approach superior to the "quick fix" of pasting an adaptor onto a preexisting screen browser (lynx) or graphical browser (Netscape). Of course that's just my opinion. To be fair, many blind users, even totally blind users, are satisfied with their auditory screen scrapers. I'm glad it works for them, but this approach frustrates the hell out of me. If you also prefer linear applications, give this browser a try.
This documentation assumes you are familiar with ed. In fact it helps if you are fluent in ed. Experience with internet browsers and the associated terminology is also helpful.
q: quit the current session qt: quit the program completely, whether you've written your files or not !command: shell escape p: print the current line 4,7p: print lines 4 through 7 'a,'bp: print a range of lines, marked with labels a and b kb: mark the current line as b l: list the current line, showing nonascii chars in hex n: print the current line with its line number =: print the number of lines in the file z22: print the next 22 lines s/x/y/: replace x with y on the current line s/x/y/2: replace the second instance of x with y on the current line 4,7s/x/y/g: replace all instances of x with y, on lines 4 through 7 /x/: look for the line containing x /x/i: look for the line containing x or X ci: searches and substitutions are case insensitive cs: searches and substitutions are case sensitive sg: substitution strings are global across sessions sl: substitution strings are local to their sessions lc: convert line to lower case mc: convert line to mixed case uc: convert line to upper case h: help, explain the last question mark f: print the name of the current file f foo: set the file name to foo f/: retain only the lass component of the filename e: print the number of the current session e3: move to session 3 e foo: edit the file named foo r foo: read the contents of foo into the current buffer w foo: write the current buffer to foo w+ foo: append to foo w/: write to the lass component of the filename d: delete the current line 1,$d: delete all the lines, 1 through eof u: undo the last command i: insert text before the current line, end with a period c: change the current line, enter a new block of text, end with period a: add text after the current line, end with a period a+: include the line you just typed in, when you thought you were in append mode 4,7m11: move lines 4 through 7 to line 11 4,7t11: copy lines 4 through 7 to line 11 3,4j: join lines 3 and 4 together 3,4J: join lines 3 and 4 together with a space between g/x/ p: print every line that has an x v/x/ p: print every line that does not have an x B: find the line with the balancing brace b: brouse the current file, which is assumed to be in html b foo.html: edit the file foo.html and browse it b url: fetch url from the internet and browse it ub: unbrowse a file g: go to the link on the current line g2: go to the second link on the current line ^: the back key, go back to the web page you were looking at before i=xyz: set the input field on the current line to xyz i2=xyz: set the second input field on the current line to xyz i2*: push the second button on the current line, usually submit or reset i3?: describe the third input field on the current line db: set debug level [0-7] cd: change directory bl: break line into sentences and phrases dr: directory is readonly dw: directory is writable, and d moves files to your recycle bin dx: directory is writable, and d deletes files hf: show hidden files in directory listing (toggle) bd: binary detection on files (toggle) eo: end markers off el: show end markers ^$ when a line is listed ep: show end markers when a line is listed or printed pb: play buffer ft: show the title of the current web page fd: show the description of the current web page fk: show the keywords of the current web page hr: http redirection (toggle) js: allow javascript (toggle) sr: send referrer (toggle) tn: send dos-style newlines on lines in textareas (toggle) fma: ftp mode active fmp: ftp mode passive fmd: ftp mode default, passive then active rf: refresh the web page or directory listing et: edit this web page as pure text vs: verify ssl connections (toggle) ip: show referenced ip numbers, usually for saved mail messages sm: send mail [account number]
If you just want to read the whole document, type ,p. That works, if you use a command line speech adapter. The whole document is in buffer, and you can read through it using the function keys on your adapter. Now I realize most people still use screen readers, so this won't work. Still, there's an easy way to step through screen by screen. Start with 1z20 to get the first 20 lines. Then the z command will give you the next 20, and the next 20, and so on. You may want to use 22, or 24, or whatever makes sense relative to your screen.
Another approach is to simply hit return, again and again, and proceed line by line. You may need to hit a function key to "read" each line, after you hit return, or maybe not, if your adapter has an autoread feature.
Once you are use to the regular expressions, you can jump to any part of the document, even a large document, in record time simply by searching for a unique text fragment. This comes with practice. Sometimes I guess wrong, and my search string is not unique. I wind up somewhere else and have to search again. This doesn't happen very often. I usually get to the right place in one or two tries.
If you want to mark certain lines of text, please don't try to remember the line numbers. Use the k command to mark them. I usually use ka and kb to mark the start and end of a block of text, while kc marks the new location. The move command is then 'a,'bm'c - with absolutely no line numbers. (This is standard ed fair, though most people never take advantage of it.)
To look for links on a web page, search for the right brace. Yes, you may stumble across a literal right brace in the text, but this doesn't happen very often. You might access a particular link by typing /{Next}/g. Similarly, you can look for input fields by searching for the greater than sign. (This will make sense as you read about the representation of web pages.) And of course, multiple operations can be scripted, a feature unique to this browser.
These are just some of the tips and tricks that will make you as fast and efficient as anybody using a screen editor or browser, provided you are familiar with the page. (You will never be faster than your sighted colleague when traveling through unfamiliar territory, no matter what system you use.) My wife is always amazed at how quickly I can negotiate websites, or edit the common documents that we work on together.
Great! You've read the perlre man page, and you're back. Here are a few changes that I've made to perl regular expressions. I have found that ( and ) are almost always meant to be literal, as in searching for myFunction(), so I reverse the sense of escaped parentheses in perl. That is, ( and ) now match the literal characters, and \( and \) are used to demark substrings of the matched text. These substrings are then referenced, in the replacement string, by $1 through $9. Similarly, | means a literal |, and \| is alternation. I also change the sense of &, on the right hand side, to mean what it means in ed. I leave ^ $ . [ ] + * ? and {m,n} alone, to be interpreted by perl, as described in the perlre man page. However, if * is the first character, it is treated as a literal star. This makes sense, as there is no previous character to modify. Some versions of ed do this, some don't. But I find it convenient; when I want to replace * + or ?, I don't have to escape it, just because it is a modifier. Similarly, an open bracket by itself is treated as literal. These changes to regexp, to look more like ed, may be confusing if you are a perl expert. Sorry about that, but I think these changes make this editor much easier to use for everyone, especially the experienced ed users. Below are some additional differences between this program and /bin/ed.
Unlike bash, edbrowse does not retrace your steps back through symbolic links. Thus .. is always the physical parent directory.
environment variables are expanded before the cd command is applied, including the leading ~. Thuse cd ~/work takes you to the work directory under your home directory.
This command does not change any filenames that may be active. You can edit foo, cd .., and write, and foo will be copied to the parent directory. That's probably not what you want, so be careful.
Shell metta characters are also expanded, provided the result is one file name. You can read or write a file by typing a minimal portion of its name. Neither $variables nor stars are expanded for files on the command line, as this expansion is already done by the Unix shell. Windows users should compile using the setargv.obj utility, which performs wildcard expansion on command line arguments. Thus you should be able to edit *.c in any operating system and get all the C source files in the current directory.
However, I realize most people still use screen readers, where trailing whitespace is indistinguishable from the blank screen, and a wrapped fragment is sometimes mistaken for a second line. Therefore, you can use the command `el' to place end markers around listed lines. Listed lines begin with ^ and end with $. Enter `ep' to place end markers around all printed lines. Use `eo' to turn end markers off.
Subsequent sections describe new and interesting features, completely foreign to ed. These include the simultaneous edit of multiple files similar to emacs and vi, and the ability to browse an html file and "edit" its fill-out form. That's why I wrote the program in the first place.
if(x == 3 &&
y == 7) {
printf("hello\n");
} else {
printf("world\n");
exit(1);
}
The capital B command, on either the second or the last line, moves to the middle line "} else {", because that balances the open brace. On the first line, B moves to the second line, which balances the open parenthesis. The second line balances {, rather than ), because braces have precedence over parentheses, which have precedence over brackets. You can force a parenthesis match by typing B), which moves from line 2 back to line 1.
The B command on the else line is ambiguous - I don't know whether to look backwards or forwards. You must type B{ or B}.
You can explicitly balance <>, as in multiline html tags, or `', used in some preprocessors such as m4.
Comments or literal strings that contain balancing punctuation marks will definitely throw edbrowse off the track. If you are the author of the source, you might want to avoid braces in comments, or use comments to keep braces in balance.
static char openstring[] = "{block"; /* closing } is found elsewhere */
If you quit a session you are moved to the next valid editing session, wrapping around to session 1 if necessary. The program exits when the last session quits.
Warning, the program contains a bug regarding the undo command. If you switch to another session, then switch back, you cannot undo your last edit. You'd think this would be easy to fix, but it is trickier than it seems, so I haven't gotten rround to it. I just wanted you to know. Make sure everything is copasetic before you switch to another session.
Let's run through a cut&paste example. You are editing file foo in session 1, and you realize that a paragraph from file bar would fit perfectly right here. Here is how it might look. Lines beginning with < are the user's input, and lines beginning with > form the program's responses. The # sign delimits my injected comments.
