Contents
CyberLinks User Edition

Quick Start Guide to CyberLinks

What is CyberLinks?  Get a brief conceptual understanding of CyberLinks here.

Next, get a step-by-step guide to creating live hyperlinks in your documents with CyberText, CyberButton, CyberPicture and CyberMap objects.

Table of Contents

What is CyberLinks?

Hyperlinking information enables easy navigation

CyberLinks - Universal hyperlinking for your documents and information

CyberLinks architecture

What you can link to ...

How does one activate a hyperlink in a document containing CyberLinks?

How does hyperlink activation work?

How are hyperlinks specified?

Creating hyperlinks using CyberText objects

A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberText objects

CyberText Properties Reference

CyberText Menu Reference

CyberText Context-menu Reference

Creating hyperlinks using CyberButton objects

A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberButton objects

CyberButton Properties Reference

CyberButton Menu Reference

CyberButton Context-Menu Reference

Creating hyperlinks using CyberPicture objects

 A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberPicture objects

CyberPicture Properties Reference

CyberPicture Menu Reference

CyberPicture Context-Menu Reference

Creating hyperlinks using CyberMap objects

A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberMap objects

CyberMap Properties Reference

CyberMap Menu Reference

CyberMap Context-Menu Reference

Understanding Uniform Resouce Locators (URLs)

What are URLs?

Where will you encounter URLs?

The format of a URL

URL Examples

How do you use URLs?

The URL Schemes

Escape Sequences

How do you manually decode a URL?

Creating URLs manually

Troubleshooting URLs

Specifying a URL in CyberLinks

Directly enter the URL

Specify the URL using Drag-and-drop techniques

Use the URL Wizard

Hyperlinking information within corporate Intranets

Hyperlinking information on file servers

Hyperlinking information on desktops

See Also

Installing CyberLinks


What is CyberLinks?

As the enormous success of the World-Wide Web demonstrates, hyperlinks provides an excellent means to connect related information together, and navigate through information easily.

CyberLinks brings proven, standards-based, universal hyperlinking to your world of documents and information.

In a nutshell, CyberLinks offers the following tangible benefits:

√  CyberLinks enables you to author documents in your favorite tools (wordprocessors, spreadsheets etc.) with hyperlinks to related information anywhere within your own desktop, within corporate intranets or on the global Internet

√  CyberLinks lets you publish documents with live links, on the World-Wide Web or within corporate webs, without requiring format conversions or maintaining multiple copies of documents in different formats

√  In combination with the latest Internet innovations such as Netscape Navigator 2.0 and the Microsoft Word viewer plug-in from Inso, CyberLinks enables seamless navigation across Web pages as well as Word documents, from within the browser

√  CyberLinks enhances the collaborative document authoring experience by providing the ability to include live links to on-going project work within any document regardless of the tool used to author it

√  CyberLinks improves the document viewing and sharing experience within a workgroup, or across the entire globe by incorporating standards-based hyperlinking technology

√  CyberLinks brings to information within corporate intranets, the same benefits that World-Wide Web technologies brought to the global Internet.  With CyberLinks, any document can now incorporate live links to related information just as web pages do

√  CyberLinks is fully compatible with World-Wide Web technologies, but doesn't require Web servers or other similar infrastructure

√  CyberLinks fits seamlessly into the working environment of any desktop, and intelligently operates with a user's software preferences

The conceptual basis for CyberLinks, its architecture and operation are covered in the following topics:

Hyperlinking information enables easy navigation, OR What's the big deal about Hyperlinks?

CyberLinks - Universal hyperlinking for your documents and information

CyberLinks architecture

What you can link to ...

How does one activate a hyperlink in a document containing CyberLinks?

How does hyperlink activation work?

How are hyperlinks specified?


Hyperlinking information
Hyperlinking information enables easy navigation

Hypertext or Hypermedia systems allow for easy navigation of information through the use of links to related information.  Here are a couple of examples of hyperlinks that you may be familiar with:

•	If you have used Windows Help (you are looking at a Windows help file right now), then you are familiar with those highlighted/underlined words which you can click to go to a related topic of information.  The Windows Help system is a hypertext system.

•	If you have accessed the World-Wide Web using a Web browser, then you are familiar with those highlighted words or pictures, which you can click, to go to a related topic of information.  The World-Wide Web is global, distributed, hypermedia system, that has made it easy to navigate the vast amount of information in Cyberspace.

These highlighted/underlined words in a document which you can click to go to a related topic of information are known as hyperlinks.

Hyperlinks are a proven way to interconnect related information.  When you use links to related information, and provide the user with a easy way to traverse those links, you have made information much easier to navigate.  These benefits have traditionally been available in external systems such as Windows Help, the World-Wide Web etc..

Imagine the benefits of hyperlinking in every document you create, using your favorite Wordprocessor, spreadsheet, or graphics package!

Imagine being able to link to information without worrying about its location or means needed to access it!

Imagine being able to incorporate links to information anywhere on the global Internet, your corporate network or just your own local desktop!

Imagine!

That is what CyberLinks is all about!


CyberLinks - Universal hyperlinking for your documents and information
CyberLinks - Universal hyperlinks for your documents and information

CyberLinks enables you to incorporate hyperlinks to information anywhere in your local desktop machine, corporate network or Cyberspace, from within any document created with your favorite OLE-capable Windows applications.  CyberLinks is the first product of its kind in the world that brings the proven benefits of hypermedia systems such as the World-Wide Web, into your own world of information.

CyberLinks is software designed for Microsoft Windows (initially for Windows 95 and Windows NT) that permits users as well as software developers to create documents or applications which incorporate live, on-line, seamless, links to related applications, documents, or other information sources, whether they are resident on a user’s local machine, on a corporate network server, or anywhere on the global Internet.


CyberLinks architecture

CyberLinks is based on Microsoft’s OLE technology, and therefore can be accessed from virtually any application that is OLE compatible (includes popular applications like MS-Word, MS-Excel, MS-PowerPoint, Lotus SmartSuite, etc.).  CyberLinks can be incorporated within applications built using virtually any application development tool which can use OLE-based components (e.g. Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, etc.)

To fit seamlessly within your world of information and applications, CyberLinks is designed as a set of OLE objects – CyberText, CyberPicture, CyberMap, and CyberButton.

The four types of CyberLinks objects enable you to incorporate hyperlinks very easily in your documents.  You can simply insert them in your documents as you need them.

You can create a hyperlink in your document, by choosing any one of these four objects from the “Insert | Object …” or “Insert | New Object …” menu of your application.

Your document must be created using an application which is OLE-aware.  Specifically, the application must be able to insert OLE objects via the “Insert | Object …” or other similar command.  Wordpad (the free mini-wordprocessor in Windows 95), MS-Word, MS-Excel, MS-PowerPoint, Lotus Word Pro, are some examples of applications you can use to create documents with CyberLinks.


What you can link to ...

CyberLinks lets you create documents with hyperlinks to virtually anywhere.  In all the cases we describe below, the hyperlinks can refer to information within your corporate network or on the global Internet.  In some cases, the hyperlinks can refer to information on your own machine.

You can incorporate hyperlinks to the following sources of information using CyberLinks:

•	Link to information on the World-Wide Web, Gopher, or FTP servers

•	Link to terminal sessions via Telnet/Tn3270

•	Link to Usenet newsgroups

•	Link to WAIS databases

•	Link to E-mail

•	Link to applications on your local desktop or anywhere within your corporate network

•	Link to documents on your local desktop or anywhere within your corporate network


How does one activate a hyperlink in a document containing CyberLinks?

The recipient of a document containing links, will see the links as you intended him to see it.  i.e. if you created a CyberText link which looked like a piece of blue, underlined text, that is exactly how the recipient of your document sees it.

The links in the document are live.  The recipient can simply double-click on a link to open it.

CyberLinks will dynamically choose an appropriate application to handle the opening of the link, depending on the nature of the information pointed to by a given link.


How does hyperlink activation work?

CyberLinks incorporates an “intelligent configuration agent”, which is fine tuned to work with whatever software is available on your machine, or that of the recipient of any document you create.  This means that you can create links to the Web in your document (and, say, you use Netscape Navigator) and send the document over to a friend (who, say, uses Microsoft Internet Explorer).  Your friend can jump to the Web links in your document just fine, and CyberLinks will automatically use the Microsoft Internet Explorer on your friend’s machine.

CyberLinks will use the Windows registry and other configuration files on each machine it is running on, to automatically tune itself to work with the set of applications configured on that machine.  It does so without user intervention, dynamically in the background, as and when needed.

For expert users and to cater to special situations, all CyberLinks objects permit the user of a link to open the link with a different application, irrespective of whether it is configured on the machine or not.  CyberLinks will optionally perform auto-registration of user-selected applications, so as to remember the user’s choice in future link activation.


How are hyperlinks specified?

CyberLinks is totally based on standards.  Just as CyberLinks uses OLE as a standard means to work within any document or application, it uses an Internet standard called URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) to specify links in an open, standard fashion.  In addition to this, CyberLinks also supports the UNC (Universal Naming Convention) filenames standard to support specification of location-independent information on your corporate network servers.

All of the CyberLinks objects have a property called “URL”.  An expert user can manually enter a URL to point to whatever kind of information needed.  The beginning user can use the URL Wizard feature to guide the process of creating a URL in a step-by-step fashion.

Even so, the specification of URLs can be error-prone.  To alleviate this, CyberLinks supports URL specification by drag-and-drop.  It can’t get simpler than this!  Here are the simple steps:

 •	insert a CyberLink object in a document

•	keeping the object activated, choose your link source, which can be an object in the file system (in which case, you open the Windows Explorer to the location containing the file, document, application or folder of your choice) or an object on the Internet  (in which case, you use a Web browser designed to support drag-and-drop and point it to the location you want to go)

•	select the link in the source application and drag it over the activated CyberLink object in the document

•	drop it

CyberLinks automatically constructs all the necessary information including a name and a URL for this hyperlink!

Yes!  It is that simple.

You can drag-and-drop files, documents, folders, applications, Internet hotlinks all in the same, simple, consistent fashion to fully specify the URL for a link.

See Also:

Understanding URLs

Specifying a URL with CyberLinks

Hyperlinking information within Intranets


Creating hyperlinks using CyberText objects

A CyberText object is designed to give the look and feel of text-based hypertext links, much like those you may have encountered in Windows Help files, or on World-Wide Web pages.  By default, a CyberText object will appear as a blue colored, underlined piece of text.  You can change the appearance of a CyberText object, by simply changing its properties such as Font, ForeColor etc.  A URL property permits you to specify what information the CyberText object should point to.

CyberText objects appear as a seamless part of your OLE-capable document, and they will print exactly the way the appear on screen.

The CyberLinks white paper, included with the product distribution (you should see a program icon in the "CyberLinks" group), has numerous links to all kinds of information.  All the hyperlinks in this document are CyberText objects.

You can explore using CyberText objects by first starting with:

A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberText objects

A complete reference to CyberText objects can be found in these topics:

CyberText Properties Reference

CyberText Menu Reference

CyberText Context-menu Reference


CT - A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberText objects
A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberText objects

Following is a step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks in your documents using CyberText objects.  This guide uses Microsoft Word as an example of a tool which can be used to incorporate hyperlinks using CyberText objects.

1.   Finding the CyberText object

2.   Inserting a CyberText object

3.   Examining the CyberText menu

4.   Changing the Properties of a CyberText object

5.   Resizing a CyberText object to fit the text


CT - Finding the CyberText object
Finding the CyberText object

Look in the “Insert | Object”, or “Insert | New Object” menu of your OLE-capable application such as MS-Word, MS-Excel etc. The above figure shows the “Object” dialog box (brought up by selecting “Insert | Object” menu) in MS-Word for Windows 95.


CT - Inserting a CyberText object
Inserting a CyberText object

Once you have the object dialog open, select CyberText from the object list, and press OK.  This will insert a CyberText object in the current document at the cursor location.

The figure above shows a document in MS-Word after a CyberText object has been inserted.

Note the following:

•	the CyberText object has been automatically activated within the Word document

•	the Word menu bar has three popup menus “File”, “CyberText”, and “Help”.

Most of what you can do with a CyberText object appear in the “CyberText” and “Help” menus, covered next.


CT - Examining the CyberText menu
Examining the CyberText menu

The above figure shows the CyberText popup menu as it appears on the application (Microsoft Word, in this example menu bar when a CyberText object is activated.  Here is a brief summary of the options available under the CyberText menu:

•	Properties brings up a dialog box which allows to change object properties such as font, color, URL etc.

•	Resize To Fit causes the CyberText object to resized to fit the size of the text within it

•	Open Link causes the link specified by the URL in the object to be opened in a suitable target application

•	Open With brings up a dialog box with a list of applications available on the machine using which the URL in the object can be opened

•	Create Shortcut creates a Windows 95 shortcut on the Windows 95 Desktop using the information specified in the URL


CT - Changing the Properties of a CyberText object
Changing the Properties of a CyberText object

To change the properties of a CyberText object, choose “Properties …” from the CyberText menu.

