Quickbrowse
Why Didn't I Think of That?
Jim Fox
The Internet has certainly placed a wealth of information at our fingertips. News and information junkies can now get their daily news fix right online. Marc Fest, a freelance news correspondent used to visit about 20 or so newspaper and magazine sites on a regular basis. He soon realized he was spending more time pointing, clicking and waiting for pages to load than he was reading the news. It occurred to him that scanning all those papers could be accelerated greatly by stitching them together inside a single web page that he could then scroll in one fell swoop from top to bottom. Unfortunately, there was no such product that did exactly this, so he created one - Quickbrowse.
With Quickbrowse, you can define a list of web pages that you would like to browse, much like you create your list of bookmarks now. The only difference is that once Quickbrowse is activated, it retrieves all of the web pages and stitches them together, allowing you to view them all on the same page one on top of the other. This is much more convenient than having to load and view each page individually.
Quickbrowse is not a browser plug-in, it is a browser service. The first thing you must do is visit the Quickbrowse web page and register as a new user. Registration is free, all you need to provide is your e-mail address and a password. Don't worry, their privacy policy states that they will not sell or disclose any e-mail address or other user data.
Once you log in, you can choose from a set of default lists such as the Washington Post, Entertainment, Comics, Shopping or Travel to name a few. Load one of these lists or create your own list of web pages. Once you have your list loaded, click the Quickbrowse button and let it do its thing. It takes several minutes to gather all your web pages and stitch them together but during this time there is no input required from you. Each list you define can be saved and recalled again with one click of the mouse. When the process is complete you are presented with one "Masterpage" with all the requested pages linked together.
It is not necessary to visit the Quickbrowse site each time. Once you have a collection of sites you like, you can save it like a standard bookmark in your browser and recall it from there just like any other bookmark. Another nice feature is the ability to have your "Masterpage" e-mailed to you. Quickbrowse will go out and collect your web pages each day and have them waiting for you in your mailbox when you log on in the morning (or any other time of the day that you specify).
There are a few things you should be aware of:
- The Quickbrowse user interface relies heavily on JavaScript and Cookies. Your browser must allow all these so you can use Quickbrowse.
- There are some sites, like MyYahoo, using a cookie-based user authentication method. You currently can't quickbrowse such sites.
- Quickbrowse may not properly display sites that rely on the following: JavaScript; Java Applets; cascading style sheets; Macromedia and other plug-ins.
This is a work in progress and the author is constantly adding new features and incorporating bug fixes. I am sure many of the limitations mentioned above will also be addressed in future upgrades to the program.
People have been known to include everything from news content to eBay auctions to daily stock market information in their Quickbrowse page. The potentials are endless. If you have a series of web pages you like to visit on a regular basis, check out Quickbrowse. It will definitely save you time and make your life easier.
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