Version History

• [+] Automatically remove cookie consent banners: For Chromium-based and Edge-based check technologies, WebSite-Watcher can automatically accept cookies and remove cookie banners. This new feature works with cookie banners on many websites. It is optional and enabled by default. You can disable it in the program configuration. If a cookie banner cannot be removed automatically, right-click the bookmark in the main window, select "Browser", and accept cookies in that browser window.
• [+] Browser integration: Brave Origin is supported
• [x] Improved support for Cloudflare-protected pages
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [+] Great enhancement for Check-Macros: Use the new commands "SendKey", "SendText", and "SelectItem" to extend Check-Macros with keystroke automation. Works with both Chromium-based Check-Macros and Edge-based Check-Macros. See help file for detailed information.
• [x] Support for new variants of Cloudflare protections.
• [x] Improvements to automatic Cloudflare protection solving.
• [+] The check technology Browser/Edge can now solve Cloudflare protections
• [+] Cosmetic filters: The question mark (?) can be used as a wildcard in class names and ID names.
• [+] CSS based ignore filters and CSS based watch filters: The question mark (?) can be used as a wildcard in class names and ID names.
• [x] Filter Assistant: When creating CSS-based filters, the selected text is now used as the search text in the CSS selection window. This also works when CSS-based filters are created through the Text tab.
• [x] Many smaller UI text changes
• [x] Help system revised and expanded.
• [x] Each help topic includes a link to its online version, which can be automatically translated by your web browser if needed.
• [x] Many UI localizations updated.
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [+] LWA: WebClipper feature to archive selected text (via global keyboard shortcut or via WebSite-Watcher browser integration)
• [+] Browser integration: New menu item to add the selected text to Local Website Archive
• [+] Filter Assistant: New selection window when adding CSS based filters
• [+] Manual text filter: New toolbar command to add CSS based filters
• [+] Cosmetic filters: New method to find CSS definitions and to create cosmetic filters
• [+] Automatic detection and handling of truncated image downloads
• [x] Monitoring Cloudflare protected pages improved
• [x] Monitoring of large Excel files has been improved. WSW could hang when Excel sheets contained a very large number of empty rows or columns.
• [x] Performance improvements when monitoring large Excel spreadsheets.
• [x] Improved automatic assignment of PDF/Excel/Word plugins. In addition to the server log and file extensions, WSW checks the correct file content before the plugins are used.
• [x] Various improvements when checking PDF/Excel/Word files with Browser/Chromium and Browser/Edge.
• [x] Chromium Macros improved: More steps can be recorded
• [x] Edge Macros improved: More steps can be recorded
• [-] Plugin-System: Various bugs were fixed that could cause a crash when executing a plugin.
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [-] Fix to work around a Chromium timeout problem
• [x] Improved handling of Cloudflare protected pages
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [x] Improved support for Cloudflare protected pages
• [x] Many Chromium-related adjustments to provide improved compatibility with certain graphics cards and other system components
• [x] Detection of PDF file format could fail in some special cases
• [x] Downloading CSS files and images could be slow in some special cases
• [x] Login to X accounts could fail in rare cases
• [x] Checking bookmarks using the Chromium technology may, in rare cases, result in error logs
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [x] Support for Cloudflare protected pages improved
• [+] PDF Plugin: Completely new PDF engine to convert a PDF to text. WebSite-Watcher now uses the same PDF engine as Chromium based browsers which makes the PDF plugin compatible with more PDF files. WebSite-Watcher can now extract the same text content that you usually get with Copy/Paste.
• [x] Word/Excel Plugins improved
• [x] Check technology Chromium and Edge: Getting the source code via Print/PDF improved by using the new PDF engine. It also includes a screenshot of each page.
• [x] The alternative PDF plugin pdf-to-text has been ported to the new PDF engine.
• [x] Improved: Importing bookmarks that were exported with older versions
• [+] Plugins: The function Bookmark_SetProperty can now change the check technology (param#1: checktechnology, param#2: intern, chromium, chromium-incognito, edge, edge-incognito). See help for more details.
• [x] Advanced setup options: Added option to automatically install the license key for Local Website Archive
• [x] Improved timeout handling when saving images to disk
• [x] Monitoring binary files with the Chromium and Edge technologies improved
• [x] Monitoring large binary files improved, especially when a server does not send a file date or file size
• [x] Fixes an issue where checking huge files could cause a database crash
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [x] Workaround for a Windows bug that displays short flashing windows when checking bookmarks with the Chromium or Edge technology (this bug was introduced with one of the latest Windows updates and affects many software tools, including WebSite-Watcher).