The above figure shows the Properties dialog box for a CyberText object.  Note that the dialog box has four tabs, “General”, “Display”, “Fonts”, and “Colors”.  Each of these tabs contain options you can set to manipulate the display as well as operational attributes of a CyberText object.

You can set the most commonly desired attributes of a hyperlink, namely the text visible to the reader, the URL it points to, the font and colors used to display the text.

1.   Changing the Caption

2.   Changing the URL

3.   Changing the Font

4.   Changing the text color (ForeColor)


CT - Changing the Caption
Changing the Caption

Enter the string, “The Home of the World-Wide Web” (without the double-quotes, of course), in the “Caption” field on the “General” tab, in the “Properties” dialog box.  This is the string that is displayed in your document.  You can check this out, by simply moving the dialog box to one side, and then pressing the “Apply” button.

As shown in the above figure, you can see that the CyberText object now reads “The Home of the World-Wide Web”.  Not all of the caption is currently visible in the document, but that is a problem that is easily fixed (See “Resizing a CyberText object to Fit”).


CT - Changing the URL
Changing the URL

In the URL field (on the “General” tab, in the properties box), type in “http://www.w3.org/” (again, without the double quotes).

See Also:

Understanding Uniform Resouce Locators (URLs)

Specifying a URL using CyberLinks

Hyperlinking information within corporate Intranets


CT - Changing the Font
Changing the Font

Select the “Font” tab in the “Properties” dialog box.  You will see the font options available, as shown in the following figure.

CyberText objects use the Times New Roman, size 10, Underline options by default.  Let us change the Font to Arial.  You can choose “Apply” as before to see the effect on the text.


CT - Changing the text color (ForeColor)
Changing the text color (ForeColor)

Choose the “Colors” tab from the “Properties” dialog box.  You will be presented with options shown in following figure.

In this figure, the “Property Name” combo box is shown open to illustrate an important point.  A CyberText object has three color properties:

“BackColor” is the background color for the object.  It is set to white, by default

“FlashColor” is the color used when the mouse is pressed down within the text of a CyberText object (the object should be activated – i.e. hatched borders should be on – in order for you to see this feature)

“ForeColor” is the color of the text.  It is set to blue, by default

Of these color properties, the “BackColor” is selected by default, and therefore, if you make a color change immediately after opening the “Colors” tab, you will be changing the background color of the object, and not the text color, as you are likely to expect.

So, to change the text color, first choose “ForeColor” from the “Property Name” combo box.  Then choose a color from the colored buttons on the right.  You can also set a color to follow one of the system colors which is shown in the “System Colors” combo box.

For example, choose “ForeColor” and then choose the green color from the right.  As before, you can press “Apply” to see the effect in the document immediately.  Click OK to dismiss the properties dialog box.


CT - Resizing a CyberText object to fit the text
Resizing a CyberText object to fit the text

You have two options to resize the object -- manually resize the object, or, use the CyberText menu option “Resize to Fit”.  Choosing the menu option is recommended because it will help you fit the object size precisely to the size of the text it contains.

The above figure shows the result of choosing “Resize to Fit” in the example we have been working with, so far.

You can click  anywhere outside the CyberText object within the MS-Word document to de-activate it.

The above figure shows how this object appears in the Word document after it has been de-activated and a few words of text have been typed after it.


CyberText Properties Reference

The "Properties ..." menu item in the CyberText menu, brings up a tabbed dialog box, containing the following options.  These properties control the visual look as well as the operation of a hyperlink created using a CyberText object.

Align Display	BackColor (Background Color)

Caption	Display as a Windows Shortcut

FlashColor (Highlight color)	Font

ForeColor (Foreground color)	Open Link in New Window if Possible

Show Picture	URL

Use Container's Font/Color

Align Display

Options

Left	Align caption text flush left within the object rectangle

Center	Center caption within the object rectangle

Right	Align caption text flush right within the object rectangle

Default

Left

Description

The “Align Display” property controls the alignment of the caption text within the rectangular boundary of a CyberText object.  By default, the caption text aligns left within the object.

BackColor (Background Color)

Options

Color	Choice of one among a set of colors.  Can be set to match a specific system object’s color like color of a button text or window caption text etc.

Default

White color

Description

The “BackColor” property controls the background color of the text within a CyberText object.

 Caption

Options

A string of text

Default

“Win.Ini”

Description

The contents of the “Caption” property appears as the text displayed in the CyberText object within a document.  Only a single line of caption is displayed, and whatever doesn’t fit is truncated from the display (though whatever caption text you enter for this property is entirely retained).

Display as a Windows Shortcut

Options

On	Displays the content of the CyberText object as a combination of an icon and a text label

Off	Displays the content of the CyberText object as a simple string of text

Default

Off

Description

The Display as a Windows Shortcut (“DisplayAsShortcut”) property provides control over whether a CyberText object is displayed as a plain string of text (which is the default) or combination of a icon and label.  Windows 95 shortcuts are displayed as icon with a text label beneath it.  When the “DisplayAsShortcut” option is turned on, a CyberText object will display itself within the document, just like a normal Windows 95 shortcut.

The icon is automatically chosen based on the URL property.  Based on the scheme specified in the URL, an application is dynamically found that can handle the URL and an icon is derived from it.   The label is automatically taken from the caption text.

For example, if you have specified a URL of “http://www.w3.org/”, and you have Netscape Navigator configured on your machine, then the Netscape icon is automatically chosen.  The figure below shows how this CyberText object would appear after the “DisplayAsShortcut” property is turned on.

Likewise, if the URL specified points to the Windows Clock application as in “file:///c:\windows\clock.exe”, then the Clock icon is automatically chosen.  The figure below shows how this CyberText object would appear after the “DisplayAsShortcut” property is turned on.

FlashColor (Highlight color)

Options

Color	Choice of one among a set of colors.  Can be set to match a specific system object’s color like color of a button text or window caption text etc.

Default

Red Color

Description

When a CyberText object is activated, pressing the left mouse button on it makes it behave, sort of like a button.  If you press the mouse button on the caption text and hold it down, then the color of the text will turn from whatever the text color (ForeColor) is to the color specified in the FlashColor property (default is Red color).  Keeping the left mouse button pressed, if you move out of the text caption area, the color of the text will revert to the color specified in ForeColor.

If the “DisplayAsShortcut” property is turned on, then the behavior of the FlashColor property is somewhat different.  Instead of altering the foreground text color, the background color will flash between the color specified in FlashColor and the BackColor properties.

Font

Options

Font	One of a number of fonts installed on your system

Font Style	One of Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic

Size	The font size in number of points

Effects	Strikethrough, Underline

Default

Times New Roman, Regular, Size 10, Underline

Description

The “Font” property can be manipulated to provide the necessary look and feel for a CyberText object within the context of its occurrence in the document you are creating.

If the “DisplayAsShortcut” property is turned on, then the “Font” property has no effect on the display of the CyberText object.

ForeColor (Foreground Color)

Options

Color	Choice of one among a set of colors.  Can be set to match a specific system object’s color like color of a button text or window caption text etc.

Default

Blue Color

Description

The “ForeColor” property specifies the color of the text appearing in the CyberText object, which is blue by default.

If the “DisplayAsShortcut” property is turned on, then the “ForeColor” property has no effect on the display of the CyberText object.

Open Link in New Window if Possible

Options

On	Attempt to open the URL specified in the link in a new application window

Off	Attempt to open the URL specified in the link within an existing application window

Default

Off

Description

The Open Link in New Window if Possible property is a suggestion to CyberLinks that the URL contained within the CyberText object be opened within the same instance of an application (that handles the URL scheme) or within a new instance of the application.

Note that this property setting is a mere “suggestion” to CyberLinks, because each type URL handler (like a Web browser, FTP program, etc.) behaves in a totally different way, making it impossible for CyberLinks to deterministically handle the situation.

ShowPicture

Options

None	No picture is displayed with the text

Small Picture	A small icon is displayed to the left of the text

Large Picture	A large icon is displayed to the left of the text

Default

 None

Description

The “ShowPicture” property provides yet another level of control over how the CyberText object is displayed within a document.  The option “None” is the default.

If a different option is chosen, then an appropriate sized picture image is created automatically from the application handler discovered to handle the URL scheme specified in the CyberText object.

Beta 1 Note:  This option is not implemented, and may be removed in later releases.

URL

Options

URL string	The URL string specifying the resource to link to

Default

“file:///c:\windows\win.ini”	(this default has no real relevance)

Description

The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) string which specifies the resource that this object links to.

See Also:

Understanding Uniform Resouce Locators (URLs)

Specifying a URL using CyberLinks

Hyperlinking information within corporate Intranets

Use Container's Font/Color

Options

On	Try to use relevant property settings from the container

Off	Use specified object properties only

Default

 Off

Description

In OLE, document container applications are supposed to have a means by which they can communicate with contained objects, properties such as “font”, “color” etc.

The purpose of the “Use Container's Font/Color” property setting is to enable the link creator to control if the object should follow changes in container properties, thereby appearing as a totally seamless part of the document, responding to font/color changes, just as normal text in the document does.

By default this property is turned off, because there are few document container applications that support this behavior.


CyberText Menu Reference

The CyberText popup menu appears in the document’s main menubar when a CyberText object is activated (a CyberText object can be activated by clicking on it with the right mouse button and selecting "Edit".  You know when a CyberText object is activated, when you see a hashed border around the object within the document you are editing).

The CyberText menu is the primary means for altering object properties and performing other operations on a CyberText object.  The following sections are a comprehensive reference to CyberText menu items.

Properties

Resize To Fit

Open Link

Open With

Create Shortcut

Properties

This menu item brings up the CyberText properties dialog.  It has four tabs: General, Display, Fonts and Colors.  All the properties of a CyberText object can be set or examined using these four tabs.

Resize To Fit

This menu option causes the size of the hyperlink object to be altered to fit the content.

If the content is just the text string (corresponding to the "Caption" property), then the object is grown or shrunk to precisely fit the text size.  If “DisplayAsShortcut” property is turned on, then the object is set to a standard pre-computed size corresponding to the size of the icon plus the label text.  This option is preferable to resizing the object manually, especially when the object is activated.

Open Link

This menu option opens the link specified by the URL contained within the object in an application that can handle the given URL scheme.

CyberLinks is designed to automatically pick a suitable application for any given URL type, from those configured on any given machine.  However, since there may be more than one application that can handle a specific type of URL (like when you have more than one Web browser), or since there may be applications installed but are not configured properly with the Windows system, an additional option is provided as well – that of the menu option “Open With …”

Open With

This menu option provides a dialog box containing a set of applications to choose from to open the URL contained within the object.  The dialog box differs depending upon whether the object contains a file URL or some other Internet URL.

Open With - for a File URL

If the URL points to a file on the local machine, or on the corporate network, then choice of this menu item will bring up the following dialog box.

Following is a description of what each of the fields of this dialog box does:

 •	The field “The link points to a file or folder” contains the full path name to the file or directory specified in the URL.

•	The “Choose the program you want to use” contains a list of all programs configured on the local machine.  The program name as well as a brief description of what the program is/does is given.  You can choose a configured program to open the file specified, by double-clicking on a program name, or by selecting it and then pressing the OK button.

•	The field “Always use this program to open xxx files” can be turned on, if you decide to use the selected program to be used by Windows to launch files of the type in the URL.  In Figure xx above, this field is disabled because the URL points to a directory rather than a file.

•	The “Enter a brief description of xxx files” is meant to provide Windows with a description of what the file type is (for example “jpg” files can be described as “JPEG compressed images”).  Once again, this field is disable in Figure xx above, because the URL points to a directory rather than a file.

CyberLinks uses the information in these two fields (“Always use this program to open xxx files” and “Enter a brief description of xxx files”) to automatically add information to the Windows registry such that activation of links containing URLs of the same file type will become automatic henceforth.  After this registration is done, not only that, you can double-click on files of this file type in the Windows Explorer to launch them automatically as well.

The “Other …” button brings up the generic file choose dialog box shown in figure below.

This dialog box allows you to select any program, even one that is not configured, to open the file specified in  the URL.

Open With - for Internet URLs

If the URL points to a resource on the Internet, then the dialog box in Figure xx is shown.

Following is a description of what each field of this dialog box does:

•	The field “The link points to the URL” shows the URL in its entirety.  In the figure, above, this field points to a Web resource (http://www.w3.org/”).

•	The “Registered Browsers” field list all the Web browser / Internet access applications that have been registered on your machine.

•	The “Other browsers found on this machine” lists all the other Web browser / Internet access applications found automatically by CyberLinks’ intelligent search scheme.

You can choose either a registered application or an unregistered one (by double-clicking on the program name in the appropriate list, or by selecting a name and pressing the OK button) to open the URL specified.

The “Other …” button brings up a standard choose file dialog box to permit you to select any program on the machine, or elsewhere on your corporate network to use to open this URL.

Why an Open With dialog box which lists multiple Web/Internet access applications?

CyberLinks has been thoughtfully designed to accommodate the way you work.  Here are some scenarios in which you will find this feature extremely useful.

