Frequently Asked Questions

How do I order a copy of WebCompiler?

Jump to the Ordering Page by clicking here.

How do I call an external executable?

Use a link of the form <A HREF=">program.exe"> (note the > before the program name which tells WebCompiler that it is an external executable). You can put path information in front of the executable if you want to. Note that the external executable is expected to be in the same directory as the WebCompiler presentation that you have created, or if you've specified path information then in that relative directory below where the WebCompiler presentation is.

How do I restrict my whole presentation to just those with the correct password.

Put a password on the "Home" page.

What did you use to make this Demo Web?

Microsoft FrontPage.

Is there any support for Active Server Pages

No. Something is needed to generate the pages, and there is no way WebCompiler can know what to do.

What does the end user need to be able to use the presentation?

Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or above, running on a 32bit version of Windows (95, 98 or NT4 or above) on the Intel platform.

Does Internet Explorer 4 have to be the user's default browser?

No.

What if the user doesn't have IE4 installed?

He will get a message telling him he requires it to use the presentation.

Do you have a Unix or Mac or Alpha version of this product?

No, Microsoft Windows on the 32bit Intel Platform only. We have no plans to produce anything for other platforms. Sorry.

Do you have a version that works with Netscape?

No. We have no plans to produce one.

Do I need a patent license from Unisys to distribute presentations that include Gifs?

No. The executable you create does not include any patented code. To display Gifs, WebCompiler uses functionality that already exists inside IE4 and the Operating System.

Do I need any further license to distribute presentations I create. Are there any further royalties to pay?

No. Providing you own a licensed copy of WebCompiler you are free to distribute the presentations you create with it in any way you wish, without further payment.

I've lost the source files for my presentation. Is there any way to decompile the presentation to get back to the source?

No, afraid not. Whilst it would be technically possible to do so it would involve an awful lot of work which we don't intend to undertake.

How secure is the Password Protection on pages?

We wouldn't like to try to reverse engineer it, but it isn't uncrackable, very little is. It isn't as secure as say 128bit DES encryption. One advantage that WebCompiler presentations have is that they are all different. Also, the same presentation compiled on different versions of the WebCompiler compiler will be different, and we will modify subsequent versions in such a way that makes a generalised "crack" that will work across different versions unlikely. That said you should not consider it totally secure.

What is the maximum presentation size?

2 Gigabytes.

If I create a large presentation does it mean my user needs a lot of memory to run it?

No. Windows doesn't work like that. Windows/WebCompiler will only load as much of the executable as it needs to get started, and then fetches other parts as it needs them, disposing of parts it no longer needs.

How do I let the user print a page in "Cleanscreen" mode, when there is no menu or Print button?

Use the #WCPRINT special link.

If the user uses the right-button popup menu to add a page to his "favorites" why doesn't it work when he calls it in Internet Explorer?

Because Internet Explorer has no way to know where the data is. It is compiled into the executable you create and Internet Explorer has no knowledge of that.

Why no JAVA support?

Because IE4 deals with JAVA in a unique and non-standard way. According to Microsoft "Java is somewhat different, it bypasses urlmon and talks to wininet directly". Urlmon is one of IE4's core DLLs that asks WebCompiler for data when it needs it, and is how WebCompiler "feeds" the HTML, graphics etc.. Because of this WebCompiler simply never gets asked for the data, but somewhat worse it causes a crash in Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine when it can't find it. We are hoping that Microsoft will change this in a future release, but even when they do it will still mean that users will need the updated browser (IE5, IE6 or ...), so for the foreseeable future using JAVA is not feasible. This may be something to do with licensing issues between Sun and Microsoft, we don't know.

What about PlugIns, or ActiveX, are they supported?

The only answer we can give is "maybe". It depends on how the plugin or ActiveX control requests its data. If it goes through the standard protocols to get its data then it may work. If it doesn't then there is no chance it will work. Even then it may be dependent on the way that the end-user has both his system and the Plugin configured. The only advice we can offer is to try it and see. But even if it does work we would suggest you are very thorough in testing it in all the scenarios in which your presentation will be used.

Searching in a large presentation can take some time. Why is this? Can it be speeded up?

WebCompiler has a lot to do. It has to go through every page in the presentation, uncompressing it and then applying the search against it. This naturally takes some time. For this reason we have made it multithreaded, so you can continue moving around the presentation while searching is occurring, and in fact you can also move to items found early in the search while the search continues. At the end of the search the found pages will be sorted into alphabetical order.

Items in framed pages that are found during a search don't appear in the frameset they were designed for. Is there any way around this?

Possibly. There is no way from the HTML for the page that has been found during a search that WebCompiler can know what Frameset, and what Frame within the Frameset, the page is intended for. There is no reference within the document's HTML pointing to the Frame it is supposed to go in. It is one of the downsides of using Frames.

