What are filter settings (Overview)
To detect updates, WebSite-Watcher compares the content of the new version of a page with the 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 ad, ...), an update would be reported with each check. With a filter you can ignore specific parts of a page to prevent false update notifications.
If a filter is defined, WebSite-Watcher will compare the filtered content of the new version with the filtered content of the old version of a page to detect updates.
Filter settings are defined in the bookmark properties where you can also see the button "Test filter". This button opens a dialog which displays the filtered content of the new version and the filtered content of the old version.
Automatically created Ignore filters (Auto-Filter)
The Auto-Filter system is a self learning filter system and provides an easy and comfortable way to create a set of Ignore filters automatically based on highlighted changes. You should call this filter only when you get a false positive (for example caused by a changing date, a changing visitor counter, etc.), but not if a page contains any other highlighted news or changes.
Manually defined an Ignore filters (Ignore userdefined strings)
This filter ignores a specified part of a page, for example a text with changing numbers ("You are visitor number 8234"), a daily date or everything from the page beginning until the text "Daily News".
Manually defined a Watch filters (Watch userdefined strings)
This filter watches a specified part of a page instead of ignoring it. It is a watch-and-ignore-everything-else filter and can be used to watch for example only the version number of a software.
- Special Filters
WebSite-Watcher has also some predefined filter options which must only be checked or unchecked. These filter options work for the whole page and not for specified parts like Ignore/Watch filters.
In most cases it works best to define a set of Ignore filters, either with the Auto-Filter system or manually via the Filter-Wizard.
- Using the Auto-Filter system
The Auto-Filter system is a self learning filter system and provides an easy and comfortable way to create a set of Ignore filters automatically based on highlighted changes. You should call this filter only when you get a false positive (for example caused by a changing date, a changing visitor counter, etc.), but not if a page contains any other highlighted news or changes.
Using the Filter Wizard
The Filter Wizard lets you create a filter interactively in a very comfortably way. Using the Wizard is an easy task and consists of two steps: firstly you have to select the text you want to ignore/watch and then, secondly, select the type of the filter you want to create (Eg. "the selected text is a text with changing numbers", or "the selected text is a date").
- Create the filter manually
Alternatively to the Auto-Filter system and the Filter Wizard, you can create an Ignore/Watch filter manually with simple Wildcards and/or Regular Expressions.