< e2 # switch to session 2 > new session # Unlike ed, the r command does not establish a file name, even if the # buffer is empty. # Thus "r bar" is safer than "e bar". # The text is not linked to the file bar, # and we cannot accidentally corrupt this file. # After all, we don't want to change bar, we just want to steal from it. < r bar > 28719 < /start/ > This is the start of the cool paragraph that you want to copy. < 1,-d # don't need the stuff before it < /end/ > This is the end of the cool paragraph that you want to copy. < +,$d # don't need the stuff after it < e1 > foo < r2 > 3279 # size of text read from session 2 < q2 # clean house, get rid of session 2 < w # write foo, with the new paragraph included > 62121
The following moves the data from one file to another.
< e2 > new session < e bar # this time I'm going to change bar > 28719 < /start/ > This is the start of the cool paragraph that you want to move. < ka # mark the paragraph < /end/ > This is the end of the cool paragraph that you want to copy. < kb < 'a,'bw3 > 3279 < 'a,'bd < w # write bar, withouth the cool paragraph > 25440 < q > no file # now in session 3 < e1 > foo # back to session 1 < r3 > 3279 < q3 # quit session 3 remotely, while still in session 1 < w # write foo, with the new paragraph included > 62121
An e command, by itself, tells you the current session, in case you've forgotten. This is similar to f, by itself, which tells you the current file.
The -dx option sets the debug level to x, where x is between 0 and 9. The default is -d1, which prints the sizes of files as they are written and read. Some people like -d2, which prints the URLs as you jump to new web pages or submit forms online. Unless you are debugging the program, you probably don't want to go any higher than -d3. On rare occasions you might want to set -d4, to see the http headers in and out. Remember, the debug level can be changed on the fly by using the dbx command (x between 0 and 9).
The -e option causes edbrowse to exit when it encounters an error. This is usually used by batch scripts. If there is a problem, you don't want to march on, executing the rest of the edbrowse commands.
Use -c to suppress processing of, and edit, the .ebrc configuration file. (This config file will be described later.) And why would you want to do this? Suppose you have made a change to this file, and thereby produced a syntax error, so that edbrowse cannot even get started. Now you can't use edbrowse to fix your config file. Of course you could rename the config file to something else, fix it, and put it back; but then you might discover another syntax error, and so on. Instead, use the -c option to edit the config file directly. It is automatically loaded into buffer 1. Note that -c must be the first option.
The arguments are the files to edit. Edbrowse reads these files into corresponding sessions, and starts you off in session 1. If there are no arguments, you start in session 1, but there is no text and no associated file.
If you like this program, and you want it to be your primary editor, you can set the following Unix alias.
alias e="/usr/local/bin/edbrowse"
If you do this, you can use `e filename', to edit a new file, whether you are inside edbrowse or at the shell prompt. Very convenient.
Hello~07 ~x is ~bd of y
And then listed, you will see the very same text, but there is a bell and a 1/2 character inside. The ~x is not encoded into anything, because x is not a hex digit. If you want to force a ~, even though there are hex digits following, use two tildes, ~~.
When you are entering a regular expression, you have the choice, hex or octal. This program converts ~xx, as a hex value, and the perl regexp machinery converts \nnn, as octal. Thus any of the following will undos a file. The first is translated via my software, the second and third by perl regexp.
,s/~0d$// ,s/\15$// ,s/\r$//
Embedded escape characters are always displayed in hex, whether the line is listed or not. Most terminals and terminal emulaters, including the Linux console and my speech adapter, interpret various escape sequences as control commands. Thus an errant escape sequence from a binary file could send your terminal or your speech adapter into an unexpected state, making recovery difficult. It seems prudent to render escapes as visible characters all the time. If you have no idea where that ~1b came from, it's probably a literal escape character.
Returns and nulls are also converted into hex all the time. Thus an embedded return will not make one line look like two lines. You will usually see this when importing a dos text file. Every line ends in ~0d. Issue one of the three commands shown above to undos the file.
When binary data is first read into the buffer, you will see the words "binary data". After that the buffer remains "binary", even if you delete all the data and read in ascii text. You must use the `e' command to get a fresh, ascii buffer.
For the most part it doesn't really matter if the data is considered binary or ascii. Either way you can display and edit the data, and write it to a file.
This program tries to "do the right thing" under DOS/Windows. That is, it converts crlf to and from newline if it believes the file is text; and it leaves binary data alone. These distinctions are not relevant on Unix/Linux.
Although this approach is satisfactory for English and most European languages, it fails miserably for Asian languages, which definitely look like binary data. You can disable binary detection by entering the `bd' command. If you speak an Asian language, you may want to put this command in your init script, so edbrowse comes up the way you want - treating your international files as text files.
If you speak an Asian language, and you are running Windows, and binary detection is disabled, don't use this program to manipulate binary files, as they will get corrupted! Better still, say goodbye to Windows and start using a real operating system.
Like `ls -F', a subdirectory is indicated by a trailing slash. This slash is not part of the filename. Similarly, named pipe is indicated by |, symbolic link by @, block special by *, character special by <, and socket by ^. If a regular file ends in one of these characters, it may confuse you, but it won't confuse this program. Edbrowse knows whether that trailing | is part of the filename or a pipe indicator. Since each file is represented by a single line of text, files with newlines embedded in their names cannot be accessed.
If you read a directory into a preexisting file it is just text. You can't visit any of the underlying files, because they are just words. You must edit a directory in its own session or read a directory into an empty session if you want to access the underlying files. Note that you can write the buffer to another editting session, and in that session the words are just words. This distinction is important as we start to edit the text.
By default, directories are readonly. If you try to delete a line, and hence the associated file, it will tell you that you are still in directory read mode. I'm trying to save you from yourself! Type dw to enable directory writes, and dr to make directories readonly again.
When directory writes are enabled, you can remove files using the d command. For instance, g/\.o$/d removes all the object files. Since these edits have implications outside the scope of this program, there is no undo capability. When you make a change it is made. With this in mind, I borrowed a good idea from Microsoft. (That's one.) The deleted file isn't actually deleted; it is moved to your recycle bin, located in $HOME/.recycle. So if you accidentally type ,d and remove all your files, you can recover them from your recycle bin. You may want to set up a cron job that removes all the files from your recycle bin once a week. This directory is created mode 700, so nobody else can look at your deleted files. If you create this directory yourself, please make it 700. After all, some of your files might be private.
Because this operation is a move, rather than a true delete, there are a few restrictions based on your operating system. If your OS can move directories, this program will be able to delete a subdirectory as easily as a file. The entire subtree is moved to your recycle bin. Make sure your cleanup cron job is capable of removing directory trees, not just files.
Depending on your OS, you may not be able to move files across file systems. From /disk2 to /disk1, or from the D drive to the C drive. In this case you might want to issue the dx command, which makes directories writable, like dw, but actually deletes the files. You'll need this if you're trying to free up space on the disk. Note that symbolic links are always deleted; there isn't much point in moving a link to the recycle bin.
"What's the point of all this?" you may ask. "What's wrong with the shell?"
Nothing, as long as the file names are small and familiar. But sometimes the file names are long and cumbersome, and it is nearly impossible to type those names into the shell, character for character, upper and lower case, with no mistakes. Meta characters such as the * can help, but only when the file you want has a name radically different from the other files in the directory. This isn't always the case. Suppose an application generates log files as follows.
ProgramFooBar.-04-04-1998.06:31:59.log ProgramFooBar.-04-11-1998.11:37:14.log ProgramFooBar.-04-18-1998.16:22:51.log
How do you delete the old ones and keep the most recent, or rename them to something more manageable? Stars are a bit risky; you can access multiple files without realizing it. And we're not even talking about those pesky files with spaces or invisible control characters in their names. Our sighted friend calls up his file manager and simply clicks on the file he wants to view or edit or remove. Sometimes I want/need that kind of power.
When the substitute command changes text, it renames the underlying file. This won't move the file on top of another existing file, so you can't lose any data this way. Again, I'm saving you from yourself.
The search and substitute commands ignore the trailing filetype characters. If you want to rename a directory from foo/ to foobar/, you can type s/$/bar/. The bar will be placed at the end of the word foo, because the trailing / isn't really there.
Now suppose you want to run an arbitrary program on some of these files. This could be a print utility,a compiler, whatever. Sometimes you can rename the files for your convenience, then work in the shell. But sometimes you don't own the files, and sometimes they must retain their original names. This happens when several html documents reference each other through hyperlinks, using their existing filenames. So you can't rename the files, yet you still want to run your program on one or two of them.
You can run any program on any file without retyping that filename via the shell escape. Use kx to assign the label x to the file you are interested in. (This is standard ed syntax.) Then run !program 'x to invoke your program on that file. This sounds involved, but it is merely macro substitution, implemented in a few lines of code. If 'x is present in a shell escape, and is not next to any letters or digits, we replace it with the text on the line labeled x. Thus if your filename contains spaces, you'd better run !program "'x", to make sure the entire file name is one argument to the running program.
The token '. is replaced with the text on the current line, and the token '_ is replaced with the current filename. If you try to write a file, and remember that you left it readonly, you can make it writable via !chmod +w '_, then write the text to the file.
You can expand multiple tokens in one shell command. Use kx and ky to mark two files that you want to compare, then run !diff 'x 'y.
This feature is not limited to directory scans. You may be editing a simple file, but you can still paste the contents of a line into your shell command. Off hand I don't know why you'd want to do this, but you can.
This is especially useful in a directory scan. The last thing a blind person wants to worry about is whether some of the letters in a file name are upper case. If directory write mode is enabled, type ,lc to convert all the file names to lower case. It's that simple.
