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Using HouseSpider 4.0

Keith L. Jackson, Friday September 10, 1999

Slightly modified and published on SourceForge by Hans Fr. Nordhaug, January 2001

HouseSpider is a Java applet that adds indexing and search capability to a web site. The example above is set up to search through the documentation for HouseSpider version 3.1 (this version) - which isn't very interesting since it consist of only two pages.

There are eight elements to its user interface:
  1. Text input box. Enter your search term here. As you type a few characters, the keyword list will jump to the matching keyword and display its associated URLs. If there is no match keyword, HouseSpider will search the index-file for matches.
  2. Search button. Click this button to start an exhaustive search of the web site. Some notes on searching are listed below.
  3. Go button. This button will take you to the URL selected in the site list.
  4. Language menu. This pop-up menu chooses the language for the interface.
  5. Help button. This button will take you to this page.
  6. Status line. Helpful messages are displayed here, such as search progress.
  7. Keyword list. This is an index of the web site. The web site curator places selected terms here that visitors to the site may be interested in. You can select a term directly from this list and its associated URLs will be displayed in the link list. If you type a few letters in the text input box, the matching keyword is automatically selected. If you type in a term that has has not been indexed by the site's curator, no keyword will be selected but you may perform a search instead.
  8. Site list. Web pages associated with the current keyword or search term are displayed here. You may select a term and click "Go" to go to the link. If a link is selected, its corresponding URL is displayed in the browser's status line (just like when your mouse is over a link in a normal web page).

Valid HTML 4.0!