New Tool Cleans Up The Messy Business Of Web Research
It's pretty easy to find things on the Web these days using Google or other search engines. But it's not so easy to capture, save and organize the information you find for later reference offline, especially if you're doing significant research.
Some people print out the relevant Web pages, but that can take a lot of paper and ink. Others cut and paste important passages into a word processor, a slow and clumsy method. Still others save the Web pages as files to their hard disk. But, depending on the method you use and how good your file system is, these saved pages can be hard to locate and open later.
Now, a new company based in Cambridge, Mass., Onfolio Inc., has come up with an inexpensive piece of software, also called Onfolio, which aims to solve this problem.
The software integrates seamlessly with the dominant Internet Explorer browser, and allows you to quickly store whole Web pages, pictures, snippets of text from the Web and other material, in a way that makes it a snap to find later.
Onfolio costs $29.95, and can be downloaded at
www.onfolio.com. It requires Windows XP or 2000, and Internet Explorer version 5.5 or later. A Professional Edition that allows you to publish customized reports from the material you capture is $79.95. Before buying Onfolio, you can download a free trial version that has all the product's features but expires in 30 days.
I have been testing Onfolio, and I like it. Despite a few minor downsides, it does what it promises and can make a huge difference in the process of doing research on the Web. I especially like the user interface, which is clear and clean, and gives users multiple ways to do many key tasks so they can fit the product to their own styles of working.
Onfolio takes the form of a special panel on the left side of the Internet Explorer browser, with three main sections. At the top of this panel is a toolbar with a few simple command icons. Below that is a section showing how your information has been organized into groupings called collections and subgroups called folders. Finally, the bulk of the panel is a list of the Web pages, images, text snippets and other material you have saved in whatever collection or subfolder is selected at the top.
Capturing information is simple. You just navigate to a Web page of interest and click on Onfolio's capture button, which appears both at the top of the Onfolio panel, and in the upper right of the browser's main window.
Onfolio then pops up a window asking whether you want to save the page as a link, which would require you to be online to see it in the future, or as a "local copy," which is a file to whatever hard disk you want that can be viewed offline. You can also choose a collection or folder in which to store the page, add your own comments about the page, name it whatever you want and even assign it a color-coded flag. You then click Save and the page appears as an entry in the Onfolio panel.
You can also capture pages by hitting the F9 key, or by right-clicking on the page you want.
If you want to save only an image from a page, you just right-click on it and select "Capture image to Onfolio." To save a passage of text, you highlight the passage you want and right-click to select "Capture snippet to Onfolio." Or, you can just drag text passages and images onto the Onfolio panel.
Onfolio also allows you to capture files and text passages from your hard disk, from programs like Microsoft Office, or from other Web browsers with which it doesn't integrate.
To do these things you use a module called the Desktop Bar, which closely resembles the Onfolio panel in Internet Explorer, but functions separately.
In my tests, I was able to assemble collections and folders that included a mix of Web links, locally stored Web pages, text snippets, images and non-Web files. I was amazed to be able to save perfectly formatted tables yanked from Web sites.
Once you have all this stuff, what can you do with it? Well, if you click on any saved item, it appears right in the browser. If you assemble a large amount of material, you can use Onfolio's built-in search function to rapidly find any term or phrase in any of the documents.
Or, you can export the material to files on your hard disk and e-mail it to others, right from within Onfolio, in a variety of formats. If you have the Pro edition, you can turn the material into personalized, formatted reports.
So, what are the downsides to Onfolio? In my tests, I couldn't capture some Web content that was in Macromedia Flash format, including on Onfolio's own Web site. Some of the reports Onfolio created were blocked by my security software when I tried to open them, though that could be fixed by adjusting the settings. And a feature in which Onfolio supposedly keeps track of Web searches simply never worked for me.
But these are minor woes. Onfolio works well and fills a real need. If you do a lot of Web research, it's worth the $30.