Suppose you have Internet access via The Microsoft Network (MSN) and via a native Internet access provider such as Netcom On-line Communications Corp.  When you receive a document with links pointing to Internet resources, double-clicking on a link may automatically launch the Microsoft Internet Explorer, and sign you onto MSN.  This (using MSN) may be a more expensive proposition for plain old Internet access, as compared to using your flat-fee, virtually unlimited connect time, access via Netcom and running another browser, say, Netscape.  You should be the one controlling this decision.  That is exactly what the Open With option permits you to do.

If you are a person with a compulsive need to work with the latest and greatest applications, chances are that you will have more than one Internet access product configured on your machine.  It is quite likely that you have a “favorite” one as well – one that you’d rather use to open a link in a document, as opposed to the one that CyberLinks chose automatically for you.  You should be the one making the choice.  That is exactly what the Open With option permits you to do.

As transparent as CyberLinks is, in its setup and operation, it doesn’t compromise power and choice in the process.

Create Shortcut

This menu option will permit you to create a standard Windows 95 shortcut from a link object.  This shortcut will be placed on your desktop.

This is a very useful feature that lets you save links from documents you receive, onto your desktop, converting them into standard Windows 95 shortcuts in the process.


CyberText Context-menu Reference

If you are not familiar with what a context menu is, or how to access one, the start with Context Menu Basics.

If you are familiar with context menus, proceed directly to the CyberText Context Menu Reference.

Context Menu Basics

What is the Context Menu?

A context menu is a standard feature of all new versions of Windows.  You can access some of the basic capabilities of any object by clicking the right mouse button on it, and looking at the object’s context menu.

All CyberLinks object support a set of verbs that appear on the object’s context menu.

How do you access the CyberText context menu?

When a CyberText object is active, the CyberText menu on the main menu bar of your application provides access to all the CyberText functionality.  However, when a CyberText object is not active, you can get access to the object’s functionality by clicking the right mouse button on the (inactive) object.  All the CyberText commands are accessible from the menu that pops up.

How does the CyberText context menu appear?

As explained above, the CyberText context menu can be opened by right-clicking on an inactive CyberText object.

How the menu appears and what options appear in it vary depending on the application within which you are using a CyberText object.

The following figure shows the context menu, as it appears in MS-Word for Windows 95.

The following figure shows the context menu, as it appears in MS-Excel for Windows 95.

When do you need to use the context menu?

Most of the time, as the recipient of a document with links, you do not need to use the context menu at all.  You can just double-click on a link to open it in a suitable application.  However, for your convenience, commands like Open Link, Open With, Create Shortcut, About etc. are made available on the context menu primarily to enable you to work with links as the recipient of a document with links.

As the creator of a document with links, most of your work will be done from the CyberText menu in the main menu bar of the application you are using to create the document.  However, there is one situation when the use of the context menu is unavoidable.  When a CyberText object is not in active state, the only way to activate it is to use the context menu, and issue the “Edit” command from it.

CyberText Context Menu Reference

The CyberText context menu has the following menu items in it:

Open Link

Open With ...

Create Shortcut

Edit

Properties ...

About ...

Open Link

Same as “Open Link” from the CyberText menu which appears in the main menu bar of the application creating the document.  See CyberText Menu Reference.

Using this option has the same effect, as double-clicking the object (when it is not in active state) within the document.  I.e. Open Link is the default verb for a CyberText object.

Open With …

Same as “Open With …” from the CyberText menu which appears in the main menu bar of the application creating the document.  See description of the "Open With ..." menu in the  CyberText Menu Reference.

Create Shortcut

Same as “Create Shortcut” from the CyberText menu which appears in the main menu bar of the application creating the document.  See description of the "Create Shortcut" menu in the  CyberText Menu Reference.

Edit

This is the only way to activate a CyberText object that is not in active state.  As creator of a document with links, this option will be most valuable to you.

To deactivate a Cybertext object (that is currently in active state), all you need to do is click in an area of the document outside the CyberText object.

Properties …

Same as “Properties” from the CyberText menu which appears in the main menu bar of the application creating the document.  See description of the "Properties ..." menu in the  CyberText Menu Reference.

About …

Brings up the About box for the CyberText object.  This reveals important details such as copyright information and the version number of the object.

This menu item is same as “Help | About …” when a CyberText object is activated.


Creating hyperlinks using CyberButton objects

A CyberButton object is designed to give a hyperlink, the look and feel of Windows 3D command buttons, much like those you see in most Windows applications. You can change the appearance of a CyberButton object, by simply changing its Font property.  A URL property permits you to specify what information the CyberButton object should point to.

Hyperlinks made using CyberButton objects appear as a seamless part of your OLE-capable document, and they will print exactly the way the appear on screen.

You can explore using CyberButton objects by first starting with:

A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberButton objects

See Also:

CyberButton Properties Reference

CyberButton Menu Reference

CyberButton Context-Menu Reference


CB - A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberButton objects
A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberButton objects

Following is a step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks in your documents using CyberButton objects.  This guide uses Microsoft Word as an example of a tool which can be used to incorporate hyperlinks using CyberButton objects.

1.  Finding the CyberButton object

2.  Inserting a CyberButton object

3.  Examining the CyberButton menu

4.  Changing the Properties of a CyberButton object

5.  Resizing a CyberButton object to fit the text


CB - Finding the CyberButton object
Finding the CyberButton object

Look in the “Insert | Object”, or “Insert | New Object” menu of your OLE-capable application such as MS-Word, MS-Excel etc. The figure above shows the “Object” dialog box (brought up by selecting “Insert | Object” menu) in MS-Word for Windows 95.


CB - Inserting a CyberButton object
Inserting a CyberButton object

Once you have the object dialog open, select CyberButton from the object list, and press OK.  This will insert a CyberButton object in the current document at the cursor location.

The figure above shows a document in MS-Word after a CyberButton object has been inserted.  Note the following:

•	the CyberButton object has been automatically activated within the Word document

•	the Word menu bar has three popup menus “File”, “CyberButton”, and “Help”.

Most of what you can do with a CyberButton object appear in the “CyberButton” and “Help” menus.  Let’s take a quick look at what is available in these menus.


CB - Examining the CyberButton menu
Examining the CyberButton menu

The above figure shows the CyberButton popup menu as it appears when a CyberButton object is activated.  Here is a brief summary of the options available under the CyberButton menu:

•	Properties brings up a dialog box which allows to change object properties such as font, color, URL etc.

•	Resize To Fit causes the CyberButton object to resized to fit the size of the text within it

•	Open Link causes the link specified by the URL in the object to be opened in a suitable target application

•	Open With brings up a dialog box with a list of applications available on the machine using which the URL in the object can be opened

•	Create Shortcut creates a Windows 95 shortcut on the Windows 95 Desktop using the information specified in the URL


CB - Changing the Properties of a CyberButton object
Changing the Properties of a CyberButton object

To change the properties of a CyberButton object, choose “Properties …” from the CyberButton menu.

The figure, above, shows the Properties dialog box for a CyberButton object.  Note that the dialog box has two tabs, “General”, and “Fonts”.  These tabs contain options you can set to manipulate the display as well as operational attributes of a CyberButton object.

Here is a quick look at changing the most frequently used properties of a hyperlink using a CyberButton object - the Caption, the URL and the Font.

1.  Changing the Caption

2.  Changing the URL

3.  Changing the Font


CB - Changing the Caption
Changing the Caption

Enter a string, say, “The Home of the World-Wide Web” (without the double-quotes, of course), in the “Caption” field on the “General” tab, in the “Properties” dialog box.  This is the string that is displayed in your document.  You can check this out, by simply moving the dialog box to one side, and then pressing the “Apply” button.

As shown in above figure, you can see that the CyberButton object now reads “The Home of the World-Wide Web”.  Note that the caption text appears to be centered within the CyberButton object.  This is as it should be – text is always centered in standard button  objects.  Also note that not all of the caption is currently visible in the document, but that is a problem that is easily fixed (See “Resizing a CyberButton object to Fit” later).


CB - Changing the URL
Changing the URL

In the URL field (on the “General” tab, in the properties box), type in the location of the resource, say, “http://www.w3.org/” (again, without the double quotes).


CB - Changing the Font
Changing the Font

Select the “Font” tab in the “Properties” dialog box.  You will see the font options available, as shown in figure below.

CyberButton objects use MS Sans Serif, size 12 by default.  Let us change the Font to Arial, size 10.  You can choose “Apply” as before to see the effect on the text.


CB - Resizing a CyberButton object to fit the text
Resizing a CyberButton object to fit the text

You have two options to resize the object -- manually resize the object, or, use the CyberButton menu option “Resize to Fit”.  Choosing the menu option is recommended because it will help you fit the object size precisely to the size of the text it contains.

The above figure shows the result of choosing “Resize to Fit” in the example we have been working with, so far.

You can click  anywhere outside the CyberButton  object within the MS-Word document to de-activate it.

The above figure shows how this object appears in the Word document after it has been de-activated and a few words of text have been typed after it.


CyberButton Properties Reference

The "Properties ..." menu item in the CyberButton menu, brings up a tabbed dialog box, containing the following options.  These properties control the visual look as well as the operation of a hyperlink created using a CyberButton object.

Caption	Font

Open Link in a new Window if Possible	URL

Caption

Options

A string of text

Default

“Win.Ini”

Description

The contents of the “Caption” property appears as the text displayed in the CyberButton object within a document.  Only a single line of caption is displayed, and whatever doesn’t fit is truncated from the display (though whatever caption text you enter for this property is entirely retained).   This text is automatically centered within the bounds of the object.

Font

Options

Font	One of a number of fonts installed on your system

Font Style	One of Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic

Size	The font size in number of points

Effects	Strikethrough, Underline

Default

Times New Roman, Regular, Size 10, Underline

Description

The “Font” property can be manipulated to provide the necessary look and feel for a CyberButton object within the context of its occurrence in the document you are creating.

Open Link in a New Window if Possible

Options

On	Attempt to open the URL specified in the link in a new application window

Off	Attempt to open the URL specified in the link within an existing application window

Default

Off

Description

The "Open Link in a New Window if Possible" property is a suggestion to CyberLinks that the URL contained within the CyberButton object be opened within the same instance of an application (that handles the URL scheme) or within a new instance of the application.

Note that this property setting is a mere “suggestion” to CyberLinks, because each type URL handler (like a Web browser, FTP program, etc.) behaves in a totally different way, making it impossible for CyberLinks to deterministically handle the situation.

URL

Options

URL string	The URL string specifying the resource to link to

Default

“file:///c:\windows\win.ini”	(this default has no real relevance)

Description

The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) string which specifies the resource that this object links to.

See Also:

Understanding Uniform Resouce Locators (URLs)

Specifying a URL using CyberLinks

Hyperlinking information within corporate Intranets


CyberButton Menu Reference

The CyberButton popup menu appears in the document’s main menubar when a CyberButton object is activated.  The CyberButton menu is the primary means for altering object properties and performing other operations on a CyberButton object.

The following sections are a comprehensive reference to CyberButton menu items.  This information is geared towards the needs of the creator of links within documents.

Properties ...

Resize To Fit

Open Link

Open With ...

Create Shortcut

Properties ...

This menu item brings up the CyberButton properties dialog.  It has two tabs: General and Fonts.  All the properties of a hyperlink created using a CyberButton object can be set using the Properties dialog.

Resize To Fit

This menu option causes the size of the object to be altered to fit the content.  If the content is just the text string, then the object is grown or shrunk to precisely fit the text size.

This option is preferable to resizing the object manually, especially when the object is activated.

Open Link

This menu option opens the link specified by the URL contained within the object in an application that can handle the given URL scheme.

CyberLinks is designed to automatically pick a suitable application for any given URL type, from those configured on any given machine.  However, since there may be more than one application that can handle a specific type of URL (like when you have more than one Web browser), or since there may be applications installed but are not configured properly with the Windows system, an additional option is provided as well – that of the menu option “Open With …”

Open With ...

The "Open With ..." menu item enables you to open a hyperlink in an application of your choice.

This functionality is identical to the "Open With ..." menu item for a CyberText object.  See here for more details.

Create Shortcut

This menu option will permit you to create a standard Windows 95 shortcut from a link object.  This shortcut will be placed on your desktop.

This is a very useful feature that lets you save links from documents you receive, onto your desktop, converting them into standard Windows 95 shortcuts in the process.


CyberButton Context-Menu Reference

If you are not familiar with what a context menu is, or how to access one, the start with Context Menu Basics (described in the section on CyberText objects).

The CyberButton context menu has the following menu items in it:

Open Link

Open With ...

Create Shortcut

Edit

Properties ...

About ...

Open Link

Using this option has the same effect, as double-clicking the object (when it is not in active state) within the document.  I.e. Open Link is the default verb for a CyberButton object.

Open With ...

This option enables you to open a hyperlink in a document of your choice.

Same as “Open With …” from the CyberButton menu which appears in the main menu bar of the application creating the document.  See CyberButton Menu Reference.

