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I don’t usually need to
edit a Snippet before saving. Is there a way to by-pass
the editor and save a page or selection quickly? |
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Yes, there are two ways to do that.
- On an ad hoc basis: hold down the CTRL key while
dragging your selection to the relevant folder of your
Net Snippets sidebar. This particular snippet will be
saved directly. To save an entire page without
editing, hold down the CTRL key while dragging its
address to your Net Snippets sidebar.
- To make save-without-editing
your default work mode: click the “Add” button at the
top of the sidebar, choose “Advanced”, and on the
pop-up menu deselect “Edit snippets before saving”.
The CTRL key always does the reverse of the default,
so if your default work mode is not to edit before
saving, holding down CTRL while dragging a snippet to
the sidebar will call up the editor. |
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The screen capture feature of Net Snippets is great! In
fact I’d like to use it to get partial screen captures
that I can paste directly into Office applications or a
graphics editor – without necessarily saving them as
snippets. Is there a way to do that? |
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You’re right, it’s much faster to work that way, than to
capture the whole screen and then paste it into a
graphics editor to take a selection. Choose “Capture
Screen” as usual, select the area to capture, and then
instead of dragging the selection to the sidebar,
right-click on it and select “copy to clipboard” from
the pop-up menu. Then paste it into Word, PowerPoint, or
any other application that can handle graphics. |
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Can I brand my report? |
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Net Snippets Professional allows you to extensively
customize and brand your report. You can write what you
like in the header and footer, including pasting in a
logo instead of or in addition to the Net Snippets logo.
You can change the contents of the header and footer at
any time. When you make a change in the header or footer
while creating a report, Net Snippets automatically
applies it to all subsequent reports you prefer; so
you’re always using the most updated version of your
header and footer.
You can also create a header or footer in an external
(e.g. graphics) program and paste it in to the header or
footer area of a Net Snippets report. |
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When should I use the NS
format to prepare a report for delivery, and when should
I use one of the other formats? |
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The NS format is ideal if you want to send a report, or
a collection of snippets, to someone who also uses Net
Snippets. The archive will automatically be extracted
into their Net Snippets hierarchy.
If you’re sending a report to someone who doesn’t have
the program, the easiest format to package in is
probably “zip file with snippets”, because everyone
already knows what to do with a zip file. They can
extract it to a folder and open the html file. And just
in case they’re not familiar with zip files, when they
double-click on the archive they get a little message
explaining what to do and which file to open. |
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I’m having problems
adding the results of searches in some websites. The
“Add Entire Page” command adds an empty snippet, or a
snippet with only a small part of the information on the
page. |
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This is a problem with some database- and frame-based
sites. You can usually get round it by selecting the
entire page (Control-A), right-clicking within the
selection and choosing “Add to Net Snippets” from the
menu (or clicking the “Add selection” button on the Net
Snippets toolbar).
If you’re in frame-based site, i.e. the problem arises
because the page is composed of several different
documents in different frames, you can also choose to
add just one of them to your snippets. There are a
couple of ways to do this:
- Click the “Add” button in the Net Snippets
sidebar, and choose “Frame” from the pop-up menu.
You’ll get a list of the frames in the page, and can
choose which to add. If you can’t tell which is which
(a lot of sites don’t bother to give useful names to
documents in frames), just add each in turn and see
what you get each time.
- Right--click in the frame
that contains the information you need, and choose
“Add to Net Snippets” from the pop-up menu. This adds
the page you clicked on – if it’s in a frame, only the
page in that frame is added.
As a last resort, you can use the screen capture
feature to add exactly what you need to your snippets.