If you want to upcase a particular word, type s/word/uc/. This converts the word to upper case. All the other substitution suffixes apply. To change foo, Foo, FOo, and FOO to FOO, everywhere, type ,s/\bfoo\b/uc/ig.
I use this feature in two different ways. If I am familiar with the document, (I probably wrote it), I may use the bl command on a line of text that seems rather long. I typed it in quickly, as an uninterrupted thought, and now I want to break it up. But I don't want to count punctuation marks and say, "I think we need a break after the third comma and the period following that and then at the next comma", issuing the s punctuation commands along the way. Oh I like the s commands well enough - they put you in complete contrl - but it's easier to type bl - and bl usually does the right thing. Also, bl compresses accidental double spaces, a typo that I will never hear if I simply read the line as a whole.
When the document comes in from the outside, usually from another word processor such as MS-Word, bl serves a completely different function. Paragraphs are often stored on a single physical line. Sometimes the entire document is on a single line, with return characters, \r, separating paragraphs. Wysiwyg word processors don't worry about separating sentences and phrases - that's what word wrap is for. Well - bl is our version of word wrap. It doesn't try to conform to any screen; it merely cuts the text into manageable chunks, each piece a separate semantic unit. When bl is issued, physical lines will contain sentences or phrases, as delimited by punctuation, or by the newline/return characters embedded in the original document.
If one of the original lines, delimited by newline or return, is long, i.e. more than 120 characters, it is assumed to be a self-contained paragraph, and a blank line is added before and after. Thus a disassembled paragraph containing 20 sentences does not simply flow into the next disassembled paragraph containing 18 more sentences. An empty line separates the two paragraphs. This is only applicable if bl is applied to a range of lines, or the entire document, as might occur when making an outside document readable.
Don't apply the bl command to a preformatted section, such as a table or ascii art. If you're not sure what to expect, i.e. you didn't write the file, scan through it first, and apply bl to the range of lines that actually represents text. Often this is the entire document (,bl). The following commands do a pretty good job of cleaning up a typical Microsoft Word document.
e whatever.doc or whatever.wps # change filename, so you don't accidently overwrite the microsoft document f _ ,s/[~80-~ff~00-~0c~0e-~1f]//g # strip out non ascii control/formatting codes g/^\s*$/d # these blank lines use to contain non ascii codes ,bl # break lines and paragraphs 1,20p # first couple lines are often garbage, but then the text begins.
Of course the program catdoc does a better job of converting word documents into text. This is often bundled with xls2cvs. These are must-have programs for people who want a command line environment.
This is a narrow window to be sure; the computer has to fail at precisely the wrong millisecond. To guard against this improbable calamity, some editors write your data to a temp file, remove the true file, and move the temp file over to the true file. This way your data cannot be lost. Either the new or the old file will survive.
Then links came on the scene, hard links, and then symbolic links. Authors of ed, and other editors, had to scramble. You can't remove a link, write to temp, and move the temp file over to the link. It isn't a link any more, it's a regular file, and your filesystem is not what it use to be. For one thing, the true file, pointed to by the (symbolic) link, has not been changed at all. This is not what you want! So people rewrote there editors to disable this feature if the named file is a link to some other file. They had to revert back to the old truncate and write paradigm, and hope that nothing bad happens in between. And you know what, it never does. The window is just too small.
With this in mind, edbrowse doesn't mess with temp files at all. I just don't bother. I truncate the file and write out the data, and I don't expect anything to go wrong during the critical millisecond.
Another race condition is more subtle. Suppose you are editing a file and your friend, or a system program, edits the same file. Your file has actually been changed out from under you, while you held it in memory. When you go to write your changes, they will clobber any changes made by your friend, or the system utility. Most text editors guard against this by watching the timestamp. When you first edit the file foo, an editor might remember the timestamp on foo. then, when you are ready to write your changes, it checks the timestamp, and if foo has been updated in the interim, it issues a warning message. "File has been updated by someone else - do you really want to write?"
This is a good feature, but edbrowse doesn't have it, simply because I haven't gotten round to writing it. I'm the only user on my PC, and you're probably the only user on your PC too, so this feature is not in high demand. Still, I should implement it some day.
Note that this is not browsing, we are simply retrieving text from another machine and editing it locally. The text need not be html, it could be (for instance) a plain ascii document. Many people, myself included, put various types of files, even executables, on their websites for retrieval. Of course you wouldn't want to edit a binary file, but you can still use this editor to retrieve the file and save it locally, thus implementing an http download.
While inside the editor, you can type `e URL' to leave the current buffer and retrieve text from a remote machine. Or you can type `r URL' to retrieve remote text and add it to the current buffer. There is no `w URL' command, because the http protocol does not allow you to "write" html source back to a remote machine.
As a convenience, any filename with two or more embedded dots and a standard suffix (such as .com or .net) is treated as a URL. You can usually omit the http:// prefix. Try invoking `e www.space.com', as an example. But again, you are looking at html source, which probably isn't what you want. Browsing will be discussed later.
Whenever you retrieve data from a URL, the editor, directed by the http protocol, might change the filename out from under you. This is because the resource has moved, and the original computer was kind enough to give you the new address. If debugging is set to 2 or higher, you might see a series of three or four different URLs as the editor is redirected across the internet. Finally it retrieves your document, and the current file name holds the correct (latest) URL. You might want to update your bookmark file accordingly. Then again, you might not. Sometimes the initial url is the "public" location of the web page, and subsequent redirections occur inside the company. In this case you'll want to retain the public url, which will always work, even if the company relocates its web server. Use youre best judgment.
When the browse conversion is executed, the system checks for common syntax errors, such as a numbered list that is never closed. If the file name is a URL, these syntax errors are not reported. After all, it's not your web page, and there's nothing you can do about it. However, if the web page is yours, as indicated by a local filename, the first syntax error is displayed, whence you can return to the html source and fix it. Type `ub' to undo the browse conversion. This takes you back to the raw html text under its original filename. Now you can coorect the error and try the `b' command again. For your convenience, the label 'e is set to the line containing the error. Repeat this process until `b' runs without errors.
If you try to quit, and the editor says "expecting `w'", remember that you should be back in raw html before you issue the write command. You could write the browsed text into file.browse, and that will satisfy the "write" criteria, but this isn't really what you want. You've corrected errors in the html source, and that's what you need to save, so remember to undo the browse reformatting before you write the file.
Note that you can issue the unbrowse command even if there were no errors. If, for instance, you are looking at a well-constructed page on some other website, and you'd like to read or save the raw html, just type ub. As an exercise, invoke `e www.space.com', and use the `b' and `ub' commands to switch between the raw html and the browsable text.
The browse reformatting is relatively simple, because a blind person doesn't want complexity. We don't care about fonts and italics etc, and if we do, the best way to obtain this information is by reading the raw html. So most tags are discarded, except those related to headers, paragraphs, and lists.
I don't indent subsections or list items. The visual effect is lost on us, and sometimes the extra spaces get in the way.
Because the physical line is, for us, the unit of thought, i.e. the atomic construct that is modified or moved or copied, lines are cut at approximately 80 characters, give or take a few, usually at a sentence or phrase boundary. Thus reading line by line often reveals a sequence of sentences, or at least self-contained phrases within a larger sentence. I consider this the optimal way to view or edit a document -- any document. If you read this manual raw, without doing the browse on the file, you'll see what I mean. Review the break line command above.
The layout of a preformatted section, <pre>, is honored, although sequences of blank lines are compressed down to one blank line, and whitespace at the end of lines is stripped. This preserves the structure of street addresses, and other preformatted blocks.
Tables are formatted like an ascii unload from a spreadsheet or sql database. Pipes separate the fields on each row. There is no whitespace around the pipes, and the fields of a given row probably won't line up with the fields below. It isn't pretty, but a blind user can't really trace down a column in any case, especially when using a line editor such as this. Better to write the table to a local file and use cut, sort, join, etc. Here is a sample table.
part number|quantity|price 2635|2|$34.80 1398|1|$67.50 8118|5|$125.00
Empty fields at the end of a row are dropped. These are almost always images -- sometimes an entire row of images -- sometimes an entire table of images. The blind user doesn't need to read the no-content pipes.
Note that the browsable text is readonly. After all, it's not the "source" -- why should you edit it? There are ways to enter and edit the input fields of an on-line form, but this will be discussed later. For now, you can think of the text as readonly. Issue a copy or insert or substitute command, and you'll get an error.
If you do want to edit the text, as pure text, enter the `et' command (edit as text). You will not be able to return to the html that produced this page. Nor can you follow a hyperlink or submit a fill-out form. The browsable text has become plain text, with no internet semantics.
The command `b file.html' is shorthand for `e file.html', followed by `b'. Remember that the ub command reverses the browse conversion, and reproduces the original html text, as though you had entered `e file.html' alone.
If a url is opened from the command line, as in `e www.google.com', it is automatically browsed. Type `ub' to revert back to the raw html.
A subscript, as indicated by html tags, is enclosed in brackets. Thus x<sub>n</sub> becomes x[n]. This transformation is not done if the subscript is a one or two digit number. Thus x subscript 1 is rendered x1, just like your professor would say it. This is not ambiguous, as you might first think; only programmers use x1 as a variable name, not mathematicians. If you see x1 in a formula, it means x subscript 1. Even 17a3b3 is not ambiguous; it is a translation of 17 times a[3] times b[3].
