Making findinsite-cd search pages manually

Basic FindinSite-CD page
Releasing to your CD
Changing parameters
Example

Introduction

This page describes how to write a FindinSite-CD page by hand and put all the necessary files into your CD image. It also describes how to add or alter applet parameters which are used to tell FindinSite-CD how to run - see other sections of the documentation for information on the changes you can make.

Initially most people use FindinSite-CD-Wizard to generate a suitable search page and put it into your CD image. Note that you can change the search page template file called searchen.htt so that all subsequent search pages generated by FindinSite-CD-Wizard will use the new layout.

For most people, editing the FindinSite-CD-Wizard generated search page search.htm is the easiest way to customise FindinSite-CD. See below for details of how to change or add applet parameters.

Basic FindinSite-CD page

A basic FindinSite-CD search page looks like this:

<HTML>
<BODY>
<H1>FindinSite-CD Search page</H1>

<APPLET CODE=fisCD NAME=fisCD WIDTH=500 HEIGHT=300 ARCHIVE="fiscd.zip" MAYSCRIPT>
<PARAM NAME=cabbase VALUE="fiscd.cab">
<PARAM NAME=index1 VALUE="MySite,en">
<PARAM NAME=rules VALUE="rulesen.txt">
Sorry, you need a browser that supports Java to run the FindinSite-CD search engine.
</APPLET>

</BODY>
</HTML>

The APPLET and /APPLET tags must be present as shown, along with the cabbase parameter for the PARAM tag. The index1 parameter tells FindinSite-CD which search database to use. The rules parameter tells FindinSite-CD to use the English word search rules defined in file rulesen.txt.

You must put in the filename of your search database in the index1 parameter, ie replace MySite with sitedb if that is the filename of your search database. Do not put in the ".his" filename extension.

You can use any HTML editor to create this web page and add any HTML text or features that you see fit. It is important that the basic structure of the APPLET, PARAM and /APPLET parameters is correct, so it might be best to edit the FindinSite-CD-Wizard generated search page, or copy the above text into a plain text editor, eg Notepad in Windows.

You can alter the APPLET tag if need be, for example to alter the width and height. If you know what you are doing, you can add a CODEBASE attribute if the FindinSite-CD code files are in a different directory. Do not change or remove the NAME and MAYSCRIPT attributes. If you do alter the CODEBASE, you will need to alter the word highlighting popup window fiscdpop.htm page to add a similar CODEBASE.

Releasing to your CD

If you have used FindinSite-CD-Wizard to generate a search page with runtime files in your CD image, then you do not need to do anything more - simply edit the search page as described below.

If you have written a search page from scratch, then you need to follow these steps:

Put the search page in your CD image
Copy the FindinSite-CD redistributable runtime files into the CD image
Copy your search database files into the CD image

If you have written your page and built your search database in your CD image, then all you will need to do is step 2 (copy in the FindinSite-CD runtime).

1. Putting the search page in your CD image

If the search page is not in your CD image already, then copy it there using Windows Explorer or similar.

2. Copying in the FindinSite-CD runtime

To make the search page work, you must copy the FindinSite-CD redistributable runtime files into the same directory as the search page.
By default, all the FindinSite-CD redistributable files are in directory C:\Program Files\PHD\fisCD\Redist. Copy all the files in this directory and sub-directories. Also copy the licence id file fiskey.hik if you have one.
It is important that you copy the COM directory and all its sub-directories, ie COM/phdcc/lang, COM/phdcc/find and COM/phdcc/lang.

3. Copying your search database files into the CD image

A single search database consists of 14 or 15 different files, with the same filename prefix and similar filename extensions (*.hi?). Copy all these files to the directory containing FindinSite-CD in your CD image.
For example, if your search database is called MySite then copy these files:
MySite.his MySite.hi1 MySite.hi2 MySite.hi4 MySite.hih MySite.hiw MySite.hiq MySite.him MySite.hip MySite.hin MySite.hic MySite.hiz MySite.hia MySite.hib
and MySite.hio if you omitted stop words from your search database.

Editing search page parameters

FindinSite-CD is set up using various applet parameters. See the parameters page for a list of all parameters. See the appropriate section of the documentation for full details of each parameter type.

There are two ways of editing, adding or deleting parameters:

Web page editors
Plain text editors, such as Windows Notepad

Web page editor

The way to add, change or delete applet parameters is editor-specific. However it usually involves selecting the FindinSite-CD Applet window or one of the enclosed or following PARAM tags. You may be able to edit a complete list of parameters. Or you might need to add PARAM tags in the plain text format shown below.

Plain text editor

Each parameter has a name and a value. You specify each parameter in a PARAM tag, making sure that it is between the APPLET and /APPLET tags on the search page.
The parameter name and value can optionally be surrounded by double quotes, eg:
<PARAM NAME=name VALUE=value> <PARAM NAME="name" VALUE="value"> The double quotes are needed if the value contains any non-alphanumeric characters such as spaces, eg:
<PARAM NAME=font VALUE="TimesRoman 15pt">
It is best to have one parameter per line, but not mandatory.
If you want to change an existing parameter then edit the existing parameter value, not forgetting to add double quotes if necessary.
To delete a parameter, simply remove the entire PARAM tag, ie the whole line.

Example search page with added parameters

This example shows a search page that has been changed to add some indexes and alter the appearance of the FindinSite-CD window.

The index1 parameter has been altered to refer to the search database named EngDb. Two other indexes have been added, index2 for French using the FrenDb search database and index3 for German using GermDb. The last two indexes also use Base URLs and a locale specifier (see the Indexes and subsets page for full details). The effect of the locale specifiers is that French users will see the French search database at startup, and Germans theirs.

The rules parameter has not been changed, so the English search rules file rulesen.txt will still be used, as is standard.

Various other parameters have been added to change the FindinSite-CD window appearance, as described on the Screen layouts page. The bgcolor, fgcolor and fieldbgcolor colours have been set to white, blue and #FFFFEF (very light yellow) respectively. And the font is set to TimesRoman and slightly larger than normal at 15 point.

<HTML>
<BODY>
<H1>FindinSite-CD Search page</H1>

<APPLET CODE=fisCD NAME=fisCD WIDTH=600 HEIGHT=300 ARCHIVE="fiscd.zip" MAYSCRIPT>
<PARAM NAME=cabbase VALUE="fiscd.cab">
<PARAM NAME=index1 VALUE="EngDb,fr">
<PARAM NAME=index2 VALUE="FrenDb@french/,fr">
<PARAM NAME=index3 VALUE="GermDb@german/,de">
<PARAM NAME=rules VALUE="rulesen.txt">
<PARAM NAME=bgcolor VALUE="white">
<PARAM NAME=fgcolor VALUE="blue">
<PARAM NAME=fieldbgcolor VALUE="#FFFFEF">
<PARAM NAME=font VALUE="TimesRoman 15pt">
Sorry, you need a browser that supports Java to run the FindinSite-CD search engine.
</APPLET>

</BODY>
</HTML>