This produces an image, not searchable text; but it does
faithfully reproduce exactly what you see on-screen. |
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When I prepare a report I
get a notice that Net Snippets does not support merging
snippets that have frames, and that these snippets have
therefore been checked out. But I need to include that
material in my report! What do I do? |
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Support for frames has been improved in the latest
version. When you choose “Add entire page” and it
appears in the Snippet editor window, the borders of any
frames are clearly marked, so that you can see, before
saving the snippet, that it’s a frame-based page. If you
need to include that Snippet in a report, choose
“cancel” to exit without saving the snippet, and then
save only the frame that contains the information you
need (or a relevant selection from it). In almost all
cases, the document that contains the actual information
is in one frame and the site’s logo, navigation bar,
advertisements, etc. are in the other frames, so it’s in
fact an advantage to be able to save only the relevant
frame. If you really do need to preserve in your
snippet the look of the entire page, add it as a screen
capture. If the part you need doesn’t fit into one
screen, capture the first part, then scroll down,
capture the next part and add it to the previous
snippet. Check whether Net Snippets has added a dividing
line between the two sections, and if so, delete it.
Usually the result will look just like it does
on-screen: you won’t even be able to tell that it’s
composed of two screen captures. And you’ll have no
problem including it in your report. |
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I’ve found some sites
that make it very difficult for me to highlight a
selection of the text or page; and if I do manage to
select something, the selection doesn’t appear in the
snippet when I choose “Add selection”. How can I save
material from sites like this? |
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Yes, some sites do strange things with frames and layers
to try to force you to return to them rather than saving
information locally. If all else fails, you can always
add a selection as a screen image. Choose “Capture
Screen” from the Net Snippets bar, select the part of
the screen you want, and then drag the selection to a
Net Snippets folder or a previously saved snippet. If
you drag it to a folder, it will be saved as a new
snippet; if you drag it to an existing snippet, it will
be added to the end of that snippet. |
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Occasionally when I print
a report that I created using Net Snippets some the text
on the right gets cut off. Is there a way to fix that? |
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Yes, that doesn't occur very frequently. It can be fixed
by changing the browser's page settings. From the
browser's menu click on file and select 'Page Settings'.
Change the size of the left and right margins to 1 inch.
That should fix the problem. |
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I’m used to working with
a fixed Favorites bar on the left of my browser screen.
The Net Snippets bar now occupies that space. Is there
an easy way to see them both together? |
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The Professional Edition lets you import all your
Favorites into Net Snippets. Click “Add” at the top of
the Net Snippets bar, and choose “Advanced” from the
menu; then choose “Import Favorites” from the submenu.
Your entire Favorites tree will appear under a Net
Snippets folder called “Favorites”.
You can now continue to use the Favorites folder the way
you did before – by just adding links to it or to a
subfolder; or you can use it just like the other Net
Snippets folders – add comments and metadata to existing
items, add snippets anywhere in the Favorites hierarchy,
and so on. From this point on, you really don’t need a
separate Favorites bar. |
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When I click on a saved
snippet, I see the actual content that I saved,
including a link to the source. Sometimes that’s what I
wanted to do; but sometimes I want to go directly to the
remote source it came from, i.e. work the way my
browser’s Favorites or Bookmarks work. Is there a way to
do that without having to access the saved snippet
first? |
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Yes: for quick access to a snippet’s source page, click
on it while holding down the CTRL key. |
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What’s the difference
between creating a bibliography separately, and creating
it “on the fly” as part of creating a report? Does it
matter which I choose? |
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The bibliography that’s automatically created (if you
choose to do so) when you create a report is a short
list of source information for each snippet. You can’t
specify a preferred format for it. Use this option if
you want to record source information in the report, but
you don’t care how it looks.
The “Create Bibliography” option allows you to format
the bibliography in one of the three most popular
styles: APA, Chicago, or MLA. If you want a nicely
formatted bibliography, or if you need it to be in one
of those styles, choose this option before you create
the final report. Then when you create the report, the
bibliography will appear in the list of possible
contents, along with all the other snippets. Select the
pre-created bibliography, and de-select the automatic
bibliography that appears under the “customize” menu
(you wouldn’t usually want both to appear in the same
report). |
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I need to save material
in various European languages. The text looks fine
on-screen but when I save it as a Snippet all the
accented characters are lost. |
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We’re working on how to enable you to save text in lots
of different languages and encodings, from websites that
use different encodings, in a format that will be
correctly reproduced on-screen by any browser. We fully
intend to include support for a much wider list of
languages in later versions. Right now, the way to solve
this problem is to save the text you need as a screen
capture. It won’t be searchable, but it will look just
the same as the original site, accents and all. |
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Is there a way to edit a
bibliography that Net Snippets has created, in Word? |
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Your bibliography appears as a snippet in the relevant
Net Snippets folder, and you can edit any snippet in
Word. To do that, right-click on the snippet (in this
case, the bibliography), choose “Open With” from the
pop-up menu, and “Microsoft Word” from the submenu.
