FAQ

If you'd like to contribute a useful tip, please send us an email with the Contact Form, or directly via email at icatviewer@mandosoft.com.

What's new ?

Version 3.0 supports the use of Cascading Style Sheets (css), allows you to add or remove fields from the search form and offers complete support for internationalization of Dates and text. There are also many 'under-the-hood' bug fixes or improvements. The upgrade is free to registered users. Please see the Upgrade Instructions.

Version 3.1 has the ability to add or remove display fields, and corrects a bug when adding input fields.

As usual, upgrades are free to registered users.

Where is the documentation ?

The documentation for each iCatViewer is included in the download. Here is an example documentation for the Documents iCatViewer.

Red Preview Text

A red text is printed at the top of all results (table lists or displays), when using an unregistrered copy. As soon as you register your copy, we'll send you a registration code that will make this text disappear. Also, the registration will make the little green pop-up window disappear. With such incentives, how can you not register ?

Popup windows

When the applet starts 2 popup windows appear on your screen:

• A 'nag screen' present only when using an unregistered or demo version. This popup is not shown when using a registered copy.
• A status screen that indicates that the applet is reading the datafile. If everything goes well, the window disappears after a couple of seconds. It serves a dual purpose:
  • While the file is being read it keeps the user informed of what's hapenning; for very large datafiles and slow connections, the download time can be significant and it is important to let the user know that the applet is not frozen. Given the notorious unreliability of internet connections, it is nice to provide the user with as much feedback as possible.
  • If there is an error reading the datafile, it indicates the cause of the error, which your users can send you to notify you of the problem.

I can only display 30 records

The unregistered copy limits you to 30 records. That limit disapears when you register.

Is iCatViewer secure ?

iCatViewer does not read or write any data on your PC, so it is perfectly safe to use it. The data that is displayed in the browser (the catalog and the items details) is transmitted over the Internet and the browser itself may keep a local copy of it in its cache, so that's only as secure as the transmission protocol, and the browser's cache availability. In this respect it is not different from any other browser based application. That's hopefully not an issue since the purpose of iCatViewer is to display the datafile contents anyway !
That said, it is probably a good idea to write-protect the datafile on the server so that malicious users cannot modify it.
iCatViewer does not support protecting the data with passwords, although you certainly can use your normal Web Server and/or host password protection on the iCatViewer pages themselves (HTML and/or datafile) to restrict access to the iCatViewer.
If you operate in a totally secure environment, you should discuss the security implications of using iCatViewer with your System Administrator.

What about privacy ?

iCatViewer doesn't track or report the usage of the application, the queries you make, or the data you view (Page usage tracking may be done by your ISP or Web Site host, as part of their operation, but that is unrelated to iCatViewer).

Use ZIP files for faster loading

Zipping up your datafile.csv makes the loading of the file much faster, especially if your users use a slow connection. If there exists a datafile.zip in the same directory as datafile.csv, the iCatViewer will use it instead of datafile.csv. If you update your data in the file datafile.csv, don't forget to re-zip it into datafile.zip (the update utility included with iCatViewer allows to automatically zip the catalo).

Are the column names fixed ?

Each iCatViewer comes a set of fixed predefined columns. You can add columns to your Catalog Datafile, to the right of the columns provided with each iCatViewer, and they will be automatically displayed in the result pages. If you have no use for some of the predefined columns provided, just blank out their name in the CSV file and they won't be mentioned in the search forms. You can also add some fields to the query form, as described in the example documentation.

Beware: do not modify the case of the preset column names in the datafile. For example, the File column absolutely needs to be spelled that way (not file or FILE). If some of the data is not properly searched on or displayed, check the spelling and case of your column names.

Netscape or MSIE ?

iCatViewer works without any problems on any modern and stable version of either Netscape or MSIE (that excludes these browsers' versions 3).

Without taking sides on this somewhat 'religious' issue, in general MSIE 4 and especially 5 is faster than Netscape 4.x at loading and executing applets, at least on Windows. Besides, in MSIE, when you switch between the Simple and the Advanced searches, it doesn't need to reload the file; Netscape forces a reload, which makes that transition slower.
Netscape 6, is buggy, slow and unreliable in general and and is not recommended. iCatViewer works in version 6.2 although slowly.

Problems have been reported with MSIE 6, using Java version 1.2. We're investigating and hope to come up with a fix soon, but in the meantime, you can go into your Internet Explorer Settings -> Advanced, and disable the checkbox "Internet Explorer uses Java 1.2".

Apple MacIntosh

There have been reports of the iCatViewer not functioning properly on the Mac. We are currently investigating but cannot give you a date when a fix will be available.

What about updates to the Catalog ?

iCatViewer includes an update utility that allows you to update the catalog. Of course, you can always use Excel (or your favorite spreadsheet or database program) if you want. To upload the catalog to your web site, use the same FTP program that you are used to.

Error Loading the iCatViewer

If the iCatViewer doesn't load, try to clear the browser cache. Browsers tend to be confused if their cache contains references to JavaScript or Java Applets that have changed.

Can I change the Colors or Fonts, or use Style Sheets ?

Yes. You can modify the Cascading Style Sheet used by iCatViewer. See the instructions in the example documentation.

Adding images and links to columns

You can add images and links to any column (and remember, you can also add columns if the ones supplied by default don't fit your needs). For example, to add an image that acts as a link, add the following to one of columns of the spreadsheet (replace the file names with actual ones): <a href="data/theLinksPage.html"><img src="data/theTumbnailImage.gif"></a>

Internationalization and Language Support

You can use languages other than English, and display dates in the users' language and formats. Please see the example documentation.