Mac OS X
This page will guide you through the user interface of the CaretCursor application. When you first start the application it will direct you to a webpage, where you can create a user account. With this user account you can log into the Caret Portal and follow the contribution you have made so far in a nice bar chart, see your favorite websites that you have saved so far and even find friends to compete with and see whose Cursor is the best.
When you first start the application, you will have to log in using the File menu (Cmd+L). Simply enter the username and the email address you have signed up with on the Cursor webpage and you are good to go. Hit the Start button and your Cursor will come to life.
Settings: you can access the settings via the "Edit" menu of the application.
Toggle Chimes(Cmd+C): select whether you want to hear audible notifications when the Cursor begins to process a packet, uploads a finished packet or you share a URL on the Send panel.
Autoprocess(Cmd+A): the Cursor will remember your user account settings and you can tell the Cursor to start processing websites whenever you launch the application. If "Autoprocess" is set, the Cursor will start in a minimized state and will run in the background without disturbing your work.
Status:
The status panel gives you information on what the application is doing. The status of the Cursor can be the following:
Requesting websites: the Cursor it contacts a server and requests a packet of website addresses (URLs like http://hydrabyte.com). This packet usually contains a hundred randomly selected URLs.
Downloading websites: the Cursor will iterate through the websites addresses acquired during the previous step and download the text source of each of them. The downloaded text source is compressed and stored in the memory of the Cursor. The progress of this step is indicated by the progress indicator.
Uploading websites: after all the text source of the websites are downloaded, they are uploaded as compressed data to the server.
Sleeping: after a successful upload, the server can request the Cursor to request another packet of website addresses only after a certain amount of time. The Cursor will spend this time with sleeping.
Retrying: sometimes requesting packets and uploading a packet can fail due to network problems for example. In this case the Cursor will sleep some and retry the failed task once again. The Cursor uses exponentially increasing amounts of time to sleep, but will only wait an hour at maximum.
Progress indicator: gives you information about the status of a packet of website addresses currently being processed.
Transmission: with the transmission slider to limit the network usage of the Cursor can be as easy as shifting gears. The Cursor transmits only textual information, so the network footprint of it is low. However, you can decide to limit the Cursor to 20 KB/s by sliding the slider to 2 or to limit the network usage to 10 KB/s by sliding the slider to 1. The default position is D that means no limitations on the network usage.
The Send panel lets you enter website addresses (URLs like http://hydrabyte.com).
You can decide to add a website to your favorite ones by selecting "My Favorites" radio button. You can access and organize your favorite websites on the Caret Portal.
Moreover, if you find a webpage that you think can be interesting to others as well (e.g.: breaking news) you can select to share it with everyone, by using the "Community" radio button. When you click on the Share button, you will hear a chime and the Cursor will upload your website address with the next uploaded packet. You can share as many URLs as you wish and interact with them using the Caret portal soon.