Superscripts are enclosed in parentheses, with a preceeding arrow. The parentheses are omited if the superscript is a number. Thus x cubed looks like x^3, while x to the n-1 power looks like x^(n-1).
There are, sad to say, three different ways to encode mathematical symbols in html. At present edbrowse only supports one of them, though it is the most common, and the most portable among all browsers. This is the unicode system, where the Greek letter theta is specified as θ. Explorer turns this expression into θ, one character on the screen, while edbrowse turns it into the word theta. We also put spaces around the word if its neighbors are also words. This is illustrated by the circumfrence of a circle, which is 2 times pi times r. These three tokens are usually squashed together, and there is no confusion in the sighted world, where pi is a separate Greek letter. But if pi is spelled out, and the tokens are left together, the result is 2pir. Now pir looks like a three letter word. To avoid this, edbrowse inserts spaces, giving 2 pi r.
These translations are designed to work with the pages of the Math Reference Project, an archive of advanced mathematics that atemps to be both sighted and blind friendly at the same time. This may be impossible, but I'm giving it a whirl.
Note that `ft' prints the title of the web page, whereas `f t' (with a space) renames the current file to "t", which is probably not what you want.
If a web page is updated every minute, e.g. with the latest stock prices for your favorite companies, you can type rf to fetch the latest copy of this web page. This assumes the intervening internet servers are not caching the web page and handing you the same out-of-date copy over and over again.
On your local machine, you can use this feature to read the latest version of a dynamic file, such as a log file. Or you can reread a directory, to incorporate any new files that have been placed in that directory. For example, you might use the shell escape to execute `cat x y >z', yet z will not appear in your directory scan until you type rf.
{Recent reports} suggest a connection between autism and intestinal bacteria.
Behind the scenes, "recent reports" is linked to www.pecanbread.com/BTVCautismchapter.html, but you don't see that unless you activate the link or view the raw html.
Of course the browsable text might also contain words inside braces, especially if the web page is technical in nature. Hence there is some ambiguity. However, I believe it is clear from context. {More information} is probably a link, whereas ${HOME}/.profile is probably not.
Some web pages present a series of icons that are actually links to other pages. That is, you click on an icon, rather than a phrase, to go somewhere else. These icons are suppose to be intuitive. Sometimes they are -- sometimes they're not. In any case, they aren't much use to the blind. Sometimes the web designer is kind enough to supply a text phrase that roughly describes the image. In this case the phrase is used as the link. It appears in braces, as though there were no image at all. If there is no alternate phrase, the filename of the hyperlink reference is used. This name can be surprisingly helpful, or it can be utterly useless, as in "index.html". If this name canot be determined, the generic link {image} is used. In this case you will have to go to the web page to find out what it contains.
To follow a link, enter the `g' (go) command. Yes, `g' also initiates a global command, such as a global substitute, but only when it is followed by a regular expression. By itself, g follows the link on the current line, g2 follows the second link on the current line, and 4g follows the link on line 4. If a link spreads across multiple lines, you must be on the first of these lines, the line containing the left brace.
The g command can also act on a link that is written in raw text, as long as it "looks" like a valid url. If your friend sends you an interesting url via email, and you save it to a text file, you can "go" to that link, even though the file is not html, and you've never issued a browse command.
The g command follows an internal link or an external link. Either way you find yourself in a different place. However, if the link is internal, you are still browsing the same file. In fact, the only thing that has changed is the current line number. The new line is displayed, and should correspond to the link you activated. Often the words are the same. Activate {Appendix I}, and you'll probably see the section heading "Appendix I". Enter z10 to read the first few lines of the appendix.
This feature seems rather silly if you're just editing files, but it makes sense when surfing the net. Often we descend through two or three links, only to find ourselves at a dead end. "I didn't want to go here." So we hit the back key again and again, until we reach familiar territory. We can now proceed in a new direction. The command ^3 or ^^^ backs up through three pages. Don't use this iterative feature unless you know exactly how many times you need to back up.
Note that the entire state of an editing session is saved and reproduced, including the file name, the last search/replace strings for substitutions, the hyperlinks and forms, the compiled javascript, everything!
Unlike lynx, I don't keep a running history of every web page visited. I never really saw a need for this feature. 99% of the time I simply want to back up one or two pages, and that's it. Unfortunately this high-runner operation requires two somersaults and a back flip under lynx. It is a one key command in my browser.
The stack should not be confused with parallel edits, as described in an earlier section. In fact each editing session, e1 e2 e3 ..., has its own internal stack. Parallel sessions are appropriate when you need to move back and forth between two files, or cut&paste between them. However, one session, with its internal stack, is usually sufficient to surf the net.
If a browse command fails completely, giving you a rather uninteresting empty buffer, the stack is popped automatically, taking you back to the previous web page. Now you can retry the link by typing `g' again, or follow a different link on the page. Note that a browse command can fail, and still give you text explaining why it failed, if the remote server is well-designed. In this case you may see the error message "file not found", yet you will be viewing a new web page, which explains the problem. After you've read the explanation, follow its directions, or type ^ to back up and try again.
If you are presented with a number, even 0, the stack has been pushed, and you are in a new file or url. The number is the size of the new file. Use the ^ command to get back. If there is no number, merely an error message, then edbrowse did not create a new buffer. It probably didn't get that far. Typing . will produce the same line you saw before.
Following an internal link to another section in the current document does not push anything onto the stack. In other words, ^ will not take you back to where you were. In fact, it will take you up to the previous web page, which is not what you want. If you want to take a glance at Appendix I, and then return, mark the current position with `kr'. After you've visited the appendix, use the label 'r to return to your original location in the file.
It is generally unsafe to make a copy of a running web page, with all its javascript objects etc, so the M command moves the page out of the way, and takes you back to the previous page. Note, this command works just as well with files.
Suppose a web page presents
{planes}
{trains}
{automobiles}
If you are curious about all three topics, issue these commands in this order.
1g M2 2g M3 3g M4
Now sessions 2 3 and 4 are the subpages about plains trains and automobiels respectively. You can fill out forms or follow hyperlinks in any of them, or stay in session 1 and do something else.
{Background Music}
This always appears at or near the top of the page. Click on this link and download the wave or mp3 file, and play it at your convenience. Use the play buffer `pb' command. Normally pb uses the name of the file to infer the audio format. If the filename ends in .wav, it's a wave file, and so on. If the filename is not particularly helpful, and you know the audio format, you can specify it by typing pb.wav for a wave file, pb.mp3 for an mp3 file, and so on.
The config file (described below) includes mime type descriptors, which tell edbrowse how to play wave and mp3 files etc. These must be set up, or the pb command won't work. It will say something like, "I don't know how to process an mp3 file". This is consistent with other browsers, which use "plugins" to play multimedia files that are retrieved from the internet.
Keywords: <> Advanced parsing: <-> Language: <en> Search now: <GO> Cleaar form: <RESET>
The first line in this sample form is a simple text field, which is initially empty. You supply the keywords to search for. Entering and editing input fields is discussed later.
The second line is a checkbox. This field tells the search engine to use advanced boolean features, such as this keyword and that, or this, but not that, etc. The feature is disabled, indicated by -. (Most people don't know how to use advanced search anyways.) A + means the checkbox is on.
The third line determines the language of the keywords, English by default. This isn't a free text field, you can't just type in anything you want. We'll describe how to view the options later.
The fourth line is the submit button, which sends the form to the search engine and retrieves the results. This "field" cannot be edited; it is merely a button to push.
The fifth line is also a button to push. It clears all the data you have entered, so you can start over. Default values will be restored. Thus the third line goes back to <en>, rather than <>.
If there is only one input field on the current line, i? displays information about that input field. If the line contains multiple input fields, you will need to use a number, as in i3? for the third field. The type of input field is displayed, then its size, then the field name. If the input field is drawn from a set of options, the option list is displayed as well, with menu numbers prepended. When you want to select an option, you can either type in a substring that determines that option uniquely, such as mich for Michigan, or you can type in its menu number. Needless to say, the latter is often easier. Recall the sample form in the previous section. If you type i? at the third field, you might see the following.
select[7] language 1: english 2: french 3: german 4: italian 5: spanish
If a select list contains hundreds of options, type i?string to see only those options that contain the specified string. Type I?mi in a state field and get Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, and Minnesota. Then you can select the option you want by name or by number.
Now let's do some data entry. Type i=xyz to place xyz in the input field. Remember, you will need to type i3=xyz to put information into the third input field on the current line. If you get an error, it is probably because the field has a fixed set of options, and you didn't pick one of those options. You can either type in one of the options or its menu number. You can also type in a fragment of the option you want, and edbrowse will fill in the rest. This is done whenever one and only one option contains a copy (case insensitive) of the string you entered. Thus you could enter tali above and get Italian, as that is the only language with those four letters. This is useful when you are entering your address, and they ask for the state. Type in a few letters of your state name, enough to be unique, and you'll probably glom onto the correct option in the list. Note the paradigm here: blind people don't want to wade through a menu unless they absolutely have to!
There is some ambiguity when the option is itself a number. In this case I perform three matches. If you type in the number exactly as it appears, that option is selected. If the number you entered is not a perfect match for one of the options, it is treated as a menu number. If it is not a valid menu number (e.g. out of range), I perform a partial match on the options, looking for those digits as a substring. This may seem confusing, but it is usually what you want.