Create Shortcut

This menu option will permit you to create a standard Windows 95 shortcut from a link object.  This shortcut will be placed on your desktop.  This is a very useful feature that lets you save links from documents you receive, onto your desktop, converting them into standard Windows 95 shortcuts in the process.

Edit

This is the only way to activate a CyberButton object that is not in active state.  As creator of a document with links, this option will be most valuable to you.

To deactivate a CyberButton object (that is currently in active state), all you need to do is click in an area of the document outside the CyberButton object.

Properties ...

This menu item brings up the CyberButton properties dialog.  It has two tabs: General and Fonts.  All the properties of a hyperlink created using a CyberButton object can be set using the Properties dialog.

About ...

The About … context menu option brings up the About box for the CyberButton object.  This reveals important details such as copyright information and the version number of the object.  This menu item is same as “Help | About …” when a CyberButton object is activated.


Creating hyperlinks using CyberPicture objects

A CyberPicture object is designed to create hyperlinks that display as pictures (of various kinds such as bitmaps, metafiles etc.). The appearance of a hyperlink created using a CyberPicture object can be altered by changing its Picture property..  A URL property permits you to specify what information the CyberPicture object should point to.

Hyperlinks created using CyberPicture objects appear as a seamless part of your OLE-capable document, and they will print exactly the way the appear on screen.

You can explore using CyberPicture objects by first starting with:

 A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberPicture objects

See Also:

CyberPicture Properties Reference

CyberPicture Menu Reference

CyberPicture Context-Menu Reference


CP -  A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberPicture objects
A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberPicture objects

Following is a step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks in your documents using CyberPicture objects.  This guide uses Microsoft Word as an example of a tool which can be used to incorporate hyperlinks using CyberPicture objects.

1.  Finding the CyberPicture object

2.  Inserting a CyberPicture object

3.  Examining the CyberPicture menu

4.  Changing the Properties of a CyberPicture object


CP - Finding the CyberPicture object
Finding the CyberPicture object

Look in the “Insert | Object”, or “Insert | New Object” menu of your OLE-capable application such as MS-Word, MS-Excel etc. The above figure shows the “Object” dialog box (brought up by selecting “Insert | Object” menu) in MS-Word for Windows 95.


CP - Inserting a CyberPicture object
Inserting a CyberPicture object

Once you have the object dialog open, select CyberPicture from the object list, and press OK.  This will insert a CyberPicture object in the current document at the cursor location.

The above figure shows a document in MS-Word after a CyberPicture object has been inserted.  Note the following:

•	the CyberPicture object has been automatically activated within the Word document

•	nothing is displayed within the object (no picture has been specified yet)

•	the Word menu bar has three popup menus “File”, “CyberPicture”, and “Help”

Most of what you can do with a CyberPicture object appear in the “CyberPicture” and “Help” menus.  Let’s take a quick look at what is available in these menus.


CP - Examining the CyberPicture menu
Examining the CyberPicture menu

The above figure shows the CyberPicture popup menu as it appears when a CyberPicture object is activated.  Here is a brief summary of the options available under the CyberPicture menu:

•	Properties brings up a dialog box which allows to change object properties such as font, color, URL etc.

•	Resize To Fit causes the CyberPicture object to resized to fit the size of the picture within it

•	Open Link causes the link specified by the URL in the object to be opened in a suitable target application

•	Open With brings up a dialog box with a list of applications available on the machine using which the URL in the object can be opened

•	Create Shortcut creates a Windows 95 shortcut on the Windows 95 Desktop using the information specified in the URL


CP - Changing the Properties of a CyberPicture object
Changing the Properties of a CyberPicture object

To change the properties of a CyberPicture object, choose “Properties …” from the CyberPicture menu.

The above figure shows the Properties dialog box for a CyberButton object.  Note that the dialog box has three tabs, “General”, “Pictures”, and “Colors”.  These tabs contain options you can set to manipulate the display as well as operational attributes of a CyberPicture object.

Here is a quick look at changing the most frequently used properties of a hyperlink using a CyberPicture object - the URL and the Picture itself.

1.  Changing the URL

2.  Changing the Picture


CP - Changing the URL
Changing the URL

In the URL field (on the “General” tab, in the properties box), type in the location of the resource, say, “http://www.w3.org/” (without the double quotes).


CP - Changing the Picture
Changing the Picture

Select the “Pictures” tab in the “Properties” dialog box.  You will see the picture options available, as shown in figure below.

Click on the “Browse …” button to select a picture.  You get the dialog in the figure below.

After you select a picture file from this box and click OK, you will see a preview of the picture in the “Preview” area of the Picture tab in the Properties dialog box.  Click on “Apply” to see the effect in the document.

Note that the CyberPicture object got resized to the correct dimensions of the picture automatically.  This is because of a property called “Resize Control to Fit Picture Size”, which is turned on by default.


CyberPicture Properties Reference

The "Properties ..." menu item in the CyberPicture menu, brings up a tabbed dialog box, containing the following options.  These properties control the visual look as well as the operation of a hyperlink created using a CyberPicture object.

AutoResize	BackColor (Background Color)

Open Link in New Window if Possible	Picture

URL

Resize Control to Fit Picture Size (AutoResize)

Options

On	Automatically resize object to fit picture dimensions

Off	Don’t resize object

Default

On

Description

The AutoResize property causes a CyberPicture object to resize automatically to the dimensions of the picture specified in it.  Note that this is done only when a picture is specified or changed in the properties.

You can manually change the size of a picture to something different that its native dimensions (in which case the picture will get scaled – shrunk/grown appropriately).  If you wish to resize the object back to the native dimensions of the picture, then choose the CyberPicture menu option called “Resize To Fit”.

BackColor (Background Color)

 Options

Color	Choice of one among a set of colors.  Can be set to match a specific system object’s color like color of a button text or window caption text etc.

Default

White color

Description

The “BackColor” property controls the background color of the picture within a CyberPicture object.

Open Link in New Window if Possible

Options

On	Attempt to open the URL specified in the link in a new application window

Off	Attempt to open the URL specified in the link within an existing application window

Default

Off

Description

The “Open Link in New Window if Possible” property is a suggestion to CyberLinks that the URL contained within the CyberPicture object be opened within the same instance of an application (that handles the URL scheme) or within a new instance of the application.

Note that this property setting is a mere “suggestion” to CyberLinks, because each type URL handler (like a Web browser, FTP program, etc.) behaves in a totally different way, making it impossible for CyberLinks to deterministically handle the situation.

Picture

Options

A picture	From a Windows bitmap, metafile or icon file

Default

Empty picture

Description

The picture set into the property is displayed in the document.  Three different kinds of pictures are supported: Windows Bitmaps (.bmp files), Windows Metafiles (.wmf files) and Icons (.ico files).  By default there is no picture specified.

URL

Options

URL string	The URL string specifying the resource to link to

Default

“file:///c:\windows\win.ini”	(this default has no real relevance)

Description

The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) string which specifies the resource that this object links to.

See Also:

Understanding Uniform Resouce Locators (URLs)

Specifying a URL using CyberLinks

Hyperlinking information within corporate Intranets


CyberPicture Menu Reference

The CyberPicture popup menu appears in the document’s main menubar when a CyberPicture object is activated.  The CyberPicture menu is the primary means for altering object properties and performing other operations on a CyberPicture object.  The following sections are a comprehensive reference to CyberPicture menu items.

Properties ...

Resize To Fit

Open Link

Open With ...

Create Shortcut

Properties ...

This menu item brings up the CyberPicture properties dialog.  It has three tabs: General, Pictures and Colors. All the properties of a hyperlink created using a CyberPicture object can be set in this dialog.

Resize To Fit

This menu option causes the size of the object to be altered to fit the content.  We highly recommend using the CyberPicture property called "AutoResize", which guarantees that the size of the object matches the size of the picture contained within it.  However, if you manually change the size of a CyberPicture object (which will also alter the size of the picture within it), you can use this menu option to resize the object to fit the real picture size contained in it.

Open Link

This menu option opens the link specified by the URL contained within the object in an application that can handle the given URL scheme.

CyberLinks is designed to automatically pick a suitable application for any given URL type, from those configured on any given machine.  However, since there may be more than one application that can handle a specific type of URL (like when you have more than one Web browser), or since there may be applications installed but are not configured properly with the Windows system, an additional option is provided as well – that of the menu option “Open With …”

Open With ...

The "Open With ..." menu item enables you to open a hyperlink in an application of your choice.

This functionality is identical to the "Open With ..." menu item for a CyberText object.  See here for more details.

Create Shortcut

This menu option will permit you to create a standard Windows 95 shortcut from a link object.  This shortcut will be placed on your desktop.

This is a very useful feature that lets you save links from documents you receive, onto your desktop, converting them into standard Windows 95 shortcuts in the process.


CyberPicture Context-Menu Reference

If you are not familiar with what a context menu is, or how to access one, the start with Context Menu Basics (described in the section on CyberText objects).

The CyberPicture context menu has the following menu items in it:

Open Link

Open With ...

Create Shortcut

Edit

Properties ...

About ...

Open Link

Using this option has the same effect, as double-clicking the object (when it is not in active state) within the document.  I.e. Open Link is the default verb for a CyberPicture object.

Open With ...

This option enables you to open a hyperlink in a document of your choice.

Same as “Open With …” from the CyberPicture menu which appears in the main menu bar of the application creating the document.  See CyberPicture Menu Reference.

Create Shortcut

This menu option will permit you to create a standard Windows 95 shortcut from a link object.  This shortcut will be placed on your desktop.  This is a very useful feature that lets you save links from documents you receive, onto your desktop, converting them into standard Windows 95 shortcuts in the process.

Edit

This is the only way to activate a CyberPicture object that is not in active state.  As creator of a document with links, this option will be most valuable to you.

To deactivate a CyberPicture object (that is currently in active state), all you need to do is click in an area of the document outside the CyberPicture object.

Properties ...

This menu item brings up the CyberPicture properties dialog.  It has two tabs: General and Fonts.  All the properties of a hyperlink created using a CyberPicture object can be set using the Properties dialog.

About ...

The About … context menu option brings up the About box for the CyberPicture object.  This reveals important details such as copyright information and the version number of the object.  This menu item is same as “Help | About …” when a CyberPicture object is activated.


Creating hyperlinks using CyberMap objects

A CyberMap object is designed to create hyperlinks which contain pictures of various kinds (such as bitmaps, metafiles etc.) with multiple hotspots in them. The appearance of a CyberMap object can be altered by changing its Picture property..  A default URL property permits you to specify what information the CyberMap object should point to.  In addition to this, every hotspot created in a CyberMap object can have a distinct URL associated with it.

Hyperlinks created using CyberMap objects appear as a seamless part of your OLE-capable document, and they will print exactly the way the appear on screen.

If you are familiar with the World-Wide Web, you have no doubt encountered “clickable-images”, otherwise known as Image Maps.  CyberMap objects bring the powerful image map hyperlinking technology directly into any document you create!

You can explore using CyberMap objects by first starting with:

A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberMap objects

See Also:

CyberMap Properties Reference

CyberMap Menu Reference

CyberMap Context-Menu Reference


CM - A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberMap objects
A step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks with CyberMap objects

Following is a step-by-step guide to creating hyperlinks in your documents using CyberButton objects.  This guide uses Microsoft Word as an example of a tool which can be used to incorporate hyperlinks using CyberButton objects.

1.  Finding the CyberMap object

2.  Inserting a CyberMap object

3.  Examining the CyberMap menu

4.  Changing the Properties of a CyberMap object


CM - Finding the CyberMap object
Finding the CyberMap object

Look in the “Insert | Object”, or “Insert | New Object” menu of your OLE-capable application such as MS-Word, MS-Excel etc. The above figure shows the “Object” dialog box (brought up by selecting “Insert | Object” menu) in MS-Word for Windows 95.


CM - Inserting a CyberMap object
Inserting a CyberMap object

Once you have the object dialog open, select CyberMap from the object list, and press OK.  This will insert a CyberMap object in the current document at the cursor location.

The above figure shows a document in MS-Word after a CyberMap object has been inserted.  Note the following:

•	the CyberMap object has been automatically activated within the Word document

•	nothing is displayed within the object (no picture has been specified yet)

•	the Word menu bar has three popup menus “File”, “CyberMap”, and “Help”

Most of what you can do with a CyberMap object appear in the “CyberMap” and “Help” menus.  Let’s take a quick look at what is available in these menus.


CM - Examining the CyberMap menu
Examining the CyberMap menu

The above figure shows the CyberMap  popup menu as it appears when a CyberMap object is activated.  Here is a brief summary of the options available under the CyberMap menu:

•	Properties brings up a dialog box which allows to change object properties such as font, color, URL etc.

•	Resize To Fit causes the CyberMap object to resized to fit the size of the picture within it

•	Open Link causes the link specified by the URL in the object to be opened in a suitable target application

•	Open With brings up a dialog box with a list of applications available on the machine using which the URL in the object can be opened

•	Create Shortcut creates a Windows 95 shortcut on the Windows 95 Desktop using the information specified in the URL


CM - Changing the Properties of a CyberMap object
Changing the Properties of a CyberMap object

To change the properties of a CyberMap object, choose “Properties …” from the CyberMap menu.

