Using, Creating, and Editing Hotlists

• One hotlist might include the documents you use frequently in your day-to-day work.
• Another hotlist might include documents that you need only periodically. For example, you might create a hotlist with all the documents you use to compile a particular weekly report. When its time to write the report, make that your current hotlist and all those documents will be at your fingertips!
• Other hotlists could be organized by topic. You might have separate hotlists for each of several lines of research, and use one when you are focussing on that particular area.

Sharing hotlists is an excellent way to share information without having to actually send documents to people. If a colleague is working on a project related to one of yours and you would like to share resources, just send that project hotlist.

Two types of hotlists are implemented in NCSA Mosaic for Microsoft Windows:

• The Quicklist
• User-configurable menus

Any hotlist may be used as the current hotlist, which may be set by either of the following methods:

• Select File ... Open URL, click on the arrow in the Current Hotlist: field, and select the desired hotlist.
• Select Navigate ... Menu Editor, click on the arrow in the Current Hotlist is: field, and select the desired hotlist.

NCSA Mosaic for Microsoft Windows can accommodate up to 21 hotlists: the Quicklist and 20 user-configurable menus and submenus.

User-configurable Menus

User-configurable menus can be created, deleted, and edited from the Menu Editor window. To open the Menu Editor window, select Navigate ... Menu Editor.

The Menu Editor window

The current user-configurable menus and the Quicklist are listed in the Menus field. If you select an item in the Menus field, the elements in that list will be displayed in the Items field.

The four buttons used to edit the menus, Insert..., Copy Item, Delete, and Edit..., appear near the bottom of the Personal Menus window. In general, select the list you wish to edit from the Menus window, then click on the appropriate button.

Insert...

Opens the Add Item window to add a document or a separator to an existing menu, to add a submenu to an existing top-level menu, or to add a top-level menu.

If you insert an item without specifying a location in a list, it will be added to the end of the list. If you highlight a location, the document will be inserted immediately before the highlighted position.

Adding a document to an existing menu: By default, the title and URL of the current document appear in the Add Item window. If this is not the document you wish to add, you can either type in a title and URL, select an item from another hotlist using the Copy Item button (see below), or paste in a URL from another source such as email or a document.

Once you have the title and URL you want, click on OK to add the document to the selected list.

Add Item window

Adding a separator to an existing menu: Click on the Separator control button then click on OK to add the separator to the selected list.

Adding a submenu to an existing menu: Click on the Menu control button and type the new menu title into the Title field. Click on OK to add the submenu to the selected menu.

Adding a top-level menu: This is the only instance in which you do not select an item in the Menus window before clicking on Insert. If you have selected an entry in the Menus window, click on Cancel to close the Add Item window, highlight the blank line above Quicklist, and click on Insert again.

The Add Item window will now have only a Title field and the Menu control button will be checked. Type the new top-level menu title into the Title field. Click on OK to add it.

Copy Item

Copies the title and URL of the selected document to a buffer. This will then be the next document to appear in the Add Item window.

Delete

Removes the current item or menu, after you respond to the query in the Menu Editor window asking whether you actually want to delete the highlighted item. If a list element in the Item field is highlighted, that item will be removed from the corresponding menu or the Quicklist. If no item is highlighted but a menu is highlighted, that menu will be deleted. You cannot delete the Quicklist.

Edit...

Opens the Edit Item window, allowing you to edit the highlighted menu name or the highlighted item's document name and URL. You cannot edit the name of the Quicklist.

Edit Item window for a menu entry

The Menu Editor window can also be used to reset the current hotlist, which is displayed in the Current Hotlist is: field in the bottom left-hand corner of the window. Click on the arrow on the right end of this field to display all the available hotlists: the Quicklist and all of the user-configurable menus. Click on the desired hotlist name to reset the current hotlist.

When you have finished working in the Menu Editor window, click on the Close button in the bottom right-hand corner.

User-configurable menus can accommodate up to forty entries; there is no limit on the number of entries in the Quicklist.

Quicklist

Documents can be added to or deleted from the Quicklist via the Personal Menus window described above.

There is no limit on the number of entries in the Quicklist; user-configurable menus can accommodate up to forty entries.

Sharing Hotlists