• [x] Highlight changes: Improvements for more exact highlights within paragraphs
• [+] If a page uses CloudFront and cannot be monitored with the internal check technology, WebSite-Watcher will automatically use the Chromium technology
• [-] Download Manager: files could not be downloaded after certain circumstances
• [x] Download Manager: Improved file type detection based on the file content
• [x] Dialup/Hangup re-implemented for better compatibility. This function is now based on rasdial.exe which is part of Windows.
• [x] Plugins: the functions "Chr" and "Ord" work now with Unicode character codes
• [x] The AutoBackup window is no longer displayed when WebSite-Watcher is minimized or in the tray bar
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [x] Support for Cloudflare protected pages improved
• [x] Internal browser / Text view: smaller improvements and optimizations
• [x] Improved multi monitor support
• [+] New option to enable/disable the display of the number of bookmarks per virtual folder. Default value is off. Using this option can slow down WSW if you have a lot of bookmarks and many virtual folders with complex configurations. This option can be found under: Program configuration + Advanced + Folders
• [-] Fixed a problem on remote server configurations where checks could fail with a timeout error
• [-] Checking bookmarks with the technology "Browser: Edge" could crash under certain circumstances
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [x] Improved handling and conversion of Excel documents (better compatibility, conversion of some xlsx files failed).
• [+] New Backup/AutoBackup file format: The creation of backups is several times faster and less error-prone. The new file extension for backup files is ".wswpac". Restoring backups created with previous versions is still supported.
• [x] Context menu + Extras + Disable check: it's now possible to also re-enable permanently disabled bookmarks
• [x] Log entry about used proxy added to the bookmark check log (especially useful when using proxy rotation)
• [x] Improved detection of RSS/Atom feeds when a bookmark is monitored with the technologies "Browser/Chromium" or "Browser/Edge"
• [x] Moving databases to new location improved (File + Database + Move bookmark file)
• [x] Improved multi monitor support
• [x] Minor improvements and fixes when using multiple watch filters
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [+] New bookmark action "Scraper": The Scraper action will extract content and structured data from a monitored page and save it to a file on your hard disk. Output formats are XML, CSV or a tab delimited file. (this feature is only available in the Business Edition)
• [+] All checks with the internal check technology or downloads are now executed in separate processes, hanging downloads or winsock operations will no longer cause side effects in the main application. This improves stability, especially when WebSite-Watcher is running 24/7.
• [+] Tons of internal code reviews, improvements and performance optimizations. Especially when processing larger pages which can be multiple times faster now.
• [+] Browser-Engine: Text-View. This engine displays the page content in a very simplified text version. It does not load the overhead of the Chromium browser and uses fewer resources and memory. Can be used if you run WebSite-Watcher 24/7 on a server and do not use the internal browser to read bookmarks. (Main menu + Tools + Browser-Engine).
• [+] New command line option: /NoBrowser - Does not load the Chromium browser and uses an alternative, lightweight text view instead. Recommended if you are only starting WebSite-Watcher to perform a check run.
• [+] Check technology Browser/Chromium and Browser/Edge: New option "Simulate user interaction". You can activate this option if a page requires user interaction (e.g. keyboard input or mouse movements) in order to load correctly. Only activate this option if necessary, as the page will take longer to load in this case.
• [+] Bookmark action "Add to LWA": new option "Delete pages when bookmark is deleted". If this option is activated and you delete a bookmark in WSW, all archived pages of this bookmark are also automatically deleted in LWA.
• [x] Chromium Macros improved: More steps can be recorded
• [x] Edge Macros improved: More steps can be recorded
• [x] Plugins: The function "ExecuteAndWait" introduces a maximum timeout of 300 seconds (5 minutes). If the executed program is not finished after 300 seconds, then the result of this function is -1 and the execution of the plugin is continued. However, the specified program continues to run and is not terminated by WebSite-Watcher.
• [x] Plugins: Aborting a check run will also immediately abort the function "ExecuteAndWait" (however, the program will continue to run)
• [x] Plugins: The function "DeleteHtmlTags" returns much better results (eg. it also removes style definitions, decodes encoded characters, etc)
• [x] Bookmark function "Merge pages" improved (could not find new pages under certain circumstances)
• [+] New plugin functions: Beep, ReplaceChar
• [x] Chromium/Browser: Checking bookmarks with frames and IFRAMES improved
• [x] Edge/Browser: Checking bookmarks with frames and IFRAMES improved
• [x] Improved checking of PDF files with the technology "Browser: Edge"
• [x] The embedded Chromium browser uses a new API layer that required lots of internal changes. This new version offers better compatibility with several websites.
• [-] Some memory leaks fixed
• Many minor improvements and fixes

