Getting help

Setting browser preferences

Browser appearance

By default, SCOhelp displays the Navigation, Location, and Personal toolbars at the top of the browser window.

To hide these elements, toggle the following:

Link behavior

On color monitors, hyperlinks appear in different colors. You can specify whether colored hyperlinks are also underlined.

NOTE: On black-and-white (or greyscale) displays, you should leave ``Underlined'' toggled on so that hyperlinks are more visible.

To specify that hyperlinks are underlined:

  1. Select:

    Edit -> Preferences

  2. Then, select:

    Appearance -> Colors

  3. Under Links, toggle the ``Underline links'' radio button.

    Under Links, you can also specify the color of the ``Unvisited'' and ``Visited'' links.

    NOTE: On black-and-white (or greyscale) displays, these options have no effect.

You can choose to always use the colors you specify, overriding any colors specified by documents you visit.

Font style, size, and character set encoding

SCOhelp allows you to specify the font and font size for the proportional and fixed fonts used to display HTML pages. Most text uses a proportional font; text in editable fields and certain preformatted paragraphs use fixed fonts.

To choose the font style and size:

  1. Select:

    Edit -> Preferences

  2. Then, select:

    Appearance -> Fonts

  3. Select the style and size for the ``Variable Width'' and ``Fixed Width'' font.

In addition, to accommodate the character symbols of different languages, you can select the character set encoding to associate with each variable width and fixed width font pair. To view or modify the fonts associated with an encoding, choose the encoding name, then select the font and size for the variable and fixed width fonts.

You can choose to always use the fonts you specify, overriding any fonts specified by documents you visit.

Images

Because images can take a long time to load, on a slower network, you might not want to load images automatically. With SCOhelp, you can specify how images are displayed.

  1. Select:

    Edit -> Preferences

  2. Then, select Advanced.

To turn off automatic image loading, deselect the ``Automatically load images and other data types'' radio button.

To manually load all the images on a page, select:

View -> Show Images

To load an individual image, click on the image replacement icon.

About dithering

``Dithering'' is a software image process for arranging adjacent pixels of varying shades to achieve a visual effect. The process is useful for displaying an image when the color or resolution of the original image must be reproduced on computer with different display capabilities.

When displaying inline GIF and JPEG images, SCOhelp sometimes must translate the colors in an image to similar colors that are available on your display. If your display does not have color capabilities that match the color information in an image, the image might look ``speckled''.

Caching

A ``cache'' is a temporary storage area on your system (both in memory and on the hard disk) where SCOhelp stores pages. If you request a previously retrieved page, SCOhelp displays the page from cache, if it is available. SCOhelp can display pages more quickly from the memory cache than from the disk cache, but both are faster than retrieving the page from the network.

When you exit SCOhelp, the memory cache is removed, but the disk cache remains on your hard disk.

To configure SCOhelp caching:

  1. Select:

    Edit -> Preferences

  2. Then select:

    Advanced -> Cache

    These options are available:

    Disk Cache
    You should set ``Disk Cache'' to between 2MB and 5MB. The default disk cache size is 5MB (5000KB).

    NOTE: A large disk cache might increase the time it takes for SCOhelp to exit.

    Memory Cache
    Depending on the amount of memory available in your system, you can increase SCOhelp performance by increasing the size of the Memory Cache. The default memory cache size is 3MB (3000KB).

    Cache Folder
    The default location for the disk cache directory is $HOME/.netscape/cache/.

    Document in cache is compared to document on netscape
    You can specify how often SCOhelp checks the network for document revisions (so that SCOhelp loads a fresh version of a revised page rather than retrieving the page from the cache).

    By default, SCOhelp checks once per session (between the time you start and exit SCOhelp). To check for changes every time you request a page, select the ``Every time'' radio button. (Checking every time reduces SCOhelp performance.) If you select ``Never'', SCOhelp never checks the network for an updated version of a page; if the page is available from the cache, SCOhelp retrieves it from the cache.

    NOTE: SCOhelp does not check the network if you click on the SCOhelp or Netscape Back buttons or choose an item from the history.

    To retrieve a fresh version from the network, regardless of the configuration, hold down the <Shift> key and click on the Reload button.

Clearing the Cache

If you suspect that a cache is not working properly (displaying stale pages) or you want to free up memory or disk space, click on Clear Disk Cache or Clear Memory Cache.

Using a proxy server

In some network configurations, the connection between SCOhelp and a remote server is blocked by a ``firewall''. Firewalls protect internal computer networks from external access. In doing so, firewalls might limit SCOhelp's ability to exchange information with external sources.

To overcome this limitation, SCOhelp can interact with proxy software. If you are running SCOhelp on an internal network from behind a firewall, you must obtain, from your system administrator, the names and associated port numbers for the server running proxy software for each network service.

To set up SCOhelp to use a proxy server:

  1. Select:

    Edit -> Preferences

  2. Then select:

    Advanced -> Proxies

  3. Select ``Automatic Proxy Configuration'' and specify the location of the proxy server; for example, proxy.remote.sco.com.

    This specifies that all HTTP requests go to the proxy server.

Because this proxies all HTTP requests, setting up proxies in this way might cause confusion when you request help on your system with SCOhelp. If the proxy server is not a UnixWare 7 system, your requests for help might display documentation for a different SCO system or version.

To continue to serve UnixWare 7 documentation from your local system:

  1. Select ``Manual Proxy Configuration'' and click on the View button.

  2. Enter the name of the proxy server in the ``HTTP Proxy'' field and the port number.

  3. In the ``No Proxy for'' field, enter localhost:457 and the fully qualified domain name for your local system. For example, wisteria.pdx.sco.com.

    NOTE: You can add multiple hosts to the ``No Proxy for'' field.

    This prevents Netscape Communicator from using the proxy server to serve information from localhost:457 (the SCOhelp server on your local system).

For information about proxy servers, select Help -> Help Contents and search for ``proxies''.

© 1999 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. All rights reserved.
UnixWare 7 Release 7.1.1 - 5 November 1999