You can use i<7 to pull the contents of session 7 into the current input field. Session 7 must have one line of text. Similarly, i<filename reads the contents of the file into the current input field. Again, the file should contain one line of text. The filename is expanded in the usual way. This includes wildcard expansion, as long as the expansion leads to one and only one file. Put enough characters around the * to designate a single file.
Now suppose you are entering your credit card number, all 16 digits, into a free text field. If you've made a typo, you don't really want to enter the entire string again. No problem -- use the substitute command. You can write this as i/x/y/ or s/x/y/ -- as you prefer. Remember, you may need to specify a field, as in s3/x/y/. The usual substitution syntax is honored. Don't overgenralize the g suffix in your mind. s3/x/y/g changes every x to y in the third input field, but does not affect the other fields on the current line.
If the submit button is the third field on the current line, you can press it via i3*. However, i* is sufficient when there is only one button on the line. Similarly, you can establish a text field by entering i=kangaroo, rather than i1=kangaroo, if the second field on the current line is a submit button. You only need specify a field number when there are multiple input fields, or multiple buttons, on the current line.
The lynx implementation of the text area is particularly hideous. This is not surprising, since lynx is not an editor. You can correct small typos on the current line, but you can't actually "edit" the text you are working on. Once you hit return, that line is done, and you're on to the next line. You can't move lines around or insert lines etc. Nor can you prepare your comments ahead of time and read them into the text area from a file.
In edbrowse, the text area is managed from another editing session. This allows you to use the full power of the editor. You can move text, make global substitutions, or read comments in from a prepared file. The editing session is chosen for you, and appears in the input field. Consider the following form.
Enter your email address: <> Enter your comments: <buffer 2>
In this example, session 2 was not active when browsing began. The browser allocated session 2 specifically for this input field. Type e2 to move to session 2, prepare your comments, and type e1 to return to the input form. On most web pages the text area starts out blank, whence buffer 2 will be empty, but this is not always the case. Be sure to check for pre-existing text before you start typing your thoughts. A particularly arrogant site might preload the text area with: "I love your website because:".
When you finally submit the form, as discussed in the next section, text buffer 2, associated with the second editing session, will replace the words "bufffer 2" in the input field. Thus your carefully crafted comments are on their way. (This doesn't mean anybody is going to listen to them.)
The submit button sends the form to the remote server and waits for a response. This is similar to following an internet link, but in this case you are sending some data along with the request. Type "kangaroo" into a search engine and you'll soon be reading a web page about kangaroos. As with any other link, you can use the ^ key to go back. In this case you will return to the on-line form. You can change the data and submit the form again, asking about another animal.
I have implemented the "get" and "post" methods, the most common http protocols, and they seem to work on most sites.
Once you have submitted your form, and you are viewing the results, you may notice some strange characters at the end of the filename. If you have retrieved information on kangaroos, the filename might look like: www.search-engine.com?keywords=kangaroo. The text after the question mark is an encoded version of the data you entered into the form. It becomes part of the virtual URL. This is actually a good thing, as we shall see in the next section.
< b this.that.com/whatever # browse a web page
> 16834 # size of the raw html
> 7855 # size of the browsable text
< /kangaroo/i # looking for kangaroo on the page
> Click here for {more information about kangaroos}, or {send us mail}.
< A # capture the URLs
> 144 # size of the URLs
< ,p # let's see them
> <A HREF=www.kangaroo-info.com>
> more information about kangaroos
> </A>
> send us mail:info@kangaroo.org
< 4d # don't need the email address
< w+ $bookmarks # append this url to the bookmark file
> 336
< ^ # back to browsing
> Click here for {more information about kangaroos}, or {send us mail}.
I suppose I could interrogate the environment variable $bookmarks myself, and append the URL to that file automatically, but as this example shows, you might not want all the links. In fact the email link makes no sense in a bookmark file. Also, you may want to change the description of the link, though in this example the description is pretty reasonable.
Alternatively, you might discard the url and retain the email address, appending it to your address book. Again, you will want to change the generic phrase "send us mail" to a brief string that is meaningful to you, such as kangaroo-mail. This becomes the alias, which you can use to send mail to that recipient. (Subsequent sections describe the use of edbrowse as a mail client.)
If there are no links on the current line, or you are not in browse mode, the current filename is used. This is useful when you want to bookmark the current page, rather than some other page pointed to by a link.
If the current page is the result of a form submition, the filename may include your input fields after the question mark. If it does, that's a feature, not a bug. This exact URL, with the data at the end, can be stored as a bookmark and activated again and again, as though you had filled out the form each time. Every week you can call up this virtual URL to see if there is any new information on kangaroos. A more practical example might be a canned query that retrieves the weather for a certain city or the stock prices for the companies in your portfolio. You can also write concise scripts that "fill in" the virtual form, simply by modifying the information after the question mark. This provides a simple command to retrieve the weather from any major city or the current price of any stock.
If the form uses the post, rather than the get method, the same data will appear, but the question mark is replaced with a control a. Unfortunately the control a is not visible, and this could cause confusion. When in doubt, list the line.
One last warning about adding links to your bookmark file. Let's say you've issued your A command, and tweaked the description a bit. Now the link is just write, and you want to save it. You accidentally type `w $bookmarks', forgetting the plus. Instead of apending the link to the end, you have clobbered your entire bookmark file. Years of accumulated links are gone. To avoid this disastrous typo, create a macro to append to your bookmark file. I know, we haven't talked about user defined macros yet, but we will. And when we do, you should write a "bookmark append" macro that looks like this.
function+bma {
w+ $bookmarks
}
Now you can type <bma to add a link to your favorites, and you don't have to worry about typos. It's shorter than `w+ $bookmarks' anyways. We'll return to this topic when we introduce macros, actually functions, that are defined in your config file.
Note that only Netscape-style cookies are supported. However, this is the most common flavor of cooky. It will probably meet your needs.
Persistent cookies are stored in a file, usually $HOME/.cookies, and are thus available for subsequent edbrowse sessions. These cookies are used to store long-term information about you, such as your login and password into amazon.com. Hence your .cookies file should be mode 0600. In fact the file is created mode 0600, for your own protection.
You probably won't need to view your .cookies file, ever, but it is text based, and can be edited directly if you wish.
Edbrowse will verify ssl connections, if you supply a file of ssl certificates. This is an antispoofing measure, to make sure a hacker isn't posing as your bank, trying to steal your account numbers and passwords. You can grab a certificate file here, but I don't always keep it up to date. If you don't have this file, or, if you don't specify its location in your config file, you will not be able to verify secure connections, and you will be warned accordingly. Some browsers don't have this feature at all, so it's not the end of the world, but in general it's a good idea to verify your secure connections, unless it prevents you from getting to a website whose authenticity you accept at face value. In that case you can use the vs command to turn the feature off. This is a toggle command; type vs again to turn the feature on.
Never send sensitive information, such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, over an insecure channel. Make sure the form is using ssl. How can you tell? The submit button will have the word "secure" added to its text.
<Make your purchase now secure>
This is similar to the lock icon that Explorer uses to tell you that your connection is secure, although my system is not quite as foolproof. A website could fake you out by putting the word secure in the submit text.
Note that generic buttons (besides the submit button) can also submit your form, through javascript. I don't know if that button is going to submit the form or not, and I don't want to put the word "secure" on every button on the page. I only add it to the submit button, but if that button is secure then they are all secure. They all use the same form, and the same url.
In theory, it is possible for javascript too switch the destination url out from under you at the last minute, from https://this.is.safe.com to http://this.is.untrusted.com. I don't know if other browsers watch for this bait-and-switch, but edbrowse does. If the original url was secure, and I reported this to you via <submit secure>, and javascript changes it to an insecure connection, I won't submit the form. This is really paranoid, because the first website, the one that asked for your credit card number, also supplies the javascript, and they have no incentive to breech security, since you're going to hand them your credit card number anyways.
If you have logins on secure servers, such as PayPal.com, you must keep your password absolutely safe. Never send that password over an insecure connection. It becomes as valuable as your credit card numbers. I have a special password that I use for my secure logins, and only for those logins. I use other, expendable passwords when the connection is not secure.
Please don't fall for all those email scams that tell you your login has expired, and would you please log in again using this convenient form. The mail is forged to look legitimate, and the form actually sends your secret password to a thief, who then rades your account. A reputable company will never, never, never, ask you to login through an email form. They will always tell you to go back to the website and log in there.
Internet security is complex, to say the least, and it is beyond the scope of this document. If you have any questions about it, please send them to me directly. As a general rule, secure http is really quite safe, and you can use it to send sensitive information across the Net. It's probably safer than giving your credit card number to the clerk on the phone, who use to take your order before there was e-commerce. so it's ok to be a little bit paranoid, in fact it's probably a good idea, but don't let that stop you from making your online purchases.
ftp download
some stats on the size of the file and the bits per second
success
Of course the download could fail, in which case you will receive an error message. If it was simply interrupted, due to some internet glitch, you can issue the command again, and edbrowse will resume the download from where it left off. This can save time when fetching a large file.