• [+] Advanced connection rules: If the URL field is enclosed in quotation marks, it is treated as a top-level domain (for example: "domain.com")
• [x] AutoWatch Countdown calculation improved
• [x] Improved checking of PDF files with the technology Browser/Edge (especially when a file has to be downloaded with Save-As)
• [x] The portable edition can now work with the WSW app
• [+] Automatic detection and termination of hanging Chromium processes
• [x] Performance improvements when processing pages
• Minor improvements and fixes

• [x] Chromium Macros improved: More steps can be recorded
• [x] Edge Macros improved: More steps can be recorded
• [x] Exact highlight method improved to avoid some false positives
• [-] Opening archived pages via Ctrl+F4 could fail on some systems
• [-] Sorting the bookmark list by file size could fail with huge file sizes (eg. with big file sizes of binary files)
• [x] Improved compatibility with external installations of Local Website Archive
• [x] Chromium/Browser: Incognito mode improved
• [+] New log that shows the sent e-mails
• Minor improvements and fixes

• [x] Improved detection of RSS/Atom feeds
• [x] Improved handling of cloudflare protected RSS/Atom feeds
• [-] Fix some conflicts with the new Twitter x.com domain

• [+] Edge Macros
• [+] Bookmark action "Script": new command "DisableCheck" in minutes (eg. DisableCheck=5). If an update is detected, the checks of this bookmark are paused for the specified number of minutes.
• [x] Twitter pages can be monitored via RSS when using the x.com domain
• [x] Chromium Check Macros improved
• [x] Improved multi monitor support
• [x] Improved checking of PDF files with the technology Browser/Edge (for example to monitor Cloudflare protected PDF files)
• [-] Running scripts: Some commands could cause a crash when no bookmark database was opened
• [-] Plugins: Fix possible conflict when combining shared/private plugins
• [-] AutoBackup could crash under certain circumstances when WebSite-Watcher is in tray bar
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [+] Bookmark action "Run program": New option "Run minimized"
• [x] Bookmark check: Huge performance improvement when processing huge CSS files
• [-] Plugins: The function GetComparisonInfo did not return correct values.
• [x] Forum plugins improved
• [x] Plugin IDE: Smaller improvements when debugging a plugin script
• [x] Minor improvements and optimizations to the new plugin scripting engine
• [x] CloudSync: Synchronization via rclone improved
• [x] Improved handling of IFRAMEs
• [x] Filtering engine no longer uses title tag from svg images
• [x] Convert Instagram to RSS: compatible with the latest Instagram page source
• [-] Filter Assistant (and other windows with embedded Chromium browser) could be hidden behind the main window under rare circumstances
• [-] Plugins: Sleep command did not work correctly
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [+] New check technology: Edge/Browser. You can try to use this technology when a server detects the other technologies as bot.
• [+] Check technology Screenshot: Edge can be used as browser engine.
• [+] The Plugin system has a completely new scripting engine. The new scripting engine has a new syntax. For compatibility reasons, plugins created with the old plugin system will continue to work for the time being. However, new plugins can only be created with the new plugin system.
• [+] The check technology "Chromium" has a new alternative method to get the page content: "Collect". This method analyzes all transferred documents and collects them to a single page. This method might be useful if WebSite-Watcher cannot resolve IFRAMES or other embedded elements.
• [+] Twitter/X lists can be monitored via RSS feed
• [+] When you insert new bookmarks, WebSite-Watcher first searches for duplicates in the selected folder, then, if not found, in all folders.
• [+] WebSite-Watcher ignores the soft-hyphen character (Unicode character U+00AD) in web pages. This character could also be misused to trigger updates in tools such as WebSite-Watcher.
• [+] New script commands: StringToFile, FileToString, MinutesAgo, HoursAgo, Now. (description and example see help file)
• [x] Chromium/Browser: When using the option to get the page content via PDF, WebSite-Watcher removes all CSS before printing the content to PDF. This produces more reliable results and prevents truncated text.