新软件帮你轻松保存搜索结果
如今，在网上使用Google或者其他搜索引擎的话，很容易搜到一大堆东西。但是，如果要想把找到的信息整理和保存起来，以供离线之后参考，就并非易事了，尤其是你需要进行大型研究的时候。
有些人选择把相关网页打印出来，但那样会耗费很多纸张和喷墨。也有人选择把重要的段落剪切、粘贴到文档文件中，但这是一种费时而笨拙的方法。还有人直接把网页当作文件保存到硬盘上，但这种方法依赖于你的操作方式和文件系统的性能，因此，将来可能很难找到并打开这些网页。
现在，位于马萨诸塞州坎布里奇的一家新公司Onfolio Inc.推出一款并不昂贵的软件，旨在解决这个问题。
这款与该公司名称相同的软件可以与流行的Internet Explorer浏览器完全兼容，帮助你迅速地保存完整页面、图片、文本片段以及其他材料，并让你将来能很快地找到它们。
Onfolio售价29.95美元，也可以在
www.onfolio.com网站上下载。这款软件要求Windows XP或Windows 2000系统，浏览器要达到Internet Explorer 5.5及更高版本。Onfolio专业版能帮你用搜索的材料制作个性化的报告，售价79.95美元。在购买Onfolio前，你可以先下载免费试用的版本。试用版具备所有功能，但在30天后就过期了。
我最近一直在测试这款软件，感觉很喜欢。尽管有些小毛病，但Onfolio还是做到了自己承诺的功能，并且大大改善了在网上进行研究的过程。我特别喜欢它的用户界面，非常整洁乾净，可以让用户有许多途径进行多种重要的工作，这样用户就能让产品适应自己的工作方式。
Onfolio软件是在Internet Explorer浏览器左侧有个特殊的面板，上面有三个主要部份。面板顶部是一个工具条，上面有些简单的命令图标。最底下的部份显示你搜索的信息如何整理到被称为collection的文件夹下或者被称为folder的子文件夹下。中间的一大块是网页、图像、文本和其他材料的列表，不管这些材料被你保存到哪个文件夹或子文件夹下了。 保存信息是很简单的。你只需要登陆一个感兴趣的页面，然后点击保存键就行了。在Onfolio面板顶部和浏览器主窗口的右上方都有保存键。
然后Onfolio就会弹出一个窗口，询问你是想把当前页面保存为一个链接，还是保存成"本机复件"。保存为链接意味著你将来要上网的时候才能浏览这个页面，而保存为"本机复件"意味著文件存在硬盘上了，能离线浏览。你也可以选择一个collection文件夹或folder子文件夹来保存页面，把自己对页面的评述加进去，随便取个名字，甚至可以给它插上颜色不同的小旗子。然后你点击"保存"选项，这个页面在Onfolio面板的列表上就会形成一个条目。
你也可以按F9键保存页面，或者在你想保存的页面上点击右键。
如果你仅想保存网页上的图片，你只需要点击右键，然后选择Capture image to Onfolio（保存图片到Onfolio上）选项。如果要保存一段文本，你先选中这些文字，然后点击右键，选择Capture snippet to Onfolio（保存文本到Onfolio上）选项。或者，你也可以把文本和图像拖动到Onfolio面板上。
Onfolio也可以让你从硬盘上、Microsoft Office之类的程序上以及其他Onfolio不兼容的网络浏览器上获取文件和文本。
为实现这个目标，你要使用一个名为Desktop Bar的模块，它的样子和Internet Explorer浏览器上的Onfolio面板类似，但功能各不相同。
在我的测试中，我成功地将包含各种网页链接、本机存储网页、文本和非网页文件的文件夹和子文件夹收集到一起。从网站上搜集到的格式化图表能够被完好地保存下来令我感到惊奇。
那么，你有了这么一大堆东西，应该怎么处理呢？如果你点击任何一个保存过了的文件，它就会立即出现在浏览器里。如果你搜集到了大量的材料，你可以使用Onfolio自带的搜索功能，迅速地找到任何一个文件中的词组或短语。
你还可以把材料发送到硬盘上的文件夹中，或者用电子邮件发送给别人，就直接从Onfolio上以各种形式发送。如果你使用专业版，你可以把材料转为个性化和格式化的报告。
那么Onfolio有什么缺点呢？在我进行测试时，我无法保存以Macromedia Flash形式存在的一些网页内容，包括那些Onfolio自己网站上的东西。另外，一些Onfolio生成的报告在我试图打开的时候被我的安全软件封锁了，尽管调整设置能够解决这个问题。还有，Onfolio用来跟踪网页搜索的功能对我来说从来就没起过作用。但这些都是小毛病。Onfolio挺管用，能够满足需要。如果你需要进行大量的网络研究，花30美元买它很值得。