The above figure shows the Properties dialog box for a CyberMap object.  Note that the dialog box has five tabs, “General”, “Pictures”, “Colors”, “Fonts” and “Hotspot Tips”.  These tabs contain options you can set to manipulate the display as well as operational attributes of a CyberMap object.

Here is a quick look at changing the most frequently used properties of a hyperlink using a CyberMap object - the default URL, the Picture, and hotspots.

1.  Changing the default URL

2.  Changing the Picture

3.  Setting Hotspots

4.  Observing Hotspots at Work

5.  Controlling Hotspot Tips


CM - Changing the default URL
Changing the default URL

In the URL field (on the “General” tab, in the properties box), type in “http://www.w3.org/” (without the double quotes).  This is the default URL associated with the CyberMap object.  i.e. If a user clicks on a part of the picture not associated with any hotspot, this default URL is activated appropriately.


CM - Changing the Picture
Changing the Picture

Select the “Pictures” tab in the “Properties” dialog box.  You will see the picture options available, as shown in the figure below.

Click on the “Browse …” button to select a picture.  You get the dialog in the figure below.

After you select a picture file from this box and click OK, you will see a preview of the picture in the “Preview” area of the Picture tab in the Properties dialog box.  Click on “Apply” to see the effect in the document.

Note that the CyberMap object got resized to the correct dimensions of the picture automatically.  This is because of a property called “Resize Control to Fit Picture Size”, which is turned on by default.


CM - Setting Hotspots
Setting Hotspots

The primary reason to choose a CyberMap object to create a hyperlink in your document is to provide multiple hotspots within the same picture.  After a picture is selected for use in the CyberMap object, you are now ready to create some hotspots.  Select the General tab from the Properties dialog.  Click on the button “Set Hotspots”.  You will see the window shown in the figure below.

You can create three types of hotspots:

•	rectangular hotspots

•	circular/ elliptical hotspots

•	polygonal hotspots – any arbitrary shape you want to make

Add a rectangular hotspot by simply dragging a rectangular shape around the word “Search” in the picture shown.

Notice the blue rectangle around the word “Search”.  This is a hotspot region.  When you leave the mouse button, you will get a dialog box, shown in the figure below, in which you can associate a “Caption” property and a “URL” with the hotspot.

You can specify a URL in this box directly, or you can drag and drop a link onto any location in this box.  Click OK.  And a hotspot has been created.

Now to see how the hotspot comes into action!


CM - Observing Hotspots at Work
Observing Hotspots at Work

Activate the CyberMap object, if it is not already activated (you can activate an inactive CyberMap object by right-clicking on it and selecting "Edit" from the context-menu that appears).  Then, move your mouse over the word “Search” in the picture. Voila!  A little popup window shows up with the message “Search the Internet Universe” – the caption we assigned to the hotspot when we created it.  See the figure below.

That’s all there is to it.  To activate the URL associated with the hotspot, all you have to do is simply single-click anywhere within the hotspot region!

The little popup window (with yellow background) in figure above, above, is called a “Hotspot Tip”.  You can control what message appears in this window by changing the caption associated with the hotspot.  You can also change the way in which this hotspot tip stuff is displayed by accessing the “Hotspot Tips” tab in the CyberMap Properties dialog box.  This is discussed next.


CM - Controlling Hotspot Tips
Controlling Hotspot Tips

You can also change the way in which this hotspot tip stuff is displayed by accessing the “Hotspot Tips” tab in the CyberMap Properties dialog box.

The figure above shows the effect of turning on the property called “Show URL in Tip” – the URL (“http://www.lycos.com”) automatically appears in the hotspot tip.

You can even change the tip to look like a Windows 95 shortcut.  Simply turn the property called “Display Tip as Shortcut” on.  This change is shown in the figure below.

You can also turn hotspot tips off, by setting the property called “Show Hotspot Tips” off in the Properties dialog box.


CyberMap Properties Reference

The "Properties ..." menu item in the CyberMap menu, brings up a tabbed dialog box, containing the following options.  These properties control the visual look as well as the operation of a hyperlink created using a CyberMap object.

AutoResize	BackColor (Background Color)

Display Tip as a Shortcut	Open Link in a New Window if Possible

Picture	Show Tips for Hotspots

Show Picture in Tip	Show Text in Tip

Show URL in Tip	TipColor

TipFont	URL

Hotspots

Resize Control to Fit Picture Size (AutoResize)

Options

On	Automatically resize object to fit picture dimensions

Off	Don’t resize object

Default

On

Description

The AutoResize property causes a CyberMap object to resize automatically to the dimensions of the picture specified in it.  Note that this is done only when a picture is specified or changed in the properties.

You can manually change the size of a picture to something different that its native dimensions (in which case the picture will get scaled – shrunk/grown appropriately).  If you wish to resize the object back to the native dimensions of the picture, then choose the CyberMap menu option called “Resize To Fit”.

One caveat to note about manually resizing the picture to a size different from the native picture dimensions.  Hotspot coordinates are all based on the original picture dimensions.  Changing the picture size causes all the hotspot coordinates to become skewed, and as a result hotspots won’t operate as expected.

It is strongly recommended that you don’t alter the picture size from its native dimensions.  If you do need to alter the picture size, use a graphic editor like MS-Paint and change the picture, save it to a file and then use the new file in the Picture property.

BackColor (Background Color)

Options

Color	Choice of one among a set of colors.  Can be set to match a specific system object’s color like color of a button text or window caption text etc.

Default

White color

Description

The “BackColor” property controls the background color of the picture within a CyberPicture object.

Display Tip as a Shortcut

Options

On	Displays hotspot tips in the shape of a Windows shortcut

Off	Displays hotspot tips as a text string (with an optional icon to its left)

Default

Off

Description

Hotspot tips can be controlled using numerous properties of the CyberMap object.  This property is one of them.  It overrides a few text and picture display properties, if tuned on.

 Open Link in a New Window if Possible

Options

On	Attempt to open the URL specified in the link in a new application window

Off	Attempt to open the URL specified in the link within an existing application window

Default

Off

Description

The “Open Link in New Window if Possible” property is a suggestion to CyberLinks that the default URL contained within the CyberMap object, or any of the URLs associated with hotspots in the CyberMap object, be opened within the same instance of an application (that handles the URL scheme) or within a new instance of the application.

Note that this property setting is a mere “suggestion” to CyberLinks, because each type URL handler (like a Web browser, FTP program, etc.) behaves in a totally different way, making it impossible for CyberLinks to deterministically handle the situation.

Picture

Options

A picture	From a Windows bitmap, metafile or icon file

Default

Empty picture

Description

The picture set into the property is displayed in the document.  Three different kinds of pictures are supported: Windows Bitmaps (.bmp files), Windows Metafiles (.wmf files) and Icons (.ico files).  By default there is no picture specified.

Show Tips for Hotspots

Options

On	Turns hotspot tip display on

Off	Turns hotspot tip display off

Default

Off

Description

This property obviously overrides all the other hotspot tip related properties.

Show Picture in Tip

Options

Small Picture	Displays a small picture to left of text in the hotspot tip

Large Picture	Displays a large picture (the size of a regular icon) to the left of text in the hotspot tip window

Off	No picture is displayed

Default

Small Picture

Description

The picture chosen for display in the tip window to the left of the tip caption, is automatically generated from the application that is set up to handle the scheme in the URL specified for the hotspot.

Show Text in Tip

Options

On	Displays the caption associated with the hotspot in the tip window

Off	Text is not displayed in the tip window

Default

On

Description

The caption property specified for a hotspot is shown in the tip window if this “Show Text in Tip” property is turned on.

Show URL in Tip

Options

On	Displays the URL of a hotspot in the tip window

Off	Does not display the URL of the hotspot in the tip window

Default

Off

Description

The URL associated with a hotspot can be displayed in the tip window if this option is turned on.

TipColor

Options

Color	Choice of one among a set of colors.  Can be set to match a specific system object’s color like color of a button text or window caption text etc.

Default

Black color

Description

Determines the color of the text in the tip window (default is black).

TipFont

Options

Font	One of a number of fonts installed on your system

Font Style	One of Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic

Size	The font size in number of points

Effects	Strikethrough, Underline

Default

Times New Roman, Regular, Size 10, Underline

Description

The “Font” property can be manipulated to provide the necessary look and feel for the hotspot tip.

URL

Options

URL string	The URL string specifying the resource to link to

Default

“file:///c:\windows\win.ini”	(this default has no real relevance)

Description

The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) string which specifies the resource that this object links to.

See Also:

Understanding Uniform Resouce Locators (URLs)

Specifying a URL using CyberLinks

Hyperlinking information within corporate Intranets

Hotspots

Varying number of hotspots of varying shapes can be set in a CyberMap object.  The key thing to note about hotspots is that each hotspot has the following properties associated with it:

•	the shape of the hotspot and its dimensions within the CyberMap object

•	the caption or description of the hotspot

•	the URL associated with the hotspot

Hotspots can be added, deleted dynamically!


CyberMap Menu Reference

The CyberMap popup menu appears in the document’s main menubar when a CyberMap object is activated.  The CyberMap menu is the primary means for altering object properties and performing other operations on a CyberMap object. The following sections are a comprehensive reference to CyberMap menu items.

Properties ...

Resize To Fit

Open Link

Open With ...

Create Shortcut

Properties ...

This menu item brings up the CyberMap properties dialog.  It has five tabs: General, Pictures, Colors, Fonts and Hotspot Tips. All the properties of a hyperlink created using a CyberMap object can be set in this dialog.

Resize To Fit

This menu option causes the size of the object to be altered to fit the content.  We highly recommend using the CyberMap property called "AutoResize", which guarantees that the size of the object matches the size of the picture contained within it.  This is important to ensure proper behavior of any hotspots you may have set.  However, if you manually change the size of a CyberMap object (which will also alter the size of the picture within it), you can use this menu option to resize the object to fit the real picture size contained in it.

Open Link

This menu option opens the link specified by the URL contained within the object in an application that can handle the given URL scheme.

CyberLinks is designed to automatically pick a suitable application for any given URL type, from those configured on any given machine.  However, since there may be more than one application that can handle a specific type of URL (like when you have more than one Web browser), or since there may be applications installed but are not configured properly with the Windows system, an additional option is provided as well – that of the menu option “Open With …”

Open With ...

The "Open With ..." menu item enables you to open a hyperlink in an application of your choice.

This functionality is identical to the "Open With ..." menu item for a CyberText object.  See here for more details.

Create Shortcut

This menu option will permit you to create a standard Windows 95 shortcut from a link object.  This shortcut will be placed on your desktop.

This is a very useful feature that lets you save links from documents you receive, onto your desktop, converting them into standard Windows 95 shortcuts in the process.


CyberMap Context-Menu Reference

If you are not familiar with what a context menu is, or how to access one, the start with Context Menu Basics (described in the section on CyberText objects).

The CyberPicture context menu has the following menu items in it:

Edit

Open Link

Open With ...

Create Shortcut

Resize To Fit

Properties ...

About ...

Edit

This is the only way to activate a CyberMap object that is not in active state.  A CyberMap object must be activated to enable the hostspots and their associated tooltips.  Using this option has the same effect, as double-clicking the object (when it is not in active state) within the document.  I.e. Edit is the default verb for a CyberMap object.

To deactivate a CyberMap object (that is currently in active state), all you need to do is click in an area of the document outside the CyberMap object.

Open Link

Opens the hyperlink corresponding to the default URL in an appropriate application.

Open With ...

This option enables you to open the hyperlink corresponding to the default URL in an application of your choice.

Same as “Open With …” from the CyberMap menu which appears in the main menu bar of the application creating the document.  See CyberMap Menu Reference.

Create Shortcut

This menu option will permit you to create a standard Windows 95 shortcut from a link object.  This shortcut will be placed on your desktop.  This is a very useful feature that lets you save links from documents you receive, onto your desktop, converting them into standard Windows 95 shortcuts in the process.

Resize To Fit

This menu option causes the size of the object to be altered to fit the content.  We highly recommend using the CyberMap property called "AutoResize", which guarantees that the size of the object matches the size of the picture contained within it.  This is important to ensure proper behavior of any hotspots you may have set.  However, if you manually change the size of a CyberMap object (which will also alter the size of the picture within it), you can use this menu option to resize the object to fit the real picture size contained in it.

Properties ...

This menu item brings up the CyberMap properties dialog.   It has five tabs: General, Pictures, Colors, Fonts and Hotspot Tips.  All the properties of a hyperlink created using a CyberMap object can be set using the Properties dialog.

About ...

The About … context menu option brings up the About box for the CyberMap object.  This reveals important details such as copyright information and the version number of the object.  This menu item is same as “Help | About …” when a CyberMap object is activated.


Understanding Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)

What are URLs?

Where will you encounter URLs?

The format of a URL

URL Examples

How do you use URLs?

