WebMate

Introduction | System Requirements
Setup and Run | Applet in Browsing Mode

Introduction

WebMate is a personal browsing and searching agent. It accompanies you when you use the Internet, and provides you with information it gathers based on your user profile, which you create as you browse the Internet and use WebMate.

Features

WebMate can dynamically set up many different resources, including search engines, on-line dictionaries, and on-line translation systems. Also, WebMate is programmed in Java, which makes it portable to all operating systems, and able to multi-thread.



WebMate Interfaces

WebMate consists of a standalone proxy and an applet controller.
Please note: WebMate is a prototype, and as such, needs to be used with its experimental status in mind. Users who have tested WebMate say there are two main areas where future programs could improve on this initial WebMate design.

  1. The first is speed--as you use WebMate, you may find it slow to respond at times. However, it is not uniformly slow, and generally runs as fast as your system can permit. (When WebMate is starting up, it takes some time for it to load all its news groups and other "resources." If you wish, you can prevent it from doing this by going into the "Edit" menu, selecting "Resources," and deleting the newsgroups it is preprogrammed to use. You can then enter in your own, or select and choose which groups you would like WebMate to use--either option will allow WebMate to begin running sooner than it otherwise would.)

  2. The other issue with WebMate that users have noticed is that it does not run equally well with all computer systems. While it can be loaded and run on any system, users here at CMU have had the best luck using WebMate on UNIX systems with direct access to an HTTP server.

Next Page: System Requirements


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