• [+] Proxy exclusion list: If a specified domain starts with a dot, then no proxy will be used for all sub-domains. Eg: .domain.com will not use a proxy for news.domain.com, download.domain.com etc, but will use a proxy for domain.com
• [x] Chromium Check Macros improved
• [x] Improved automatic detection of character sets (if they are not defined in pages or server logs)
• [x] Download Manager: Improved handling of some Cloudflare protected files
• [-] Unicode characters were not sent correctly in Pushover messages
• [-] Check technology "Chromium / Browser": Proxy exclusion list did not work correctly
• [-] Executing plugins could fail under certain circumstances
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [x] Advanced connection rules: Modifications for fixed rules were not saved. It's now possible to adjust fixed rules via program tweaks. The names of the tweaks are: crTwitterPauseSec, crInstagramConnections, crInstagramPauseSec, crFacebookConnections, crFacebookPauseSec
• [-] Check by screenshot: WebSite-Watcher could crash when comparing images under rare circumstances
• [x] Improved compatibility with external installations of Local Website Archive (the included version of LWA is not affected)
• [x] Improved handling when using Chromium/Browser and Chromium Macros in Incognito mode
• [+] Opening archived pages in LWA will remember the last sort order
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [+] Check-by-screenshot: WebSite-Watcher will detect and alert an error when a server sends an empty page
• [+] Toolbar button "Browse" can be configured to open the online version in the external browser
• [+] Browser toolbar: "Version" menu contains new item "External browser (online page)"
• [+] Browser toolbar: New optional toolbar button "External browser (online page)"
• [+] Export bookmarks to CSV file (Tools + Import/Export + Export to: Excel/CSV)
• [+] Cosmetic filters work with the TBODY tag
• [+] New tweak: AutoWatchGuard=1 (checks every 5 minutes whether AutoWatch is running. If AutoWatch is disabled, then it will be started automatically. Useful if you sometimes need to disable AutoWatch and forget to enable it again.)
• [+] CloudSync via rclone: Special Debug-Mode that will help to identify problems or bugs of rclone. This mode will show the results after running rclone.exe and waits for a keypress to continue.
• [+] Advanced connection rules: fixed rules that are created automatically by WebSite-Watcher for Twitter/Facebook/Instagram can be adjusted (you can increase the limits, but not remove them). These fixed rules are displayed in blue color.
• [x] Improved Multi-Monitor support
• [x] Improved high dpi support when recording check macros
• [+] Advanced setup options: Pre-define options for Browser-Integration, Update-Ticker and Sounds (see help file for more details)
• [x] LWA: Improved handling of embedded YouTube videos
• [x] LWA: Adding tiled view from WSW did not always work correctly
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [+] Check-by-screenshot: "Ignore filters" to ignore certain parts of a page
• [x] Technology check-by-screenshot improved
• [-] Sync with app: Fix some incompatibilities with the latest Dropbox API changes
• [x] Improved monitoring of PDF files
• [x] Improved high dpi support
• [x] Clicking a link to a binary file in the first browser tab no longer opens a new tab before downloading the file
• [x] Open page in external browser: improved handling to bring external browser into foreground
• New hardware requirements: Due to new requirements of the Chromium browser, the minimum Windows version is Windows 10. Older versions such as Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 are no longer supported (WebSite-Watcher can no longer be executed on these operating systems).
• Smaller improvements and fixes

• [x] Instagram RSS feed conversion supports latest version of Instagram (Meta has made internal changes to Instagram pages, which are now supported by this version of WebSite-Watcher)
• [x] Improved high dpi support
• [x] Cosmetic filter / automatic cookie class detection: huge performance improvements
• [x] Technology check-by-screenshot improved
• [x] If the special filters "Watch all changes in link addresses" or "Watch all changes in image addresses" are used, then defined ignore filters are now applied to the extracted addresses
• [x] Performance improvements when loading bigger bookmark databases
• Smaller improvements and fixes