However, you can set on the Compiler Options dialog the name of a Frame to target when a page is selected from the search results. If the current document contains Frames then that name will be used as the target Frame in which to load the page, providing it isn't itself a FrameSet page. If this still doesn't select the correct Frame because the name is wrong or the frame doesn't exist then the page will open in a separate instance. This may cause scripts and similar to fail if they attempt to reference parent frames or similar, because they just may not exist.

Can I stop certain pages (like FrameSet pages for example) from being found during a search?

Yes. Include a Robots Meta Tag to prevent the page being index. The tag you need is

<Meta Name="Robots" content="NOINDEX">

Can I just disable parts of the right-mouse button menus that pop up, rather than disabling the menus completely? I'd just like to disable "View Source" for example.

Afraid not. Microsoft simply haven't provided that ability, it's all or nothing. Maybe they will in future.

Details of my presentation (like Favorites and cached passwords for example) are obviously held on the user's computer. A user is asking if they can be got rid of?

They are held in the Registry. To cause them to be deleted, run the presentation and select the File/Close menu option WHILE HOLDING DOWN the Ctrl key. The Registry entries for the presentation will be deleted and the presentation will close. The user will lose all his favorites and will have to re-enter any Userid's and Passwords if he runs the presentation again.

My presentation has multiple different passwords for different areas. One of my users has different passwords with marginally different Userids. Now as he goes from one protected page to another he keeps getting asked for the passwords, because it has cached the last userid he entered, which doesn't apply to all pages. How can I sort this out?

Decide on one UserId and generate and issue all the page passwords using that. You might want to get the user to clear the records of the presentation (see above) so next time he runs it he is "starting afresh".

"Favorites" doesn't seem to work when I'm designing, but it does when the presentation is compiled. "History" works all the time. Why?

Favorites are stored in the Registry. Each compiled presentation has a unique key that it uses to store this detail, but that key isn't available until the presentation is compiled. The history is stored internally and lost each time.

How do I let the user exit from "CleanScreen" mode?

Use a link that says

    <A HREF=#WCEXIT>Exit this presentation</A>

(in fact any navigation to that bookmark will cause the presentation to terminate, so you could attach it to an image, or a script etc.)

I keep all my images in a sibling directory off the directory the homepage is in, so WebCompiler isn't picking them up. Is there anything I can do to save reorganising it all.

Yes. Specify that directory on the "Directories" page of the Compiler Options dialog.

How do I remove the password from a page?

Use the Compiler options dialog. Go to the Page/Directory Protection tab, right-click on the key and select "Delete".

Can I use a CGI script to respond to form data?

No, WebCompiler doesn't know internally what to do with Perl/C/whatever. You could probably reference a CGI script on a server somewhere that did support Perl, using the http:// protocol, but you need to think if it would be a good idea, it would require the user to have an active Intermet connection.

You may be able to do what you want using the built-in Form Processing capabilities.

I'm getting a page saying a FrontPage Extension is required.

You've either included a FrontPage component that needs to be running on a server that is running the FrontPage extensions (WebCompiler can't support those obviously), or you're trying to process a From and you've forgotten to set the Action and it's using the FrontPage default (which requires the extensions).

My form replacements aren't working, any ideas?

They are case sensitive - i.e. Name is not the same as name - maybe that's it?

My Logo and Splash Screen aren't showing up. What could be wrong?

The usual cause for this is because the bitmaps aren't in the directories that are being included in the compilation. Those images must be in one of the directories that are being included, either the directory the "Home" page is in, or a subdirectory of it, or one of the additional directories that you have specified with the "Directories" tab of the Compiler Options dialog. Note that the custom icon (if you have one) unlike the logo and splash screens doesn't have to be in one of the "included" directories.

I've got my license DLL, but the About Box still shows as "your license details will appear here..."

Your license details only show in compiled presentations, not at design time. Any presentations you compiled before you had the DLL will need to be recompiled.

Can I "UNSTACK" form data

Yes by doing a "STACK" with the same stack name reference, but no variables to be stacked.

"Print all linked documents" is always greyed out. Why?

This behavior is controlled by IE4 and not really by WebCompiler. It can occur if Content Advisor is enabled on the end user's PC. This behavior is by design. When Content Advisor is enabled, you can save or print a Web page only after it passes through Content Advisor.

I can't understand why but the link <A href="javascript:history.go(-1)"> &lt;back</A> seems not to work

It's because the JavaScript implementation in IE4 appears to want to use the standard "history" maintained by IE4, and kind of assumes that it's IE4 that will do it. It then gets confused when it finds that it isn't a stand-alone instance of IE4 that it is running in. Unfortunately we can't see what we can do about it. You'll need to use an alternative technique to implement GoBack (i.e. hard code the page URL rather than use history.go).

Can I distribute Internet Explorer?