The URL Schemes

HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

Gopher

Electronic Mail (Mailto)

Usenet News (News)

Telnet to Remote Host (Telnet)

Telnet to Remote Hosts Requiring 3270 Emulation (Tn3270)

Wide Area Information Search (WAIS)

Host-Specific File Names (File)

Escape Sequences

How do you manually decode a URL?

Creating URLs manually

Troubleshooting URLs


URL - What are URLs?
What are URLs?

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator.  It is an Internet standard (RFC 1738) developed to specify the location of an electronic resource.

A URL is somewhat analogous to your complete mailing address.  Just as the mailing address specifies all the information necessary for someone to address an envelope to you, a URL specifies in an unambiguous fashion all the information needed to access an electronic resource.  However, URLs differ from mailing addresses, because they can refer to a variety of very different types of resources.  You can think of a URL as being analogous to a system that allows you to specify a mailing address, phone number, fax number, pager number etc. all in a single format.

In short, a URL is a very convenient and standard way to direct people as well as software applications to a file or other electronic resource.


URL - Where will you encounter URLs?
Where will you encounter URLs?

In magazines, books, TV ads, newspapers … and even business cards!  URLs are the hip thing of the day, much like E-mail addresses were just a couple of years ago.  But seriously, if you have accessed the Internet using a World-Wide Web browser, then you have encountered URLs already.

The World-Wide Web uses URLs to link Web pages together, regardless of their physical location.  The item that reads something like "http://www.company.com/" in the "location/ address" field in your Web browser is a URL.  The prefix "http:" (HyperText Transfer Protocol) indicates that the information pointed to by the URL is located on a Web server.  A URL could specify files or resources available using other Internet protocols such as FTP, Gopher, Telnet, Usenet news etc.

The use of URLs is not restricted to the Internet and the World-Wide Web, thought that is where is being used quite effectively today.  URLs, in combination with UNCs (Universal Naming Convention filenames) offer a useful short-hand format to specify location of files within a corporate network.


URL - The Format of a URL
The Format of a URL

The syntax or format of a URL is defined in RFC 1738.  The general format is:

<scheme>:<scheme-dependent-information>

A <scheme> represents a specific protocol used to gain access to a resource specified by <scheme-dependent-information>.  "http", "gopher", "ftp", "news", "telnet", etc. are some examples of schemes.  The scheme defines the type of resource being pointed to, which also specifies the mechanism to use to obtain the resource.

The scheme-dependent-information is usually different for each scheme. In general, most schemes include information about the machine making the resource available and the "path" to that resource. It is possible to merely point to a specific machine as in the case of a telnet-based terminal session.  However, when a file resource is also specified in the URL, the scheme is separated from the address of the machine with two slashes (//), and then the address of the machine is separated from the full path to the file with one slash (/).

HTTP, Gopher and FTP URLs generally appear in this fashion:

scheme://machine-address/full-path-of-file


URL - URL Examples
URL Examples

The following example illustrates the different parts of a URL.

The scheme for this URL is "http" indicating that it is on a Web server.

The Internet address of the machine is "www.w3.org", and the path to the file is "pub/WWW/Consortium/Member/List.html".  When working with the WWW, most URLs will appear very similar to this one's overall structure.

Sometimes the "full-path-of-file" part of the URL will end in a slash (/), as in the following example:

In this case, the URL points to a "directory" and not a file.


URL - How do you use URLs?
How do you use URLs?

How you use URLs depends on where you encounter it.

You could encounter a URL in an ad on paper or on TV, or while reading a magazine. In any of these case, to use the URL, you would first have to launch an application like a Web browser, and type in the URL string as you found it, into the “location/address” box, and hit <Enter>.  If your system is properly configured, the resource pointed to by the URL is opened within the Web browser or in a special application configured to handle the scheme specified in the URL.

If you encounter a URL in an electronic document, or in a E-mail message, you can cut and paste it into your Web browser’s “location/address” box as above.  Once again, if your system is properly configured, the resource pointed to by the URL is opened within the Web browser or in a special application configured to handle the scheme specified in the URL.

If you are using a Web browser, URLs are usually encoded as hypertext links.  You can use a URL by simply clicking or double-clicking on a link.

With CyberLinks, URLs find a home in an entirely new realm of information – the documents you create or the applications you build.  The users of your documents or applications don’t see the URL; they only see the visual representation of a text item describing it, a picture or a button.  They can activate a link (and the URL it contains) by simply double-clicking on it.  CyberLinks will automatically launch an appropriate application for handling the URL.


URL - The URL Schemes
URL Schemes

Following are some of the most commonly used URL schemes:

HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

Gopher

Electronic Mail (Mailto)

Usenet News (News)

Telnet to Remote Host (Telnet)

Telnet to Remote Hosts Requiring 3270 Emulation (Tn3270)

Wide Area Information Search (WAIS)

Host-Specific File Names (File)

IQ/Objects Documents (IQR)

HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

HTTP is the protocol of the World-Wide Web.  HTTP URLs point to files or resources on Web servers.

http://<host>:<port>/<path>?<searchpart>
host	The Internet Address of the Web Server
port	Port number to connect to.  Standard port number is 80. In most cases, the port can be omitted (along with the preceding colon), and it defaults to the standard "80".
Path	The path tells the WWW server which file you want.  The path can be omitted, in which case the URL points to the "home page" for the system.
Searchpart	The searchpart may be used to pass information to the server, often to an executable CGI script. Generally, the searchpart along with the preceding question-mark is omitted

Examples:

http://www.w3.org/

http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Consortium/Prospectus/FAQ.html

http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/#Specifications

The last example shows another special form of the http URL that is frequently used in large Web documents.  “Specifications” is a “named anchor” within this Web document which represents the beginning of a logical section of information.  The suffix “#Specifications” in this URL indicates that this URL points directly to this section and that activation of this URL should cause this section to be displayed automatically in a Web browser.  The pound/hash sign (#) is a special character used to point to a named anchor within a Web document.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

FTP is a well-used means for transmitting files over the Internet.

ftp://<user>:<password>@<host>:<port>/<cd1>/<cd2>/.../<cdN>/<name>;type=<typecode>
user	The user name for accessing the FTP server.  When doing anonymous FTP to access files, which is usually the case, this is omitted.
Password	Password to access the FTP server.  Omitted (along with the preceding colon and the succeeding ampersand(@)) for anonymous FTP.
Host	The Internet Address of the FTP Server
port	Port number to connect to. In most cases, the port can be omitted (along with the preceding colon).
<cd1>..<cdN>	Logically refers to a full pathname to a directory on the FTP server.  Usually accomplished by a series of “change directory” commands to each of <cd1>, <cd2> … <cdN>
name	The filename within the directory specified above
;type=<typecode>	Transmission method (ascii or binary)

Examples:

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Products/Windows/Windows95/readme.txt

ftp://watmath.uwaterloo.ca/security

In both these examples, the URLs point to resources accessible via "anonymous FTP".

Gopher Protocol (Gopher)

The Gopher protocol syntax is very similar to FTP and HTTP:

gopher://<host>:<port>/<gopher-path>
host	The Internet Address of the Gopher Server
port	Port number to connect to. In most cases, the port can be omitted (along with the preceding colon).
Gopher-path	The gopher-path specifies the type of Gopher resource, a selector string, and perhaps other information.  A detailed discussion on the syntax of the gopher-path can be found in RFC 1436.

Examples:

gopher://boombox.micro.umn.edu/11/Hyper-G

gopher://gopher.microsoft.com/11%5csoftlib

In the second example above, the “%5c” stands is a replacement for the ASCII character with decimal value 92.

Electronic Mail (Mailto)

The Mailto URL scheme identifies the E-mail address of someone that can be reached via the Internet (rather than a file/directory/other resource which is the case with http, gopher and ftp URLs).

mailto:<account@site>
  account@site	The Internet E-mail address of the person you wish to contact, as defined by the Internet standard RFC 822.

Examples:

mailto:info@netscape.com

mailto:sales@microsoft.com

Usenet News (News)

Usenet newsgroups are discussion groups on the Internet, handled via servers that support the NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol). The News URL scheme allows for the referencing of Usenet newsgroups or specific articles.

news:<newsgroup-name>
news:<message-id>
newsgroup-name	The Usenet newsgroup name (e.g. sci.skeptic, alt.fan.bill.gates)
message-id	The message-id corresponds to the Message-ID of a specific article within a specific newsgroup.

Examples:

news:sci.skeptic

news:alt.fan.bill.gates

Telnet to Remote Host (Telnet)

The Telnet URL identifies a terminal-based session to a remote host via the Telnet protocol.

telnet://<user>:<password>@<host>:<port>/
user	User name on the host.  This can be omitted
Password	Password for the user identified above.  This can be omitted (with the preceding colon and the succeeding ampersand characters), if the user name is left out
Host	The Internet address of the host machine
port	The port number on the host machine to connect to.  It can be omitted, and the standard port number of “23” will be used

Examples:

telnet://gatekeeper.dec.com/

telnet://archie.sura.net/

Telnet to Remote Hosts Requiring 3270 Emulation (TN3270)

The TN3270 URL scheme is for telnetting to systems which require 3270 terminal emulation, such as IBM mainframes. This scheme is nearly identical to the Telnet URL.

tn3270://<user>:<password>@<host>:<port>/

Wide Area Information Search (WAIS)

The WAIS URL refers to WAIS databases, searches, or documents on a WAIS database.

wais://<host>:>port>/<database>
wais://<host>:<port>/<database>?<search>
wais://<host>:<port>/<database>/<wtype>/<wpath>
Host	The Internet address of the host machine
port	The port number on the host machine to connect to.  It can be omitted.
Database	A WAIS database name
search	A WAIS search string
wtype, wpath	Together the identify a specific document

Examples:

wais://wais.blues.com/aids

wais://wais.blues.com/rec?pink

Host-Specific File Names (File)

The File URL scheme identifies a specific file or directory.

file://<host>/<path>
Host	The Internet address of the host machine.  This can be omitted.  It can also be the special name “localhost” to represent the local desktop machine.
Path	The full path name of the form “dir/dir/…/filename”.  The path can also point to a directory.

Examples:

file:///c:\windows\win.ini

Note the three slashes (///) before the path, when the host name is omitted.

file://localhost/control.exe

Note the use of localhost to represent the local machine.

file://\\Apollo\sys\office

This example introduces a powerful mixture of two standards.  Universal Naming Convention file names (UNCs) and URLs.  Here “\\Apollo” is the UNC name for a file server called Apollo accessible within a corporate network and “\sys\office” points to a directory on this server.

 See Also:

The Format of Portable Links

IQ/Objects Document (IQR)

The IQR URL scheme identifies a specific IQ/Objects Document along with the relevant parameters necessary to perform operations on the document.  (IQ/Objects is a leading database query/reporting software product from IQ Software Corp.)

iqr://<document>/prompts(name=value&name=value)datasource(value)connectstring(value) iqk(value)password(value)

<document>	The file name (fully qualified name or a UNC file name) for the IQ/Objects document.  An IQ/Objects document may be a Design document (.iqr extension) or an Output document (.iqo extension).  Note that you can also use a "portable link" to specify this file name.

This document name in the "iqr" URL is mandatory.

prompts	An IQ/Objects document may be designed to take user prompts which are used as inputs to control the database query.  A prompt is in the form of "name=value" where "name" is the prompt name provided in the design document and "value" is the value of the prompt.  Prompts in the "iqr" URL are optional.

datasource	The name of the ODBC data source for this document.  The datasource in the "iqr" URL is optional.

connectstring	The ODBC database driver connection string.  The connectstrng in the "iqr" URL is optional.

iqk	The fully qualified path to an IQ Knowledge Base file.  The iqk file name in the "iqr" URL is optional.

password	The password for the document in this URL.  The password in the "iqr" URL is optional.

The CyberLinks URL Wizard permits hyperlinks to IQ/Objects documents to be created easily.


URL - Escape Sequences
Escape Sequences

Certain characters are reserved or deemed unsafe to be used in URLs, and thus may need to be encoded by escape sequences before using in a URL.   These escape sequences are of the format “%xx” where “xx” represents the two hexadecimal digits corresponding to the US ASCII value of those characters.

Special Character	Replace with escape sequence

SPACE 	%20

<	%3C

>	%3E

#	%23

%	%25

{	%7B

}	%7D

|	%7C

\	%74

^	%5E

~	%7E

[	%5B

]	%5D

`	%60

;	%3B

/	%2F

?	%3F

:	%3A

@	%40

=	%3D

&	%26


URL - How do you manually decode URLs?
How do you manually decode URLs?

Everything is works great if your system is configured properly to handle all kinds of URLs.  Sometimes, that is not the case in reality.  Either because you haven’t configured your applications properly, or because you don’t have an application to handle a particular URL scheme, you may not be able to use a URL as described above, directly.  Here is where an understanding of URLs comes in handy.

Take a URL such as “mailto:cyberlinks-support@pioneersys.com”.

