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:
- 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.
- Search button. Click this button to start an exhaustive search of the web
site. Some notes on searching are listed below.
- case is ignored (e.g., "mexico" will find "Mexico"),
- partial strings are matched (e.g., "mex" will find "Mexico" and "Texmex")
- special characters count (e.g., "méxico" will find "México", but not Mexico)
- Go button. This button will take you to the URL selected in the site list.
- Language menu. This pop-up menu chooses the language for the interface.
- Help button. This button will take you to this page.
- Status line. Helpful messages are displayed here, such as search progress.
- 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.
- 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).