Create Ignore / Watch filter manually

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Alternatively to the Auto-Filter system and the Filter Wizard you can create all Ignore/Watch filters manually. Enter one filter expression per line. All filter definitions are case insensitive, they are converted to lowercase internally.

The button "New Ignore Filter" (or "New Watch Filter") opens a help dialog where you can enter and validate a filter expression. With the button "Test selected line" you can validate the active line. The "Test filter" button tests the whole filter by comparing the filtered content of the new page with the filtered content of the old page.

Each line can contain one of the following elements:

Static text phrase
You can use that type if you want to ignore specific phrases in a page.
Text with a Wildcard
Filters with Wildcards consist typically of a start text, an end text and any text between them. The * character (Wildcard) stands for the text between the defined start/end markers.
Regular Expression
With Regular Expressions you can define complex search and filter expressions which must be placed in special function names, for example "regex(....)".

Wildcard filter

WebSite-Watcher supports 3 types of Wildcard filters with the restriction that only one Wildcard is allowed per filter expression:

*EndText
This form filters everything from the page beginning to the first occurrence of "EndText".
For example: *Daily News
StartText*EndText
This form filters all text areas which begin with "StartText" and end with "EndText".
For example: Downloads:*Publisher
StartText*
This form filters everything from the last occurrence of "StartText" to the end of the page.
For example: Users online*

Regular Expressions

WebSite-Watcher supports PERL5 compatible Regular Expressions which can be used to define complex filter expressions. Regular Expressions must be placed in one of the following functions:

regex( ... )
Filters the given regular expression
For example: regex(\d+ downloads)
StartToRegex( ... )
Filters everything from the page beginning to the first occurrence of the given Regular Expression
For example: StartToRegex(\d+ visitors)
RegexToRegex( ... , ... )
Filters everything between two Regular Expressions
For example: RegexToRegex(Downloads\: \d+,License\:)
RegexToEnd( ... )
Filters everything from the last occurrence of the given Regular Expression to the end of the page
For example: RegexToEnd(\d+ users online)

The order of filters is important!

Please keep in mind that filters are always executed from top to bottom. If the filter in the first line filters a part of the content, then this content is no longer available for filters in following lines.

Example:

You have defined the following two ignore filters:

   Watcher
   WebSite-Watcher

The first line filters "Watcher". The second line will never find a match since "Watcher" is no longer available after executing the first filter. The correct order for these two filters would be:

   WebSite-Watcher
   Watcher

Here the first line filters all words "WebSite-Watcher". The second line can filter all remaining words "Watcher".

Outdated filters

Outdated ignore filters are detected and deleted automatically after some time when they no longer find any matches. There's no need to maintain and delete these kind of filters manually.

Outdated watch filters are not deleted automatically, you have to maintain these kind of filters manually.

Related topics

Open the bookmark properties
Click the "Filter-Assistant" button (or the text "Manual text filter")
Enter the filter expressions
To test your filter, click the button "Test selected line" or the button "Test filter" to test the whole filter settings (not required, but recommended)