The scheme is “mailto”.  At the time of this writing “mailto” is not as widely supported as the basic http, ftp, and gopher schemes.  From the sections above, you can find that this URL represents an E-mail address, and that “cyberlinks-support@pioneersys.com” is the E-mail address itself.  Armed with this information, now you can launch your favorite E-mail package and manually enter the address “cyberlinks-support@pioneersys.com” in the “To:” address field.

Consider the URL “wais://wais.blues.com/rec?pink”

The scheme is “wais”.  The sections below will indicate to you that this URL represents a WAIS database query, and that the host name is “wais.blues.com”, and the database is “rec” and the search word is “pink”.  You can launch your favorite WAIS client program and use this information within it.


URL - Creating URLs manually
Creating URLs manually

Most of the time, you won’t need to create  a URL manually.  This is because you can copy the URL from whatever source of information you are looking at, and use it within an application such as  a Web browser.

CyberLinks makes this process much easier with two very useful features:

•	you can drag-and-drop a hyperlink from a Web browser (just as you can drag-and-drop a file/folder from the Windows 95 Explorer) directly into an activated CyberLinks object

•	you can use the URL wizard which will guide you to entering the needed information, step-by-step, and compose the URL for you

Even so, sometimes it is helpful to know how to construct a URL manually.  The process is simply the logical reverse of the process of decoding a URL manually.

Here is an example.  Say you want to tell someone how to obtain the update to Microsoft Flight Simulator Version 5.0a from Microsoft’s FTP server.

•	Since the information is on an FTP server, you know that the scheme is “ftp”.

•	You know that the Internet address to Microsoft’s FTP server is “ftp.microsoft.com”.

•	You know that the file is in the directory “deskapps/games/public/FlightSim/” and the file “FS500A.EXE” is a self-extracting executable file in that directory containing the update.  So the full path to this file is “deskapps/games/public/FlightSim/FS500A.EXE”.

•	Now you look in the description of the FTP URL scheme below, and realize that you need not specify a login name and password to do anonymous FTP.

You are now able to put together this information and create the URL:

“ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/ deskapps/games/public/FlightSim/FS500A.EXE”

When constructing URLs, you should avoid certain characters that are reserved or unsafe. To use these characters, you will need to encode them with "escape sequences." These sequences are mentioned in the section entitled “Escape Sequences”.


URL - Troubleshooting URLs
Troubleshooting URLs

Sometimes a link you work with may not work. There may be numerous reasons for this.  This simple step-by-step troubleshooting may help:

•	If the machine refuses the connection, it's quite possible that the site is very busy.  It is a known fact that many popular sites can't be contacted during peak hours.

•	If the file can't be found, check the name of the file in the URL to ensure that you are correctly specifying it.

•	You may have the wrong spelling for the file name.  Try removing the file name from the URL, referencing only the directory in which the file is supposed to reside.  From the resultant directory listing, it may be possible for you to locate the file you are looking for.

•	The scheme used in the URL may not be supported by any application on your machine.  For example,. wais support is not as prevalent.  You may have to procure an application that handles the wais protocol and configure it to work with your Web browser.

And, don’t forget the obvious – use this guide to URLs to verify the syntax of the URL.


Specifying a URL using CyberLinks
Specifying a URL in CyberLinks

The URL property is key to the operation of all CyberLink objects.   Though we use the CyberText object in the subsequent sections, the information here applies equally well to all the other CyberLinks objects too.

“Understanding Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)” covers basic information about what a URL is, and how to compose one depending on the type of resource you want to create a link to.

There is no one single way for specifying a URL that suits all your needs.  Consider the following scenarios:

•	you may have the URL handy, having obtained it from a magazine, book or other printed or electronic matter

•	you know the resource to link to and have the resource you want to link to right in front of you in a Web browser

•	you know the resource to link to, but you have to compose the URL from scratch

This is precisely the reason why CyberLinks is designed to let you specify URLs in three different ways:

•	Directly type in the URL into the “URL” field in the “Properties” dialog box of any CyberLinks object

•	Specify the URL using Drag-and-drop techniques

•	Use the URL Wizard to help compose a URL step-by-step

Important Note:
Irrespective of the method used to specifiy a URL, if the URL being created points to a file or directory on the local machine or on a corporate network server, you have to take some extra steps to ensure that this hyperlink will operate as you expect on another person’s machine.  This information is covered in the sections on Hyperlinking information on file servers and Hyperlinking information on desktops .


SPURL - Directly Type in the URL
Directly type in the URL

This method is suitable and the fastest when you have the URL available to you from a source such as a magazine, book, or other printed matter.

This method is also suitable, if you have the URL in electronic form (say, as part of a e-mail message), in which case, you can copy and paste the URL into the “URL” field in the "Properties" of a CyberLinks object.


SPURL - Specify the URL using drag-and-drop techniques
Specify the URL using drag-and-drop techniques

You can specify links to corporate network-based resources or Internet-based resources using a simple drag-and-drop technique.  This is an extremely powerful and intuitive way to specify a URL for a link.  This method is preferable, if you are aware of what to link to, and have it available in another application that supports OLE drag-and-drop technology.

Check here for information on "Specifying File URLs using Drag-and-Drop”.

Check here for information on “Specifying Internet-based URLs using Drag-and-Drop”.


SPURL - Specifying File URLs using Drag-and-Drop
Specifying File URLs using Drag-and-Drop

You can specify URLs which point to document files, application files or directories on your local machine or anywhere within your corporate network.   To specify URLs of this type using drag-and-drop, all you need is to open up the Windows Explorer application.

Though we use the "CyberText" object in the example here, the same method applies to hyperlinks created with any CyberLink object.

Suppose you want to specify a link to a directory called “\MSOffice\Sounds” on a file server called “Master” in your corporate network.  Here are three simple steps to accomplish this.

1.	Insert a new CyberText object into the document you are working with

2.	Launch the Windows Explorer and open up “Network Neighborhood”, and then the server called “Master” within it.  Next open the directory “\MSOffice\Sounds” within this server.  Select the directory using the left mouse button and drag it over the (activated) CyberText object in the MS-Word document.  You will notice that the mouse cursor changes to indicate that the CyberText object will accept a link to the information being dragged over it currently.

3.	Release the mouse button while the mouse cursor is over the CyberText object.

Voila!  You are done.  Two things have happened as a result of this operation:

•	An appropriate File URL has been created automatically and set into the “URL” property of this CyberText object.

•	The “Caption” property has automatically been changed to the name of the directory you have dragged and dropped onto the CyberText object.

This drag-and-drop operation using the Windows Explorer is illustrated in the following figure.

Verify the changes made for you, by checking the “Properties” dialog box again.  The result of this operation is shown in figure below.

Note that you can use “Resize to Fit” from the CyberText menu to accurately size the CyberText object to fit the caption in it.

The mechanism described here can be used no matter whether links have to be made to documents, application executables or directories, irrespective of whether the file or directory resides on your local machine, on a CD-ROM drive, or a network-based file server.  To ensure that links created to file or directory resources operate as expected, you have to take some extra steps as described in the sections on Hyperlinking information on file servers and Hyperlinking information on desktops.


SPURL - Specifying Internet-based URLs using Drag-and-Drop
Specifying Internet-based URLs using Drag-and-Drop

To specify Internet-based URLs (such as http, ftp, gopher, news, mailto, wais, etc.) using the drag-and-drop technique, you should have available one of the following advanced browsers for 32-bit Windows environments:

•	Netscape Navigator v 1.22 or later

•	Microsoft Internet Explorer v 1.0 or later

The steps for specifying Internet URLs by drag-and-drop is identical no matter which of the above advanced Web browsers you use.  In our illustration here, we use the Netscape Navigator.  Also, note that though we use the "CyberText" object in the example here, the same method applies to hyperlinks created with any CyberLink object.

Suppose you want create a document in which you want to specify a link to a resources on “Oriental Medicine” on the World-Wide Web.  Here are three simple steps to accomplish this.

1.	Insert a new CyberText object into the document you are working with

2.	Launch the Netscape Navigator, and open up to the location which has a comprehensive list of Health resources on Alternative Medicine (By the way, the “Yahoo!” directory on the Web has such a resource listing at the site “http://www.yahoo.com/Health/Alternative_Medicine/”). Select the link titled “Oriental Medicine” using the left mouse button and drag it over the (activated) CyberText object in the MS-Word document.  You will notice that the mouse cursor changes to indicate that the CyberText object will accept a link to the information being dragged over it currently.

3.	Release the mouse button while the mouse cursor is over the CyberText object.

Voila!  You are done.  Two things have happened as a result of this operation:

•	An appropriate Internet (http) URL has been created automatically and set into the “URL” property of this CyberText object.

•	The “Caption” property has automatically been changed to the name of the directory you have dragged and dropped onto the CyberText object.

This drag-and-drop operation using the Netscape Navigator is illustrated in the figure below.

Verify the changes made for you, by checking the “Properties” dialog box again.  The result of this operation is shown in the figure below.

Note that you can use “Resize to Fit” from the CyberText menu to accurately size the CyberText object to fit the caption in it.

The drag-and-drop mechanism described here can be used for any kind of hyperlink occurring within a Web browser.


SPURL - Using the URL Wizard
Specifying URLs Using the URL Wizard

The URL Wizard allows you to compose a URL for any of the following information sources in a familiar step-by-step fashion:

The URL Wizard interface for each of the information sources follow:

http

ftp

gopher

mailto

news

telnet

tn3270

wais

file

Portable links to local files

Portable links to files on network servers

Non-portable link to file/directory resources

iqr

http - Web Server (World-Wide Web)

A Web or http URL has the following parts:  Machine name or address, Port number, Path name to a file or directory, and an optional search string.  See the http URL Format for more details about these fields.

ftp - FTP Server (File Transfer Protocol)

A FTP URL has the following parts: Machine name or address, Port number, Path name to a file or directory, and optional User name and Password for doing non-anonymous FTP.  See the ftp URL Format for more details about these fields.

gopher - Gopher Server

A Gopher URL has the following parts:  Machine name or address, Port number, Path name to a file or a Gopher selector.  See the gopher URL Format for more details about these fields.

mailto - Electronic Mail

A mailto URL has the following parts: E-mail account name, and Machine name or address on which the account exists.  See the mailto URL Format for more details about these fields.

news - Usenet News (newsgroups or messages)

A news URL has just the newsgroup name.  See the news URL Format for more details.

telnet - Terminal Session using Telnet

A telnet URL has the following parts: Machine name or address, Port number, User name and Password for signing on to the machine.  See the telnet URL Format for more details.

tn3270 - Terminal Session to an IBM mainframe

A tn3270 URL, like the telnet URL, has the following parts: Machine name or address, Port number, User name and Password for signing on to the machine.  See the tn3270 URL Format for more details.

wais - WAIS database or search (Wide Area Information Server)

A wais URL has the following parts: Machine name or address, Port number, Path name to a WAIS database, and an optional Search string.  See the wais URL Format for more details.

file - File or Directory

A file URL can point to a file or directory resource.  As mentioned in Hyperlinking information within corporate intranets, file URLs can point to information on desktops or on corporate file servers.  Also, these links can be either portable or non-portable.  So, the URL Wizard offers these three choices first:

1.  Create a "portable local link"

This choice permits you to create a portable link to a local file or directory resource using CyberLinks support for portable links.  See "Specifying a Portable Local Link".

2. Create a "portable network link"

This choice permits you to select a file or directory on a network file server, and will automatically convert the name to a UNC name for making it a portable network link.  See "Specifying a Portable Network Link".

3. Choose a file or directory

This choice permits you to select a file or directory and will create a URL that will point to the specified resource without regard to the portability of that link.  See "Specifying a Full Path Name to a File or Directory".

Specifying a Portable Local Link

This is the second step to creating a portable local link.  You must select whether you want a portable link to a file or a portable link to a directory resource.

Specifying a Portable Local Link to a File Resource

Portable local links to a file resource are based on the concept that rather than using the full path name to a file directly in the URL (which makes the link non-portable), you can specify one of many indirect means to determine the full path name to a specific file (which makes the link portable from one machine to another).  This step in the URL Wizard specifies how a specified file should be located (at the time the link is activated).  You have the following choices:

•	Look for the file in the Windows directory (which could be c:\windows, d:\win95 or whatever)

•	Look for the file in the Windows System directory

•	Look for the file in the directory specified by the TEMP environment variable

•	Look for the file in all the directories specified by the PATH environment variable

•	Look for the file in all "common places" (such as the root directory, Windows directory etc.) including the directories specified in the PATH environment variable

 	If you choose any of these options above, the URL Wizard will bring up a standard file open dialog to let you choose or type in a file name.  This is the file name which will be dynamically located at link activation time based on the criteria specified above.

•	Look for the file in all the directories pointed to by a specified environment variable

 	If you choose this option, then the URL Wizard will request for the environment variable name.  Next the URL Wizard will request for the name of the file using a standard file open dialog box.  This specified file will be located at link activation time by looking up the specified environment variable (and the directories pointed to by it).