By default, edbrowse uses the account name "anonymous" and the password "some-user@edbrowse.net" for ftp connections. However, you can override this in the url, and some web pages take advantage of this feature. For example, let's say you want to access the file /etc/passwd on whatever.localdomain. This file isn't readable by anonymous users. You have to log in as a real person. Within edbrowse, you might use the command:
e ftp://chris:xxx@whatever.localdomain/etc/passwd
The ftp connection will be made as user "Chris", with password "XXX".
Some ftp URLs point at directories, not files. If you visit one of these, and it is located on a Unix-like server, you will receive the listing as an html file with hyperlinks. You can visit the directory members just as though you were exploring a website. If the server does not run some flavore of Unix, you will receive the directory listing in plain text.
The ftp mode, i.e. the style of data connection, can be either active or passive. One works well when the client is behind a router, and the other works well when the server is behind a router. You can specify ftp mode active by entering the command `fma', or ftp mode passive by `fmp'. The command `fmd' sets the ftp mode to a default, which tries to establish a passive connection first, and then an active connection as a fallback. This is a reasonable default, so you should probably leave this alone.
Edbrowse doesn't actually establish the ftp connections, rather, it invokes the program ncftpget to fetch the file, and ncftpls to list the directory. These programs are distributed with most Unix systems. If you don't have these programs, please visit ncftp.com.
Once again, review the differences. Http pulls a file into a buffer in memory, i.e. an edbrowse session, while ftp copies the file directly to disk. Also, ftp does not print dots every 100K to indicate progress, so you just have to wait until it's done. (Depending on your operating system, you could switch to another virtual console/window and check on the length of the local file.)
Ay helpfes that support secure http have URLs of the form: https://secure.server.com. Notice the protocol is https:// rather than http://. The extra s stands for "secure". The traffic is encrypted, i.e. mathematically scrambled, and cannot be intercepted by a nefarious third party.
Edbrowse will verify ssl connections, if you supply a file of ssl certificates. This is an antispoofing measure, to make sure a hacker isn't posing as your bank, trying to steal your account numbers and passwords. You can grab a certificate file here, but I don't always keep it up to date. If you don't have this file, or, if you don't specify its location in your config file, you will not be able to verify secure connections, and you will be warned accordingly. Some browsers don't have this feature at all, so it's not the end of the world, but in general it's a good idea to verify your secure connections, unless it prevents you from getting to a website whose authenticity you accept at face value. In that case you can use the vs command to turn the feature off. This is a toggle command; type vs again to turn the feature on.
Never send sensitive information, such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, over an insecure channel. Make sure the form is using ssl. How can you tell? The submit button will have the word "secure" added to its text.
<Make your purchase now secure>
This is similar to the lock icon that Explorer uses to tell you that your connection is secure, although my system is not quite as foolproof. A website could fake you out by putting the word secure in the submit text.
Note that generic buttons (besides the submit button) can also submit your form, through javascript. I don't know if that button is going to submit the form or not, and I don't want to put the word "secure" on every button on the page. I only add it to the submit button, but if that button is secure then they are all secure. They all use the same form, and the same url.
In theory, it is possible for javascript too switch the destination url out from under you at the last minute, from https://this.is.safe.com to http://this.is.untrusted.com. I don't know if other browsers watch for this bait-and-switch, but edbrowse does. If the original url was secure, and I reported this to you via <submit secure>, and javascript changes it to an insecure connection, I won't submit the form. This is really paranoid, because the first website, the one that asked for your credit card number, also supplies the javascript, and they have no incentive to breech security, since you're going to hand them your credit card number anyways.
If you have logins on secure servers, such as PayPal.com, you must keep your password absolutely safe. Never send that password over an insecure connection. It becomes as valuable as your credit card numbers. I have a special password that I use for my secure logins, and only for those logins. I use other, expendable passwords when the connection is not secure.
Please don't fall for all those email scams that tell you your login has expired, and would you please log in again using this convenient form. The mail is forged to look legitimate, and the form actually sends your secret password to a thief, who then rades your account. A reputable company will never, never, never, ask you to login through an email form. They will always tell you to go back to the website and log in there.
Internet security is complex, to say the least, and it is beyond the scope of this document. If you have any questions about it, please send them to me directly. As a general rule, secure http is really quite safe, and you can use it to send sensitive information across the Net. It's probably safer than giving your credit card number to the clerk on the phone, who use to take your order before there was e-commerce. so it's ok to be a little bit paranoid, in fact it's probably a good idea, but don't let that stop you from making your online purchases.
ftp download
some stats on the size of the file and the bits per second
success
Of course the download could fail, in which case you will receive an error message. If it was simply interrupted, due to some internet glitch, you can issue the command again, and edbrowse will resume the download from where it left off. This can save time when fetching a large file.
By default, edbrowse uses the account name "anonymous" and the password "some-user@edbrowse.net" for ftp connections. However, you can override this in the url, and some web pages take advantage of this feature. For example, let's say you want to access the file /etc/passwd on whatever.localdomain. This file isn't readable by anonymous users. You have to log in as a real person. Within edbrowse, you might use the command:
e ftp://chris:xxx@whatever.localdomain/etc/passwd
The ftp connection will be made as user "Chris", with password "XXX".
Some ftp URLs point at directories, not files. If you visit one of these, and it is located on a Unix-like server, you will receive the listing as an html file with hyperlinks. You can visit the directory members just as though you were exploring a website. If the server does not run some flavore of Unix, you will receive the directory listing in plain text.
The ftp mode, i.e. the style of data connection, can be either active or passive. One works well when the client is behind a router, and the other works well when the server is behind a router. You can specify ftp mode active by entering the command `fma', or ftp mode passive by `fmp'. The command `fmd' sets the ftp mode to a default, which tries to establish a passive connection first, and then an active connection as a fallback. This is a reasonable default, so you should probably leave this alone.
Edbrowse doesn't actually establish the ftp connections, rather, it invokes the program ncftpget to fetch the file, and ncftpls to list the directory. These programs are distributed with most Unix systems. If you don't have these programs, please visit ncftp.com.
Once again, review the differences. Http pulls a file into a buffer in memory, i.e. an edbrowse session, while ftp copies the file directly to disk. Also, ftp does not print dots every 100K to indicate progress, so you just have to wait until it's done. (Depending on your operating system, you could switch to another virtual console/window and check on the length of the local file.)
Ay helpfes that support secure http have URLs of the form: https://secure.server.com. Notice the protocol is https:// rather than http://. The extra s stands for "secure". The traffic is encrypted, i.e. mathematically scrambled, and cannot be intercepted by a nefarious third party.
Edbrowse will verify ssl connections, if you supply a file of ssl certificates. This is an antispoofing measure, to make sure a hacker isn't posing as your bank, trying to steal your account numbers and passwords. You can grab a certificate file here, but I don't always keep it up to date. If you don't have this file, or, if you don't specify its location in your config file, you will not be able to verify secure connections, and you will be warned accordingly. Some browsers don't have this feature at all, so it's not the end of the world, but in general it's a good idea to verify your secure connections, unless it prevents you from getting to a website whose authenticity you accept at face value. In that case you can use the vs command to turn the feature off. This is a toggle command; type vs again to turn the feature on.
Never send sensitive information, such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, over an insecure channel. Make sure the form is using ssl. How can you tell? The submit button will have the word "secure" added to its text.
<Make your purchase now secure>
This is similar to the lock icon that Explorer uses to tell you that your connection is secure, although my system is not quite as foolproof. A website could fake you out by putting the word secure in the submit text.
Note that generic buttons (besides the submit button) can also submit your form, through javascript. I don't know if that button is going to submit the form or not, and I don't want to put the word "secure" on every button on the page. I only add it to the submit button, but if that button is secure then they are all secure. They all use the same form, and the same url.
In theory, it is possible for javascript too switch the destination url out from under you at the last minute, from https://this.is.safe.com to http://this.is.untrusted.com. I don't know if other browsers watch for this bait-and-switch, but edbrowse does. If the original url was secure, and I reported this to you via <submit secure>, and javascript changes it to an insecure connection, I won't submit the form. This is really paranoid, because the first website, the one that asked for your credit card number, also supplies the javascript, and they have no incentive to breech security, since you're going to hand them your credit card number anyways.
If you have logins on secure servers, such as PayPal.com, you must keep your password absolutely safe. Never send that password over an insecure connection. It becomes as valuable as your credit card numbers. I have a special password that I use for my secure logins, and only for those logins. I use other, expendable passwords when the connection is not secure.
Please don't fall for all those email scams that tell you your login has expired, and would you please log in again using this convenient form. The mail is forged to look legitimate, and the form actually sends your secret password to a thief, who then rades your account. A reputable company will never, never, never, ask you to login through an email form. They will always tell you to go back to the website and log in there.
Internet security is complex, to say the least, and it is beyond the scope of this document. If you have any questions about it, please send them to me directly. As a general rule, secure http is really quite safe, and you can use it to send sensitive information across the Net. It's probably safer than giving your credit card number to the clerk on the phone, who use to take your order before there was e-commerce. so it's ok to be a little bit paranoid, in fact it's probably a good idea, but don't let that stop you from making your online purchases.
ftp download
some stats on the size of the file and the bits per second
success
Of course the download could fail, in which case you will receive an error message. If it was simply interrupted, due to some internet glitch, you can issue the command again, and edbrowse will resume the download from where it left off. This can save time when fetching a large file.
