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Welcome to the ChronoFish FishBowl Browser FAQ
- How is the FishBowl Browser different than any other browser?
The FishBowl Browser will automatically execute programs and scripts that ordinary
browsers don't know how to handle. Normally it is up to a Web (HTTP) Server to do this.
- What is "CGI"?
CGI is an abbreviation for "Common Gateway Interface". Basically it is the protocol
that defines how an outside process can communicate with a web page. It is what
makes submitting forms possible.
- Where can I find more information on CGI programming?
A fantastic start to learning CGI programming (especially through Perl)
can be found at cgi101.com
- What is "Perl"?
Perl is a programming language. To learn more about Perl, visit
Perl.org
- Where can I find a good Perl Interrupter?
We have enjoyed using ActiveState's
ActivePerl which you can get at
www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl
- Can I use the UNIX ShaBang (#!) at the beginning of my Perl Script?
Yes! The first line of your script (Perl or otherwise) should be "#!/path/Perl.exe"
where path is the path to your Perl Interrupter. Replace Perl.exe with
the name of the executable that should interrupt your script.
- What is an "HTTP Server"? What is a "Web Server"? Why are they bad?
For our discussion a Web Server and an HTTP Server can be thought of as one in the same. To
sum it up, a Web Server sends data to Web Browsers for viewing. They are not "bad", but
they do take up additional overhead (memory, disk space, etc). There is also the question
about support and of course security if you are running a web server on a system attached to
a network.
- Why can't AOL users use FishBowl?
We have discovered that the AOL Browser is very aggressive and intercepts any HTML processing
that FishBowl attempts. In our professional opinion this is an AOL bug. However we
understand that AOL will probably not address this problem, and therefore we will try to find a fix.
- What system changes does FishBowl make on installation?
The FishBowl browser makes no system changes during installation. If the user
edits the setup, an option comes up to associate FishBowl with the ".cfi" extension. This
allows users to click on ".cfi" files which then automatically launches FishBowl. This
association takes place in the system registry, and is no different than doing it manually
by viewing file-types. There is also a standard windows protocol that FishBowl follows to
register itself on startup. No additional system changes are made.
- What are ".cfi" files?
CFI files are setup files that the FishBowl Browser uses to keep track of things like
"homepage", "cache directory", etc. The default setup file is "fishbowl.cfi". It is created
if the user alters and saves the default setup. The user can also define new .cfi files by
defining a "New Application" from the "File" menu.
- What are "index" files, and why are they important?
Take a look at your current web browsers address line. It should say something like
"http://www.ChronoFish.com/FishBowl/faq". We believe that this is a cleaner interface
than "http://www.ChronoFish.com/FishBowl/faq/index.html". For the ChronoFish web site,
this is accomplished by using the Apache Web Server, and is why you will never see the
name of the file you are actually viewing - only the directory. We like this feature
so much, we incorporated it into the FishBowl Browser. So if you distribute a product
that utilizes the FishBowl Browser, or if you are testing out your web site before
making it public, you can take advantage of this feature.
- Why do I need to have MS-Internet Explorer installed?
Technically you don't. FishBowl is built around Microsoft's CHtmlView class which
requires several key components of IE 4.01 or newer to be installed.
Please contact us for more information.
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