The blog of Spiral Software

Backing Up Your Data

spiralsoftware — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 11:19:50 +0000

Backing Up Your Data

On Vista/Windows 7, the definitions of your saved pages from Internet Owl are stored in this directory:

C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Spiral Software\Internet Owl\2.0

where USERNAME is whatever you login as.

If you are using XP, the directory is slightly different:

C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Spiral Software\Internet Owl\2.0

You should ensure this directory is backed up.

Need a free back program? You can try the freeware Syncback

For my own backup needs, I use a combination of the commercial programs SyncBack SE, Acronis trueimage and dropbox.

Large external USB hard drives are now really cheap, so you really owe it to yourself to backup your data regularly.

Version 2.0.991 is released

spiralsoftware — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:57:15 +0000

Version 2.0.991 is released.

The new version contains a number of stability fixes, plus a couple of new features:

Proxy support

If you are behind a company firewall and need to manually specify your proxy settings, you can now do so

See the Settings/Proxy screen.

Update Checks

Update checks refer to Internet Owl checking for an updated version of itself.

By clicking the box, you’ll automatically be notified when there is a newer version of the program.

If you wish to manually check for program updates, you can click About/Check for updates.

Upgrading

Shutdown Internet Owl before running the installer.

Do not uninstall the old version.

Internet Owl on Windows 7

spiralsoftware — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 08:55:27 +0000

Windows 7

I did an in-place upgrade today from Vista (64 bit) to Windows 7 (64 bit).

After the Windows upgrade, Internet Owl continued to run fine without any changes.

The taskbar now has a thumbnail preview as shown below:

The Windows 7 upgrade process was very smooth, although it took about 3 hours to complete, so it’s not something to attempt if you are in a hurry.

So for those of you who may be considering an upgrade to Windows 7, I can report that the Owl works just fine.

Build 783 is now available

spiralsoftware — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:13:54 +0000

Build 783 is now available

The changes are:

IMPROVEMENT: Remembers size of browser preview window

FIX: Clean shutdown

FIX: Stability improvements for older systems with IE 6

I’ve been resisting the urge to add more features.

Instead, I’m focusing on stability, and the behind the scenes tasks that need to release 2.0…I think it’s close.

Build 746 is now available for download

spiralsoftware — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:38:52 +0000

Build 746 is now available for download

The changes are:

FIX: Crash comparing page differences

IMPROVEMENT: The caption bar now shows a summary of pages watched and changed.

IMPROVEMENT: Included default sound

Build 708 is now available for download

spiralsoftware — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:01:10 +0000

Build 708 is now available for download

If you already have an earlier version 2 installed and running, the automatic update notification window should popup and let you know that a new version is ready.

In this example “Your Version” is the same as the new version, but in reality, the “New Version” number will be bigger.

The new version has lots of changes.

NEW: Import of Internet Owl Version 1 data

- click on the round Owl icon on the top left to access a menu

You can then select a file containing your old Internet Owl version 1 data,

which is typically stored in:

c:\program files\internet owl\internetowl.dat

NEW: Import of CSV format
As shown above, click on the Owl, and select “Import CSV data”. Select a file containing CSV data.
The format must be two columns of URL,NAME , with no header line.
e.g.

NEW: Added clear all changes to menu on the tray icon

NEW: HTML differences shown if there are no visible differences

If there are no visible differences between two saved versions of a web page (because only the underlying HTML has changed), then the differences window now shows the HTML that has changed.

NEW: Javascript removed from pages before display

The page being displayed in the browser preview window now has javascript removed from it before being displayed.

This means pages that previously caused popup windows, or had javascript errors etc now won’t disrupt viewing of the page in Internet Owl.

There are also a myriad of small changes, such as:

Artwork on the installer
FIX: “Stop checking” not working
FIX: Installer putting css and images in the wrong directory. Also fixed uninstaller not removing everything it should.
FIX: Graceful error handling if html file for a saved page is missing
FIX: Differences checked for file size, and limits to 10,000 lines
FIX: UNDO of deleting a page
FIX: Deleting a folder of pages

Internet Owl build 583

spiralsoftware — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:44:05 +0000

A new version is available (Build 583)

The changes are:

FIX: Adding a page to a folder always went to the root folder

FIX: “The address is not valid” when showing revision that doesn’t exist

FIX: Scheduled checks wasn’t counting number of changes correctly

FIX: Update checker was checking too frequently

NEW: Icon in taskbar flashes when there are new changes

I’m currently working on drag and drop so you can move watched pages between folders….hopefully in the next release.

A new version is available (Build 565)

spiralsoftware — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:20:28 +0000

A new version is available (Build 565)

The changes are:

NEW: Added help
NEW: Added columns for last checked and last updated
NEW: Supports redirects (http 302) from https to http
NEW: Now checks for updates and notifies you if there is a new version
NEW: The installer now checks if the program is already running and prompts you to close it first.
FIX: Sort by status fixed

Two releases in one day…build 491 has some important fixes

spiralsoftware — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:12:12 +0000

Two releases in one day…

Build 491 is now available

FIX: Email settings wasn’t correctly reading preferences for summary/individual emails.

FIX: Email showing page differences was showing added lines as removed and vice versa

IMPROVEMENT: Watch visible content is now the default way to watch for changes, since that should suit most people.

A new version is ready (Build 473)

spiralsoftware — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:49:11 +0000

Version 2.0 Build 473 is ready for download.

This release is mostly focused on stability, but there are a few new features:

NEW: Added support for password protected pages (HTTP authentication).
NEW: Added a ‘test email’ function on the email settings page
NEW: Added a “start with windows” option so the program runs automatically
IMPROVEMENT: Exiting the program now confirms you meant to, and gives the option not to confirm exiting in future.
IMPROVEMENT: Rearranged the icons on the ribbon so the most important buttons appear first.

FIX: Email settings validation is now disabled if you uncheck the send email boxes.
FIX: The default installation directory is now “Internet Owl v2″ so it doesn’t clash with version 1.
FIX: The title bar now displays correctly after restoring from the tray.
FIX: The uninstaller on Vista was showing a warning message “might not have installed successfully”.
FIX: The uninstaller now removes all files.
FIX: Large web page (>=1mb) was causing a crash
FIX: Small icons are now consistent with the large icons
FIX: Removed some default commands that shouldn’t have been displayed, like print preview.

Thanks to those that submitted problem reports.