By default, edbrowse uses the account name "anonymous" and the password "some-user@edbrowse.net" for ftp connections. However, you can override this in the url, and some web pages take advantage of this feature. For example, let's say you want to access the file /etc/passwd on whatever.localdomain. This file isn't readable by anonymous users. You have to log in as a real person. Within edbrowse, you might use the command:
e ftp://chris:xxx@whatever.localdomain/etc/passwd
The ftp connection will be made as user "Chris", with password "XXX".
Some ftp URLs point at directories, not files. If you visit one of these, and it is located on a Unix-like server, you will receive the listing as an html file with hyperlinks. You can visit the directory members just as though you were exploring a website. If the server does not run some flavore of Unix, you will receive the directory listing in plain text.
The ftp mode, i.e. the style of data connection, can be either active or passive. One works well when the client is behind a router, and the other works well when the server is behind a router. You can specify ftp mode active by entering the command `fma', or ftp mode passive by `fmp'. The command `fmd' sets the ftp mode to a default, which tries to establish a passive connection first, and then an active connection as a fallback. This is a reasonable default, so you should probably leave this alone.
Edbrowse doesn't actually establish the ftp connections, rather, it invokes the program ncftpget to fetch the file, and ncftpls to list the directory. These programs are distributed with most Unix systems. If you don't have these programs, please visit ncftp.com.
Once again, review the differences. Http pulls a file into a buffer in memory, i.e. an edbrowse session, while ftp copies the file directly to disk. Also, ftp does not print dots every 100K to indicate progress, so you just have to wait until it's done. (Depending on your operating system, you could switch to another virtual console/window and check on the length of the local file.)
Ay helpfes that support secure http have URLs of the form: https://secure.server.com. Notice the protocol is https:// rather than http://. The extra s stands for "secure". The traffic is encrypted, i.e. mathematically scrambled, and cannot be intercepted by a nefarious third party.
Edbrowse will verify ssl connections, if you supply a file of ssl certificates. This is an antispoofing measure, to make sure a hacker isn't posing as your bank, trying to steal your account numbers and passwords. You can grab a certificate file here, but I don't always keep it up to date. If you don't have this file, or, if you don't specify its location in your config file, you will not be able to verify secure connections, and you will be warned accordingly. Some browsers don't have this feature at all, so it's not the end of the world, but in general it's a good idea to verify your secure connections, unless it prevents you from getting to a website whose authenticity you accept at face value. In that case you can use the vs command to turn the feature off. This is a toggle command; type vs again to turn the feature on.
Never send sensitive information, such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, over an insecure channel. Make sure the form is using ssl. How can you tell? The submit button will have the word "secure" added to its text.
<Make your purchase now secure>
This is similar to the lock icon that Explorer uses to tell you that your connection is secure, although my system is not quite as foolproof. A website could fake you out by putting the word secure in the submit text.
Note that generic buttons (besides the submit button) can also submit your form, through javascript. I don't know if that button is going to submit the form or not, and I don't want to put the word "secure" on every button on the page. I only add it to the submit button, but if that button is secure then they are all secure. They all use the same form, and the same url.
In theory, it is possible for javascript too switch the destination url out from under you at the last minute, from https://this.is.safe.com to http://this.is.untrusted.com. I don't know if other browsers watch for this bait-and-switch, but edbrowse does. If the original url was secure, and I reported this to you via <submit secure>, and javascript changes it to an insecure connection, I won't submit the form. This is really paranoid, because the first website, the one that asked for your credit card number, also supplies the javascript, and they have no incentive to breech security, since you're going to hand them your credit card number anyways.
If you have logins on secure servers, such as PayPal.com, you must keep your password absolutely safe. Never send that password over an insecure connection. It becomes as valuable as your credit card numbers. I have a special password that I use for my secure logins, and only for those logins. I use other, expendable passwords when the connection is not secure.
Please don't fall for all those email scams that tell you your login has expired, and would you please log in again using this convenient form. The mail is forged to look legitimate, and the form actually sends your secret password to a thief, who then rades your account. A reputable company will never, never, never, ask you to login through an email form. They will always tell you to go back to the website and log in there.
Internet security is complex, to say the least, and it is beyond the scope of this document. If you have any questions about it, please send them to me directly. As a general rule, secure http is really quite safe, and you can use it to send sensitive information across the Net. It's probably safer than giving your credit card number to the clerk on the phone, who use to take your order before there was e-commerce. so it's ok to be a little bit paranoid, in fact it's probably a good idea, but don't let that stop you from making your online purchases.
ftp download
some stats on the size of the file and the bits per second
success
Of course the download could fail, in which case you will receive an error message. If it was simply interrupted, due to some internet glitch, you can issue the command again, and edbrowse will resume the download from where it left off. This can save time when fetching a large file.
By default, edbrowse uses the account name "anonymous" and the password "some-user@edbrowse.net" for ftp connections. However, you can override this in the url, and some web pages take advantage of this feature. For example, let's say you want to access the file /etc/passwd on whatever.localdomain. This file isn't readable by anonymous users. You have to log in as a real person. Within edbrowse, you might use the command:
e ftp://chris:xxx@whatever.localdomain/etc/passwd
The ftp connection will be made as user "Chris", with password "XXX".
Some ftp URLs point at directories, not files. If you visit one of these, and it is located on a Unix-like server, you will receive the listing as an html file with hyperlinks. You can visit the directory members just as though you were exploring a website. If the server does not run some flavore of Unix, you will receive the directory listing in plain text.
The ftp mode, i.e. the style of data connection, can be either active or passive. One works well when the client is behind a router, and the other works well when the server is behind a router. You can specify ftp mode active by entering the command `fma', or ftp mode passive by `fmp'. The command `fmd' sets the ftp mode to a default, which tries to establish a passive connection first, and then an active connection as a fallback. This is a reasonable default, so you should probably leave this alone.
Edbrowse doesn't actually establish the ftp connections, rather, it invokes the program ncftpget to fetch the file, and ncftpls to list the directory. These programs are distributed with most Unix systems. If you don't have these programs, please visit ncftp.com.
Once again, review the differences. Http pulls a file into a buffer in memory, i.e. an edbrowse session, while ftp copies the file directly to disk. Also, ftp does not print dots every 100K to indicate progress, so you just have to wait until it's done. (Depending on your operating system, you could switch to another virtual console/window and check on the length of the local file.)
Ay helpfes that support secure http have URLs of the form: https://secure.server.com. Notice the protocol is https:// rather than http://. The extra s stands for "secure". The traffic is encrypted, i.e. mathematically scrambled, and cannot be intercepted by a nefarious third party.
Edbrowse will verify ssl connections, if you supply a file of ssl certificates. This is an antispoofing measure, to make sure a hacker isn't posing as your bank, trying to steal your account numbers and passwords. You can grab a certificate file here, but I don't always keep it up to date. If you don't have this file, or, if you don't specify its location in your config file, you will not be able to verify secure connections, and you will be warned accordingly. Some browsers don't have this feature at all, so it's not the end of the world, but in general it's a good idea to verify your secure connections, unless it prevents you from getting to a website whose authenticity you accept at face value. In that case you can use the vs command to turn the feature off. This is a toggle command; type vs again to turn the feature on.
Never send sensitive information, such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, over an insecure channel. Make sure the form is using ssl. How can you tell? The submit button will have the word "secure" added to its text.
<Make your purchase now secure>
This is similar to the lock icon that Explorer uses to tell you that your connection is secure, although my system is not quite as foolproof. A website could fake you out by putting the word secure in the submit text.
Note that generic buttons (besides the submit button) can also submit your form, through javascript. I don't know if that button is going to submit the form or not, and I don't want to put the word "secure" on every button on the page. I only add it to the submit button, but if that button is secure then they are all secure. They all use the same form, and the same url.
In theory, it is possible for javascript too switch the destination url out from under you at the last minute, from https://this.is.safe.com to http://this.is.untrusted.com. I don't know if other browsers watch for this bait-and-switch, but edbrowse does. If the original url was secure, and I reported this to you via <submit secure>, and javascript changes it to an insecure connection, I won't submit the form. This is really paranoid, because the first website, the one that asked for your credit card number, also supplies the javascript, and they have no incentive to breech security, since you're going to hand them your credit card number anyways.
If you have logins on secure servers, such as PayPal.com, you must keep your password absolutely safe. Never send that password over an insecure connection. It becomes as valuable as your credit card numbers. I have a special password that I use for my secure logins, and only for those logins. I use other, expendable passwords when the connection is not secure.
Please don't fall for all those email scams that tell you your login has expired, and would you please log in again using this convenient form. The mail is forged to look legitimate, and the form actually sends your secret password to a thief, who then rades your account. A reputable company will never, never, never, ask you to login through an email form. They will always tell you to go back to the website and log in there.
Internet security is complex, to say the least, and it is beyond the scope of this document. If you have any questions about it, please send them to me directly. As a general rule, secure http is really quite safe, and you can use it to send sensitive information across the Net. It's probably safer than giving your credit card number to the clerk on the phone, who use to take your order before there was e-commerce. so it's ok to be a little bit paranoid, in fact it's probably a good idea, but don't let that stop you from making your online purchases.
ftp download
some stats on the size of the file and the bits per second
success
Of course the download could fail, in which case you will receive an error message. If it was simply interrupted, due to some internet glitch, you can issue the command again, and edbrowse will resume the download from where it left off. This can save time when fetching a large file.