• [x] Improved compatibility with password protected proxies
• [x] Improved WebDAV support
• [x] Improved detection when only posts were removed from RSS feeds
• [+] Bookmark note: Open URLs with Ctrl+Click
• [+] Shortcut can be defined for "Send page by mail"
• [x] Plugins: stability improvements
• [x] Plugins: runtime errors are now added to the check log
• [x] Browser integration for Edge improved
• [x] Browser integration: The button is no longer displayed for electron based applications
• [x] Improved multi-monitor support
• [x] Regex engine: improved look-ahead and look-behind support
• [x] Sync with app: Phone Mode improved to prevent horizontal scrolling on the phone
• [-] Bookmark checks could produce timeouts under certain circumstances if Windows was running a very long time without a restart
• [-] Browser size was not saved under certain circumstances
• [-] Test filter: synchronous horizontal scrolling didn't work in previous version
• [-] Some windows could be placed outside the monitor under rare circumstances
• [x] LWA: Add via "Paste from clipboard": Images can be pasted
• [x] LWA: Notes: Open URLs with Ctrl+Click
• [-] LWA: Sorting was not saved between sessions
• Smaller fixes and improvements

• [x] Improved detection of PDF files when checked with the technology Chromium/Browser
• [x] Improved behavior when a page contains broken character encodings
• [-] Reading the license key could fail under rare circumstances
• [-] For some bookmarks everything was highlighted as new under rare circumstances
• Smaller fixes and improvements

WebSite-Watcher was ported to a new development system and contains tons of internal improvements and optimizations.

Important info before updating to v23:

• Starting with v23, WebSite-Watcher is only available as 64-bit version. The last 32-bit version is v22.3
• Databases saved with v23 cannot be opened with previous versions of WebSite-Watcher. If you plan to downgrade, it's recommended to keep a database backup of the previous version.
• Removed functionality: Newsgroups (NNTP protocol). If you still have some newsgroups you want to monitor, you can install a previous version as portable edition and use this installation for Newsgroups.

Most important changes:

• [+] Wizard for adding new bookmark re-implemented (contains much more logic and also detects available RSS feeds)
• [+] Local Website Archive is now installed automatically with WebSite-Watcher and must not be maintained and updated separately
• [x] Improved integration of Local Website Archive
• [+] Mastodon pages supported (simply add a Mastodon page via the New-bookmark-Wizard in the toolbar)
• [+] Proxy Rotation: Change the used proxy with each check run (Business Edition only)
• [+] Dark Mode: The main window can be displayed in dark mode
• [+] Internal browser/Dark Mode: Checked bookmarks can optionally be converted and displayed in dark mode
• [+] Internal browser: Send page by e-mail uses now the configured SMTP server (an external e-mail client with MAPI support is no longer required)
• [x] Chromium Check Macros improved
• [+] New filter: Minimum percentage of changes
• [+] Check-by-screenshot: New filter "Minimum percent of changes" + "Test filter" in bookmark properties
• [x] Improved detection and handling of Cloudflare protected pages
• [+] Support of Cloudflare protected RSS/Atom feeds
• [+] Support of Cloudflare protected PDF/Word/Excel files
• [+] Synchronization with the WebSite-Watcher App: sync via WebDAV supported
• [+] CloudSync can use the tool "rclone" to synchronize bookmarks between PCs
• [x] CloudSync: performance improvement (up to 6 times faster)
• [+] CloudSync: options for synchronizing downloaded images
• [x] CloudSync: improved and easier configuration
• [x] Integrated AD Blocker improved
• [+] Scripting language: new built-in functions "IntToStr" and "StrToInt"
• [x] RSS feeds: Improved handling of feed items without title
• [x] RSS feeds: More media content can be extracted
• [+] New program tweak: CheckSortedBookmarkList=name (Sorts the bookmarks by name before adding them to the checking queue)
• [-] Checking PDF files by file date or by file size could fail under certain circumstances
• [x] Most third party components that we bought in the past (many of them were no longer developed or maintained) were replaced with self-developed components.
• Many performance improvements
• Tons of other small changes and improvements that we did not add to this log

Other Notes:

• Engine for regular expressions replaced. All regular expressions that were created with the filter assistant will still work without problems. If you created regular expressions manually using some advanced techniques (not listed in the WebSite-Watcher manual), then it's recommended to test your regular expressions if they still work.
• New CloudSync format: You have to backup to the sync-folder the first time you run CloudSync to have a new base for synchronization
• New backup format: WebSite-Watcher cannot restore backups that were created with a previous version. It's only possible to restore backups that were made with WebSite-Watcher 2023 or higher
• Import bookmarks from ZIP files: It's only possible to import bookmarks that were exported with WebSite-Watcher 22.2 or higher
• Scripting language: parameters for the CloudSync command have been changed, it might be required to update scripts