CaterBook

Overview
Features
System requirements
Download
Installation
Uninstallation
Starting CaterBook in Windows
Starting CaterBook on Unix systems
Categorization of bookmarks
Working with CaterBook
Frequently asked qestions (FAQ)
Questionary
Bugs
Future features

Overview

CaterBook is a bookmark management tool, which automatically organizes user's bookmarks in a Yahoo-like hierarchy of categories. At the first execution it imports user's bookmark file and categorizes the bookmarked Web pages. The hierarchy of categories is dynamically built during the categorization process. After the categorization finishes, the user can easily browse through the hierarchy, manipulate with the bookmarks and add new bookmarks.
Nevertheless, you can also use CaterBook without importing your recent bookmarks, just test it by using arbitrary URLs like http://www.cnn.com and see the results. For details follow section Working with CaterBook.

Features
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System Requirements

The application is written in 100% pure Java and it can run on any Java 2 platform. For a complete list of platforms that support Java, please check http://www.javasoft.com/cgi-bin/java-ports.cgi

System requirement for hardware is basically the same as that of any Java 2 enviroment. Additionally it requires a fast and stable Internet connection (T1/T3/DSL) and approximatelly 1 MB of free space on a hard disc (200 kB for the application and 800 kB for the working data).

Platforms, which were tested for running CaterBook:

Download

The prototype version of CaterBook, v0.9, packed in a zipfile can be downloaded here. Please note that it is a prototype version, which can be used only for academic purposes.

Installation

  1. Make sure that you have installed JavaTM 2 Runtime Environment(1.2 or later), which is free for download at Sun's Java site http://java.sun.com/j2se/. Please download a free copy at this site and install it according to the installation instruction. If you have installed JDK that already include Java virtual machine, you don't need to install Java Runtime any more.
  2. Choose a directory of your choise and unzip the zipfile you downloaded to the directory. It creates there a subdirectory called caterbook with the application. There is no additional installation.
  3. CaterBook uses Google Web APIs for the categorization process. For this reason you have to first create an account at Google and obtain a license key. The registration page can be found here.

Uninstallation

Simply delete the whole directory, where you have installed CaterBook.

Starting CaterBook in Windows

  1. Go to the CaterBook's directory and find the caterbook.jar file. Try double clicking on it and CaterBook should start up. If this fails you need to change the application which Windows uses for opening a .jar file. Right-click on the caterbook.jar file and choose: "Open With... > Choose the program... >". Browse the list with programmes you will see and choose javaw and if applicable, set it with an option as javaw -jar. Don't forget to mark "Always use this program to open these files".
    However, because handling with Java under Windows can be quite tricky, there is an alternative way how to start the application: go to the CaterBook's directory and find the caterbook.bat file. Try double clicking on it and CaterBook should start up. If not, edit the file and change the path of the Java Runtime Enviroment, e.g. c:\jre\javaw -jar caterbook.jar
  2. The simplest way to start-up CaterBook in future times is to make a shortcut of caterbook.jar or caterbook.bat to your desktop (just right-click again to make the shortcut). Please, do not move the file itselft from the directory, otherwise the application will not work properly.
  3. When you start CaterBook for the first time, a window with the user's preferences appear. Please, first fill in the license key obtained from Google. Then choose which browser you use and the location of your bookmark file or "favorites" directory. Location of MS Internet Explorer "Favorites" directory is e.g. "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Favorites" or "C:\Windows\Profiles\username\Favorites".
  4. The first import of your bookmark file can take a really long time (for 100 bookmarks approximatelly half an hour). Don't worry about the application and let it run in the background. If you skip the initial categorization process or the system crashes (which should never happen!), restart the application and click on the button ``Reimport'' in the preferences dialog.
  5. Nevertheless, you can also use CaterBook without importing your recent bookmarks, just cancel the initial dialog, write a URL( e.g. http://www.cnn.com ) to the text field and press button Categorize. In a while you should see the result of categorization.
  6. Please note a bug which occurs on some versions of Windows

Starting CaterBook on Unix systems

  1. Go to the caterbook directory and find the caterbook.jar file. Start the application by java -jar caterbook.jar. If you want to launch the application from another directory, start it by java -jar PATH/caterbook.jar, where PATH is the path to the location of caterbook.jar.
  2. When you start CaterBook for the first time, a window with the user's preferences will appear. Please, first fill in the license key obtained from Google. Then choose which browser you use and the location of your bookmark file. Finding of the location can be difficult, try the following pathes:
    Netscape Navigator: $HOME/.netscape/bookmarks.html
    Mozilla: $HOME/mozilla/bookmarks.html
    Konqueror: $HOME/kde/bookmarks.xml
  3. The first import of your bookmark file can take a really long time (for 100 bookmarks approximatelly half an hour). Don't worry about the application and let it run in the background. If you skip the initial categorization process or the system crashes (which should never happen!), restart the application and click on the button ``Reimport'' in the preferences dialog.
  4. Nevertheless, you can also use CaterBook without importing your recent bookmarks, just cancel the initial dialog, write a URL( e.g. http://www.cnn.com ) to the text field and press button Categorize. In a while you should see the result of categorization.

Categorization of bookmarks

The categorization process is based on finding of similarity between the bookmarked Web page and Web pages already categorized in the Open Directory Project (ODP) http://www.dmoz.org. It happens CaterBook fails in the categorization of bookmarks, because no similarity was found or the bookmarked URL is obsolete. In this case the bookmark is sorted into a top folder called "Others". CaterBook supports in the current version only categorization of English written Web pages. Web pages written in another language are categorized in the folder "Others". Note, that the default preset bookmarks of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer are skipped during the import of a bookmark file. They are usually considered as useless.

Working with CaterBook

The application frame is splitted into two panels, on the left is the hierarchy tree of categories and on the right are the bookmark records of the currently selected category. The bullet of each bookmark record shows if a bookmark is categorized precisely in that folder (a green bullet) or if it is categorized in a subfolder (a blue bullet). The displaying of bookmarks even in the upper categories than they are really categorized facilitates the searching.
screenshot

You can affect the maximum and minimum number of bookmarks in a category by setting the values in the Tree tab pane of the preferences dialog. After the maximum of bookmarks in a category folder is reached, the application will offer splitting of the folder into subfolders and resorting of the contained bookmarks. The bookmarks can be manipulated in several ways:
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Questionary

CaterBook is at the beginning of its evolution. For future improvements I'd like to know your experiences with the application and I would be very pleased, if you could answer a few questions in this questionary

Bugs

If you find a bug during using of CaterBook, we will be very pleased if you can report to us. In the case of a bug, please fill this bug report.
Known bugs

Future features

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e-mail:knezu@email.cz