Specify the address of the web site or directory you wish to index, using its Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address. Consider the examples:
The first one, www.devtech.com, tells us that there is a commercial (.com) entity named devtech, and that we want to index its World Wide Web (www) address. Hence, www.devtech.com.
The second one, http://www.devtech.com, is identical to the first, except that it explicitly specifies that the Builder will access the information on the site using the http protocol. That is what the "http://" text means. HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol, and is the protocol for accessing the World Wide Web. The presence of the "www" in the first example already told the Builder to use http. In fact, the Builder assumes, in the absence of any other protocol, that you want to use http.
The third example, http://members.aol.com/devtech, tells us that the web site is not a "primary" site, but is located on someone else's primary site. In this case, the primary site is where America Online provides web sites for its members, and we are selecting a specific AOL member site. We specify http:// as the protocol because the URL doesn't have "www." in it to tell us otherwise. But remember that the Builder will assume http:// if you don't specify it; we're including it here for correctness, and because your browser will likely not assume http without a "www." in the URL.
The last example, file:/d:\jdk1.1.6\docs\index.html, seems a bit trickier, but opens the door to many possibilities. SiteSurfer is able to provide searching and navigation not only for remote web sites, but for libraries of documents on your computer and network. In this example, we are asking it to process the entire Java Development Kit documentation by providing a file URL that specifies a root document. In this case (as in many cases), that is "index.html".
As with other URLs, the formal format for the file URL is "file://host/path", e.g., file://myserver/mydocuments. The most proper usage for a local drive would be "file://localhost/path". Most browsers will accept "file:/path" or "file:///path" as meaning a path on the localhost, but some will reject "file://path" as being malformed. SiteSurfer will accept any of them, and convert them to the proper formal format when communicating with a browser.
SiteSurfer Builder will remember the settings and selections for the last 5 sites visited. Each site has its own profile that may be activated by selecting it in the drop-down list.