By default, edbrowse uses the account name "anonymous" and the password "some-user@edbrowse.net" for ftp connections. However, you can override this in the url, and some web pages take advantage of this feature. For example, let's say you want to access the file /etc/passwd on whatever.localdomain. This file isn't readable by anonymous users. You have to log in as a real person. Within edbrowse, you might use the command:
e ftp://chris:xxx@whatever.localdomain/etc/passwd
The ftp connection will be made as user "Chris", with password "XXX".
Some ftp URLs point at directories, not files. If you visit one of these, and it is located on a Unix-like server, you will receive the listing as an html file with hyperlinks. You can visit the directory members just as though you were exploring a website. If the server does not run some flavore of Unix, you will receive the directory listing in plain text.
The ftp mode, i.e. the style of data connection, can be either active or passive. One works well when the client is behind a router, and the other works well when the server is behind a router. You can specify ftp mode active by entering the command `fma', or ftp mode passive by `fmp'. The command `fmd' sets the ftp mode to a default, which tries to establish a passive connection first, and then an active connection as a fallback. This is a reasonable default, so you should probably leave this alone.
Edbrowse doesn't actually establish the ftp connections, rather, it invokes the program ncftpget to fetch the file, and ncftpls to list the directory. These programs are distributed with most Unix systems. If you don't have these programs, please visit ncftp.com.
Once again, review the differences. Http pulls a file into a buffer in memory, i.e. an edbrowse session, while ftp copies the file directly to disk. Also, ftp does not print dots every 100K to indicate progress, so you just have to wait until it's done. (Depending on your operating system, you could switch to another virtual console/window and check on the length of the local file.)
Ay helpfes that support secure http have URLs of the form: https://secure.server.com. Notice the protocol is https:// rather than http://. The extra s stands for "secure". The traffic is encrypted, i.e. mathematically scrambled, and cannot be intercepted by a nefarious third party.
Edbrowse will verify ssl connections, if you supply a file of ssl certificates. This is an antispoofing measure, to make sure a hacker isn't posing as your bank, trying to steal your account numbers and passwords. You can grab a certificate file here, but I don't always keep it up to date. If you don't have this file, or, if you don't specify its location in your config file, you will not be able to verify secure connections, and you will be warned accordingly. Some browsers don't have this feature at all, so it's not the end of the world, but in general it's a good idea to verify your secure connections, unless it prevents you from getting to a website whose authenticity you accept at face value. In that case you can use the vs command to turn the feature off. This is a toggle command; type vs again to turn the feature on.
Never send sensitive information, such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, over an insecure channel. Make sure the form is using ssl. How can you tell? The submit button will have the word "secure" added to its text.
<Make your purchase now secure>
This is similar to the lock icon that Explorer uses to tell you that your connection is secure, although my system is not quite as foolproof. A website could fake you out by putting the word secure in the submit text.
Note that generic buttons (besides the submit button) can also submit your form, through javascript. I don't know if that button is going to submit the form or not, and I don't want to put the word "secure" on every button on the page. I only add it to the submit button, but if that button is secure then they are all secure. They all use the same form, and the same url.
In theory, it is possible for javascript too switch the destination url out from under you at the last minute, from https://this.is.safe.com to http://this.is.untrusted.com. I don't know if other browsers watch for this bait-and-switch, but edbrowse does. If the original url was secure, and I reported this to you via <submit secure>, and javascript changes it to an insecure connection, I won't submit the form. This is really paranoid, because the first website, the one that asked for your credit card number, also supplies the javascript, and they have no incentive to breech security, since you're going to hand them your credit card number anyways.
If you have logins on secure servers, such as PayPal.com, you must keep your password absolutely safe. Never send that password over an insecure connection. It becomes as valuable as your credit card numbers. I have a special password that I use for my secure logins, and only for those logins. I use other, expendable passwords when the connection is not secure.
Please don't fall for all those email scams that tell you your login has expired, and would you please log in again using this convenient form. The mail is forged to look legitimate, and the form actually sends your secret password to a thief, who then rades your account. A reputable company will never, never, never, ask you to login through an email form. They will always tell you to go back to the website and log in there.
Internet security is complex, to say the least, and it is beyond the scope of this document. If you have any questions about it, please send them to me directly. As a general rule, secure http is really quite safe, and you can use it to send sensitive information across the Net. It's probably safer than giving your credit card number to the clerk on the phone, who use to take your order before there was e-commerce. so it's ok to be a little bit paranoid, in fact it's probably a good idea, but don't let that stop you from making your online purchases.
ftp download
some stats on the size of the file and the bits per second
success
Of course the download could fail, in which case you will receive an error message. If it was simply interrupted, due to some internet glitch, you can issue the command again, and edbrowse will resume the download from where it left off. This can save time when fetching a large file.
By default, edbrowse uses the account name "anonymous" and the password "some-user@edbrowse.net" for ftp connections. However, you can override this in the url, and some web pages take advantage of this feature. For example, let's say you want to access the file /etc/passwd on whatever.localdomain. This file isn't readable by anonymous users. You have to log in as a real person. Within edbrowse, you might use the command:
e ftp://chris:xxx@whatever.localdomain/etc/passwd
The ftp connection will be made as user "Chris", with password "XXX".
Some ftp URLs point at directories, not files. If you visit one of these, and it is located on a Unix-like server, you will receive the listing as an html file with hyperlinks. You can visit the directory members just as though you were exploring a website. If the server does not run some flavore of Unix, you will receive the directory listing in plain text.
The ftp mode, i.e. the style of data connection, can be either active or passive. One works well when the client is behind a router, and the other works well when the server is behind a router. You can specify ftp mode active by entering the command `fma', or ftp mode passive by `fmp'. The command `fmd' sets the ftp mode to a default, which tries to establish a passive connection first, and then an active connection as a fallback. This is a reasonable default, so you should probably leave this alone.
Edbrowse doesn't actually establish the ftp connections, rather, it invokes the program ncftpget to fetch the file, and ncftpls to list the directory. These programs are distributed with most Unix systems. If you don't have these programs, please visit ncftp.com.
Once again, review the differences. Http pulls a file into a buffer in memory, i.e. an edbrowse session, while ftp copies the file directly to disk. Also, ftp does not print dots every 100K to indicate progress, so you just have to wait until it's done. (Depending on your operating system, you could switch to another virtual console/window and check on the length of the local file.)
Ay helpfes that support secure http have URLs of the form: https://secure.server.com. Notice the protocol is https:// rather than http://. The extra s stands for "secure". The traffic is encrypted, i.e. mathematically scrambled, and cannot be intercepted by a nefarious third party.
Edbrowse will verify ssl connections, if you supply a file of ssl certificates. This is an antispoofing measure, to make sure a hacker isn't posing as your bank, trying to steal your account numbers and passwords. You can grab a certificate file here, but I don't always keep it up to date. If you don't have this file, or, if you don't specify its location in your config file, you will not be able to verify secure connections, and you will be warned accordingly. Some browsers don't have this feature at all, so it's not the end of the world, but in general it's a good idea to verify your secure connections, unless it prevents you from getting to a website whose authenticity you accept at face value. In that case you can use the vs command to turn the feature off. This is a toggle command; type vs again to turn the feature on.
Never send sensitive information, such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, over an insecure channel. Make sure the form is using ssl. How can you tell? The submit button will have the word "secure" added to its text.
<Make your purchase now secure>
This is similar to the lock icon that Explorer uses to tell you that your connection is secure, although my system is not quite as foolproof. A website could fake you out by putting the word secure in the submit text.
Note that generic buttons (besides the submit button) can also submit your form, through javascript. I don't know if that button is going to submit the form or not, and I don't want to put the word "secure" on every button on the page. I only add it to the submit button, but if that button is secure then they are all secure. They all use the same form, and the same url.
In theory, it is possible for javascript too switch the destination url out from under you at the last minute, from https://this.is.safe.com to http://this.is.untrusted.com. I don't know if other browsers watch for this bait-and-switch, but edbrowse does. If the original url was secure, and I reported this to you via <submit secure>, and javascript changes it to an insecure connection, I won't submit the form. This is really paranoid, because the first website, the one that asked for your credit card number, also supplies the javascript, and they have no incentive to breech security, since you're going to hand them your credit card number anyways.
If you have logins on secure servers, such as PayPal.com, you must keep your password absolutely safe. Never send that password over an insecure connection. It becomes as valuable as your credit card numbers. I have a special password that I use for my secure logins, and only for those logins. I use other, expendable passwords when the connection is not secure.
Please don't fall for all those email scams that tell you your login has expired, and would you please log in again using this convenient form. The mail is forged to look legitimate, and the form actually sends your secret password to a thief, who then rades your account. A reputable company will never, never, never, ask you to login through an email form. They will always tell you to go back to the website and log in there.
Internet security is complex, to say the least, and it is beyond the scope of this document. If you have any questions about it, please send them to me directly. As a general rule, secure http is really quite safe, and you can use it to send sensitive information across the Net. It's probably safer than giving your credit card number to the clerk on the phone, who use to take your order before there was e-commerce. so it's ok to be a little bit paranoid, in fact it's probably a good idea, but don't let that stop you from making your online purchases.
ftp download
some stats on the size of the file and the bits per second
success
Of course the download could fail, in which case you will receive an error message. If