What are filter settings (Overview)

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To detect updates, WebSite-Watcher compares the text content of the new version of a page with the text content of the old version of a page. If these contents are different, WebSite-Watcher alerts an update. If a page contains changing parts (for example a daily date, some kind of advertisement, ...), an update would be reported with each check. A filter can ignore specific parts of a page to prevent false update notifications.

 

If a filter is defined, WebSite-Watcher will compare the filtered text content of the new version with the filtered text content of the old version of a page to detect updates.

 

Filter definitions are stored in the bookmark properties. The button "Test filter" is available on various places and opens a dialog that displays the filtered text content of the new version and the filtered text content of the old version.

 

filter-assistant

Filter types

1.Automatically created Ignore filters (Auto-Filter) filter-auto5
The Auto-Filter feature is a self learning filter system and provides an easy and comfortable way to automatically create a set of Ignore filters based on highlighted changes. You should only call this filter when you get a false positive, for example caused by a changing date, a changing visitor counter, etc. Don't call this feature when a page contains any other highlighted news or changes.

 

2.Ignore filters filter_ignore2
This filter must be created manually and ignores specified parts of a page, for example a text with changing numbers, a daily date or everything from the page beginning to a defined text.

 

3.Watch filters filter_watch2
This filter must be created manually and watches specified parts of a page and ignores everything else. It can for example be used to only monitor the software version number on a download page.

 

4.Special Filters
WebSite-Watcher has also some built-in filter options that must only be turned on/off, for example to sort all words in a page.

 

In most cases it works best to define a set of Ignore filters, either with the Auto-Filter system or manually via the Filter-Assistant.

How to create Ignore/Watch filters

 

1.Using the Auto-Filter system
Auto-Filters can be created directly in the internal browser by clicking the filter-auto5 toolbar button. This button is also available in the "Page" sub menu of the browser toolbar.

 

2.Using the Filter-Assistant
The Filter-Assistant can be started directly in the internal browser (simply hold the Alt key pressed while selecting the text you want to filter) or in the bookmark properties (by clicking the "Filter-Assistant" button). The Filter-Assistant lets you create Ignore/Watch filters interactively in a very comfortably way. Main steps are to select the text you want to filter and then to classify the selected text (eg. the text a permanent text, a text with changing numbers, etc).

 

3.Create the filter manually
Alternatively to the Auto-Filter system and the Filter Assistant you can create Ignore/Watch filters manually with simple wildcard definitions and regular expressions.

Cosmetic Filter

A further way to simplify the page (before WebSite-Watcher applies Ignore/Watch filters) are Cosmetic Filters. They will completely delete unwanted content from a page and produce a new page which is then processed by WebSite-Watcher.