•	Look for the file in all the directories pointed to by an entry in a specified INI file

 	The URL Wizard will request for details regarding the INI file entry.  The name of the INI file, the name of the section in the INI file and the the key name of the specified entry are all required for this option.  After you specify these fields, the URL Wizard will bring up a standard file open dialog box.  This specified file will be located at link activation time by looking up the specified entry in the specified section of the specified INI file.

•	Look for the file in all the directories pointed to by a Windows Registry Entry

 	The URL Wizard will request for details regarding the Registry entry.  The Key name, Subkey name and the Value name are all required for this option.  After you specify these fields, the URL Wizard will bring up a standard file open dialog box.  This specified file will be located at link activation time by looking up the specified value name in the specified key/subkey of the Windows registry.

Specifying a Portable Local Link to a Directory Resource

Portable local links to a directory resource are based on the concept that rather than using the full path name to a directory directly in the URL (which makes the link non-portable), you can specify one of many indirect means to determine the full path name to a specific directory (which makes the link portable from one machine to another).  This step in the URL Wizard specifies how a specified directory should be located (at the time the link is activated).  You have the following choices:

•	The directory is the Windows directory

•	The directory is the Windows System directory

•	The directory is the Temp directory (pointed to by the TEMP environment variable)

Any of the above choices specify the directory name for the link (indirectly).

•	The directory is pointed to by an environment variable

 	If you choose this option, then the URL Wizard will request for the environment variable name.   The actual directory name is determined at link activation time by looking up this environment variable.

•	The directory is pointed to by an INI file entry

 	The URL Wizard will request for details regarding the INI file entry.  The name of the INI file, the name of the section in the INI file and the the key name of the specified entry are all required for this option.   The actual directory name is determined at link activation time by looking up the specified INI file entry.

•	The directory is pointed to by an entry in the Windows Registry

 	The URL Wizard will request for details regarding the Registry entry.  The Key name, Subkey name and the Value name are all required for this option.  The actual directory name is determined at link activation time by looking up the specified registry file entry.

Specifying a Portable Network Link

This is a standard file open dialog box.  You can select a file name from any file server.  The URL Wizard will automatically convert the file name (containing mapped network drive letters such as x:, z:, g: etc.) to UNC file names (which are portable).

Specifying a Full Path Name to a File or Directory

This is a standard file open dialog box.  The file name you select here will be used as it is (and as a result, this link is potentially non-portable).

iqr - IQ/Objects Document

The relevant fields for specifying a hyperlink to an IQ/Objects document are as follows:

Document name	Mandatory

Prompts	Optional

Data Source	Optional

Connect String	Optional

IQ Knowledge Base file name	Optional

Only the document name is absolutely necessary to complete the creation of an "iqr" URL.  All other fields are optional.  Refer to the "IQR URL Scheme" for more details on the meaning of these fields.

The document name can be specified as a fully qualified path to a local file, a UNC file name to a file on a file server, or as a portable link to a local file.

URL Wizard Finish

This is the final step of the URL Wizard.  A fully constructed URL will be displayed for your confirmation.  You can choose "Back" to make changes (like at any other step in the URL Wizard) or "Finish" to accept this URL you have composed.

See Also

The Format of Portable Links


CyberLinks support for hyperlinking information within corporate Intranets
Hyperlinking information within corporate intranets

Corporations are rapidly adopting the popular World-Wide Web technologies as well as other Internet technologies for use within corporate networks.  For example, support for Internet E-mail is now commonplace within most companies, even if they are using a proprietary mail package like ccMail or Ms-Mail.  Likewise, many corporations are deploying internal Web servers for communicating with their employees, and maintaining a corporate knowledge base of information.  CyberLinks is fully compatible with all such intranet trends, and can be used very effectively to enrich the document authoring, sharing and navigating experience within corporations.

While usage of internal Web servers can bring great improvements in information navigation and sharing within corporations, the adoption of internal Web servers is still a new phenomenon within corporations.  The vast amounts of unstructured information (in the form of wordprocessor documents, spreadsheets, presentations etc.) that corporations create daily are strewn across numerous file servers and individual desktop machines.  Today, it is nearly impossible to navigate these islands of information.   CyberLinks incorporates numerous unique features to hyperlink information across individual desktops and corporate file servers.

You can learn more about CyberLinks capabilities for hyperlinking information within corporations in the following topics:

Hyperlinking information on file servers

Hyperlinking information on desktops


CORP - Hyperlinking information on file servers
Hyperlinking information on file servers

The "File URL" scheme is used to define hyperlinks to information on file servers.

An Example

Let us assume that you want to create a hyperlink to a document called "stat0216.doc" (a periodic report on sales quotas, status, progress and issues) in the directory "\sales\nwgroup\weekly\" (associated with sales group handling the "North-Western region") on the file server "\\MktgSrvr" (Marketing department's file server).

Setting the hyperlink properties manually

The properties of the hyperlink can be set manually in three easy steps:

The first step  in creating a hyperlink to this document involves identifying a "path name" to this document.  Assume that the server "\\MktgSrvr" is mapped as drive letter "g:" on your machine.  This path name would be "g:\sales\nwgroup\weekly\stat0216.doc".

The next step is to construct the URL for this file, which will be "file:///" (yes, three slashes) followed by the path name, yielding:  "file:///g:\sales\nwgroup\weekly\stat0216,doc".

The final step is to set the URL property of the hyperlink object and a name for this document (i.e. the caption property, if the hyperlink is created using CyberText or CyberButton).

A major caveat

There is one very important thing to note here.  When you share the document  (containing the hyperlink "file:///g:\sales\nwgroup\weekly\stat0216,doc") with another user, the link may not work as expected.  This is because the path name in the URL is peculiar to the way your machine is set up to talk to the network.  Another user may have "\\MktgSrvr" mapped as drive "x:".

This is an example of how you can create a non-portable link to information on your file servers.

How do you overcome this?  The answer lies in the use of Universal Naming Convention (UNC) file names.

UNC File Names

A file on the network can be referred to in the general form "\\Server\path-name", where "\\Server" is the name of the server, and "\path-name" is the full path to the file/directory on the server.  This is a universal naming convention that avoids using drive letters, such as "g:" or "x:" to refer to network resources, allowing for resources on networks to be referred to in an unambiguous, location-independent manner.

In our example, the UNC file name for "g:\sales\nwgroup\weekly\stat0216,doc" is "\\MktgSrvr\sales\nwgroup\weekly\stat0216.doc".

So, a URL constructed using this UNC file name becomes "file:///\\MktgSrvr\sales\nwgroup\weekly\stat0216.doc".  A hyperlink using this URL becomes totally portable, in the sense that it's reference to a resource on a given network server will be the same no matter which desktop machine it is accessed from.

The Basic Rule for Creating Portable Hyperlinks to Information on File Servers

When creating a hyperlink to a resource on a file server, use UNC names instead of names using drive letters, to guarantee portability of the hyperlink.

The Easy Way to Create Portable Hyperlinks to Information on File Servers

If you are manually constructing the URL for a hyperlink, then you have to ensure that you use a UNC name.  Sometimes, this may not be straightforward.  So, CyberLinks supports two easy ways to create portable hyperlinks to information on file servers:

1.	Drag-and-Drop

Using the Windows 95 Explorer, you can drag-and-drop a file or directory resource from a network file server, onto an active CyberLink object or onto the object’s Properties dialog box.  If the file name has a mapped drive letter such as “G:”, CyberLinks will automatically convert the file name of the resource into a UNC file name.  So, specifying a URL through drag-and-drop from the Windows Explorer always creates portable network links.

2. 	URL Wizard

The CyberLinks URL Wizard automatically converts any network file or directory names to UNC file names, thereby always creating portable network links.


CORP - Hyperlinking information on desktops
Hyperlinking information on desktops

By their very nature, links to local file or directory resources are not portable, because every person organizes their local desktop file systems differently.  However, CyberLinks uses a powerful concept of “meta-locations” to provide new possibilities to create links to local desktop resources.

The concept of “meta-locations” is rather simple.  It is based on the simple observation that locations like the “Windows directory”, “all the directories in the PATH”, etc. make sense on any desktop machine, even though the specific directory names may be different on different machines.  CyberLinks permits you to specify a file or directory name in relation to one of many “meta-locations” such as “the Windows directory”, “the System directory”, “the PATH”, “the temporary directory” etc.   This can be easily understood from the following example.

A link to a document “networks.doc” in the Windows directory would normally be specified as “file:///c:\windows\networks.doc”, where “c:\windows” is the Windows directory in the document creator’s machine.  However, the recepient of a document may have Windows installed in a different directory, say, “d:\win95”.  So, even though the recepient had a document called “networks.doc” in his Windows directory, the link pointed to by “file:///c:\windows\networks.doc” does not work on his machine.

With CyberLinks, this same link can be specified as “file:///$(WINDOWSF)networks.doc”.  Here, “$(WINDOWSF)”  represents the “Windows directory”, which is resolved to “c:\windows” or “d:\win95” or wherever Windows is installed on the target desktop.  See Also  The Format of Portable Links .

The CyberLinks URL Wizard enables you to specify portable, local links using many possible “meta-locations”, through a simple wizard-like user interface.  Such links are resolved dynamically when the link is activated on a target desktop machine.


The Format of Portable Links

 Portable Links is a powerful feature of CyberLinks.  The URL Wizard can be used to create portable links to information on desktops or corporate intranets very easily.   This section covers information that is useful for advanced users.

Portable links are achieved by simple extensions to the Standard file URL syntax.

URL Format of a Portable File Link

URL Format of a Portable Directory Link

URL Format of a Portable File Link

The general format of a portable file link is:

file:$(metalocation)<filename>

$(metalocation)	This is an indirect reference to a directory name

<filename>	Name of the file

File in Windows directory ...

file:$(WINDOWSF)<filename>

Example:

file:$(WINDOWSF)calc.exe

This is a portable link to the Windows Calculator program.

File in Windows-System directory ...

file:$(WINSYSTEMF)<filename>

Example:

file:$(WINSYSTEMF)pscript.hlp

This is a portable link to the Postscript Printer Driver Help file.

File in a directory pointed by TEMP environment variable ...

file:$(TEMPF)<filename>

Example:

file:$(TEMPF)setup.exe

This is a portable link to a program called Setup.exe in the temporary directory.

File in a directory pointed by PATH environment variable ...

file:$(PATHF)<filename>

Example:

file:$(PATHF)winword.exe

This is a portable link to the MS-Word for Windows program.

File in a common place ...

file:$(COMMONPLACESF)<filename>

Example:

file:$(COMMONPLACESF)edit.exe

This is a portable link to the DOS text editor program.

File in a directory pointed by an environment variable ...

file:$(ENVF:<envvar>)<filename>

<envvar>	Name of the environment variable

Example:

file:$(ENVF:MOUSE)mouse.ini

This is a portable link to the MS-Mouse INI file.

File in a directory pointed by an INI file entry ...

file:$(INIF:<inifile>,<inisection>,<inikey>)<filename>

<inifile>	Name of the INI file

<inisection>	Name of the section in the INI file

<inikey>	Name of the key within the section of the INI file

Example:

file:$(INIF:win.ini,MSAPPS,ORGCHART)orgchart.exe

This is a portable link to the MS-Office OrgChart program.

File in a directory pointed by a Windows Registry entry ...

file:$(REGF:<regkey>,<regsubkey>,<valname>)<filename>

<regkey>	The root key name in the Windows registry

<regsubkey>	The name of the subkey in the Windows registry

<valname>	The value name under the specified subkey

Example:

file:$(REGF:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,SOFTWARE\Digital InfoWorks\CyberLinks\1.0\General,Help)clwp.doc

This is a portable link to the CyberLinks White Paper.

URL Format of a Portable Directory Link

The general format of a portable directory link is:

file:$(metalocation)

$(metalocation)	This is an indirect reference to a directory name

A <filename> is not specified here (as compared to a portable file link) because this URL points to a directory and not a file.

The Windows Directory ...

file:$(WINDOWSD)

The Windows-System Directory ...

file:$(WINSYSTEMD)

The Temporary Directory ...

file:$(TEMPD)

A Directory Pointed by an Environment Variable ...

file:$(ENVD:<envvar>)

<envvar>	Name of the environment variable

Example:

file:$(ENVF:MOUSE)

This is a portable link to the MS-Mouse directory.

A Directory Pointed by an INI File Entry ...

file:$(INID:<inifile>,<inisection>,<inikey>)

<inifile>	Name of the INI file

<inisection>	Name of the section in the INI file

<inikey>	Name of the key within the section of the INI file

Example:

file:$(INIF:win.ini,MSAPPS,ORGCHART)

This is a portable link to the MS-Office OrgChart directory.

A Directory Pointed by a Windows Registry Entry ...

file:$(REGD:<regkey>,<regsubkey>,<valname>)

<regkey>	The root key name in the Windows registry

<regsubkey>	The name of the subkey in the Windows registry

<valname>	The value name under the specified subkey

Example:

file:$(REGF:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,SOFTWARE\Digital InfoWorks\CyberLinks\1.0\General,Help)

This is a portable link to the CyberLinks Help Directory.