The first thing that appears when you start the program is an empty list and three buttons illustrated with a plus, a minus and a magnifier. The first time, you should select “Preferences...” from the “File”-menu to set the options that are needed, see the “Preferences”-chapter for more. Then we're ready to search your pages, so let's start from the beginning.
 
The first thing you need to do is to pick one or more files that you wish to search. This can be done in several ways, basically by either clicking “Add” or selecting “Add File...” in the “File”-menu. You can also hit return or enter on the keyboard which has the same function. This will open a standard “Open”-dialog. Just pick a document, preferable your index-file (the first file the visitors of your site will see). You don't need to pick every file you wish to search manually, this will be done automatically, unless you can do it if you really wants to. With the option- or shift-key down you can also select an entire folder or many files at the same time.
Another way to select files is to use the “Open Special”-menu in the “File”-menu. From here you can have an easy way to select your most frequently checked files. See the “Installation”-chapter for more. By selecting one or many lines in the list and clicking “Remove”, they will be disappear from the list. They will not be deleted from your computer, don't worry. (To remove all, first type “command-a” which means “select all”. Then click “Remove” once.)
Other ways to add files are to and drop a few files onto the HTML LinkChecker-icon in Finder, using Internet Config (see the “AppleEvents”-chapter), or with the “spc-files feature” described in the “Menus”-chapter.
 
“Search Linked Files Too” and ”Search External Links”
In the bottom of the window there are two checkboxes. These are used to control the most powerful features and advantages of HTML LinkChecker, the features to search external links and to searched linked files. By default, “Search Linked Files Too” is selected. This means that the program will start searching for links in the files selected in the list. It will then continue in every file linked from the ones selected, then every file linked from the linked, and so on. After a while it has searched your entire site. This is useful, since HTML LinkChecker will search all the pages that can be found for the visitors, and only those pages. If you, by some reason, want to disable this feature you just need to uncheck the checkbox. When “Search External Links” is on, HTML LinkChecker will not only look for links on your local disk but also external links to other pages on other servers by looking on the net if the linked files exist. Make sure that you've opened a connection to the net before you start searching,if this option is true. Please read the “TCP Notes”-chapter for more.
Start searching
As soon as at least one file is selected and added to the list, you can start searching by clicking “Search”, by typing return or enter, by selecting “Search” from the “File”-menu or by typing command-E (for 'execute', btw). It doesn't matter what lines of the list that are selected, or if no lines are selected at all. HTML LinkChecker will search all files in the list, and to remove a file from it you need to first select it and then click “Remove” as descriped before. If you've choosed to search external links, as described, the program will first test to see if the connection seems to work as it should. Usually this will take no time at all, but if it takes more than five seconds, you've probably choosed a bad time of the day to access the Internet. Most of the Internet-users lives in the USA, and when they are awake, the net is a bit slower than otherwise. Since HTML LinkChecker makes a numerous of connections to a numerous of servers in all parts of the world (and not like Netscape, for example, which usually only has contact with one server at a time), a slow net will make a notable difference. Either your search will take longer time than it need to, or you may get some “Refused by server” or “Service is unavailable”-errors.
Since this is not a big problem actually, you can probably search external links any time of the day. But if you have a really huge site with hundereds of pages and even more external links, maybe you should choose another the time of the day. Anyhow, when the control is done, or immediately if the “Search Linked Files”-option is off, you will be moved to the so calledresult log. This is where the fun things are, and it is described in the next chapter.