As you probably noticed, that menu also gives you the
option of opening the snippet in your default HTML
editor or in Microsoft FrontPage. |
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I’d like to insert
documents that I’ve already saved locally, into my Net
Snippets hierarchy, so that I can include them in
reports, package them for delivery together with
snippets saved from the web, and so on. How do I do
that? |
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From within Windows Explorer or “My Computer”, just drag
the icon for that document into the Net Snippets sidebar
in your browser, or into the Net Snippets desktop bar.
If the file is an html page or a graphics image, the
entire contents of the file will appear in the snippet
you’re adding. If the file is in a proprietary format,
such as a Word file or PowerPoint presentation or PDF,
the snippet will contain a link to the local file;
double-clicking the link will open the file in its
native application (Word, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat,
etc.)
If you include in a report a snippet that links to a
local file, remember to choose “prepare for delivery”
before you e-mail the report, in order to ensure that
the local file, not just the link to it, will be
included in the e-mail message. |
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I have a previous version
of Net Snippets Professional Edition. How do I upgrade
to the new version, and how much does it cost? |
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Your Net Snippets license allows you to upgrade to the
latest version of the same Edition you bought, at no
additional cost. Just download the current version and
install it. The new version will access your license
information automatically. |
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What happens to all the
information I saved in my previous version, when I
upgrade? |
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Nothing happens to it! All your snippets and settings,
preferences, styles, report customization, and so on,
will be preserved. The only change you’ll notice is the
increased functionality. |
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I’d like to include my
comments in the table of contents of my report. Or if
the report contains citations from a bibliographic
database, I’d like to include the article abstracts that
I’ve copied into the “abstract” field. Can I do that? |
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You can include either the abstracts or your comments in
the TOC (you can’t, right now, pick and choose,
including the abstract for some snippets and comments
for others). In the “Create Report” screen, click on the
tab “Customize” and select “Table of Contents”. Then in
the right-hand pane, choose “Snippet Settings”. You’ll
see a bar labeled “fields to include under each snippet”
– you can choose to include the abstract field, the
comments field, or no field.
As usual, your choice becomes the default for all
subsequent reports, until you change it. |
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How do I add and update
information that Net Snippets doesn’t include
automatically, such as keywords, author, etc? |
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When you edit a snippet (when first adding it or at any
time thereafter), you can add, edit and update
information associated with it: keywords, abstract,
comments, and “custom information”, i.e. the name and
contact information of the snippet’s creator. If you’ve
added custom information to one snippet, it
automatically appears in all the other snippets saved on
that computer, so you don’t have to “sign” your snippets
repeatedly. The other fields – keywords you many want to
add, comments, and abstract – are specific to each
snippet and are not copied from one to the other. Really
you have here a mini-database of information that you
want to associate with each snippet. Of course none of
the fields are obligatory: you can add as much or as
little information as you need.
The “Source” section records cataloging information
about the item you’re adding; one of the fields is
“Authors”. The easiest way to fill in that field is to
copy or just drag the relevant text from the snippet.
The abstract is a separate tab, but again, it’s easy to
fill it in by selecting and dragging the document’s own
abstract from the snippet. |
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Is there any way to
maintain highlighting while printing out a report? The
Snippets lose highlighting once it's printed. |
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You can fix this by going into Internet Explorers
"Tools->Internet Options" menu and clicking the
'Advanced' tab. Go to the 'Printing' section there and
check the 'print background colors...' item. |
