From: Synaptosoft Subject: Easy Articles Newsletter Date: Thursday, September 28, 2000 1:10 PM Greetings to Easy Articles supporters! The new version of Easy Articles v2.1.0 promises much easier downloading and linking of pdf files from more journal websites. We successfully implemented the PubMed's link out features, allowing users to automatically download pdf files from more than 1000 online journals to your own hard drive and archive them into a simple personal database. Since the program also allows linking any number and any type of files to an article, Easy Articles is not only a pdf file organizer but a comprehensive file organizer for your reasearch. The program has been used by many scientists from all over the world and it is changing the way they archive their journal articles. Please refer to the News Page at http://www.synaptosoft.com/EasyArticles/News.html to get the detailed changes in chronological order. If you already have the previous version running, you can upgrade to the latest version by going to our Upgrade Page at http://www.synaptosoft.com/EasyArticles/UpgradeOnly.html. If you haven't tried Easy Articles, please try the demo version at http://www.synaptosoft.com/EasyArticles/DownloadDemo.html. It will change your life! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here are the highlights of the recent updates; 1. Over 1000 online journals for automatic download of pdf files. 2. Power of Proxy servers. 3. ScineceDirect search. 4. Download dialogbox, allowing canceling of download. 5. Automatic scrolling of treeview and article list. 6. Import Reference Manager articles. 7. Other new features. 8. Bug fixes. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Over 1000 online journals for automatic download of pdf files. Easy Articles now has compiled direct links to online journals hosted by biggest publishers, including ScienceDirect (who hosts most of Elsevier articles), Ideal (Academic Press), Springer, InterScience, Synergy, Kluwer and High Wire Press. These amounts to be over 1000 online journals. The new demo version has a database that comes with the links to these journals, except for the ScienceDirect journals. ScienceDirect uses peculiar method of accessing their online journals, so each user needs to run "Update ScienceDirect Journals" command (a green button) in order to compile user specific URL's for each journal. This command can be accessed in the Journals Database window, which can be invoked by running "Journal Database" command under View menu in the main window. The current users of Easy Articles have to run this command for ScienceDirect as well as other publishers. Click on all the green buttons in the bottom of the Journals Database window to update all the online journals. Once the online journals are updated, users should be able to automatically download the pdf files directly from the journal website during a drag-drop operation from PubMed through LinkOut options in PubMed. Don't forget that actual access to each journal depends on your institution's access previllage to each journal. 2. Power of Proxy servers. A proxy server is defined as "a computer program that acts as an intermediary between a web browser and a web server." The cool thing about it is that when you turn on the proxy settings on your browser, such as Internet Explorer, your browser accesses the requested URL through the proxy server, fully utilizing the access privillages on the computer that the proxy server resides. This means that even if you do not have an institutional access to a certain journal at home, you CAN get an access from home through a proxy server installed on your lab computer. For example, let say you have an access to Journal of Neurophysiology from your lab computer. You want to access that the journal from home but you are not allowed. What you do is to install a proxy server program on your lab computer, write down the IP address and port number that the proxy server is using, and then enter them in the proxy settings of your browser in your home computer. Then next time you access that journal you will see that suddenly you have a full access to the journal. This is because, the browser goes to the proxy server and the proxy server accesses the journal for you using the IP address of the computer that the proxy server resides. You can get proxy server programs from the internet in places such as www.tucows.com. We currently use a program called AnalogX, which is a free program. Using a proxy server, you will be able to enjoy the full accesses to the journals that your institution or your colleagues have. Ask us for more details. 3. ScineceDirect search. ScienceDirect hosts Elsevier articles and is by far the largest online publisher. We just added a dedicated button for ScienceDirect search. Initially, pressing this button let you navigate to ScienceDirect home page. But since you need to navigate to search page, you should first navigate manually to the search page after logging in from the home page. And then run "Use current URL for default address" command from the menu that can be invoked by pressing down arrow next to the ScienceDirect button. Once you are in the search page and perform your own search, you will obtain search results. You can now click on the articles that you like and then run "Add Checked Articles->from ScienceDirect" command under Tree menu. This function will add the checked articles to the current tree folder, simultaneously downloading the pdf files. This will be convenient feature for those who depend on Elsevier articles. 4. Download dialogbox, allowing canceling of download. Each time the program is downloading a pdf file, you will notice a download dialogbox appearing. This dialogbox shows a progress of download and contains a cancel button. Sometimes connection to journal site is slow and user may want to cancel the download. Simply press the cancel button and perform the download later. You can simply retry the download by running "Link PDF file->from Journal Website" command under Articles menu. This function will relocate the pdf file and start downloading. 5. Automatic scrolling of treeview and article list. Another convenient feature of automatic scrolling of treeview and article list has been added. If you have a long list of tree folders or articles list, you can simply reach the top or bottom of the list while performing drag-drop operation. The list will automatically scroll. 6. Import Reference Manager articles. You can now import articles from Reference Manager. First export articles from Reference Manager by saving the articles as a text file in Medline format. And then from Easy Articles, run "Import Articles->Reference Manager" command under Tree menu. It will go through each article and add them while downloading the pdf files from the journal websites. If you have Reference Manager, try this one. It works very well. 7. Other new features. Get Journal Info through PubList in Articles menu. PubList hosts information about all the science related journals. You can get info about publishers and websites. Highlight an article and then run this command and the program will display the journal info at PubList. Open pdf in Acrobat. Acrobat gives much more functionality than Acrobat Reader. For example, users of Acrobat can annotate pdf files and extract figures from pdf files. Now users of Easy Articles can open a pdf file from Easy Articles through Acrobat by running "Display pdf file->in Acrobat" command under Articles menu. Acrobat can generate a pdf file or scan paper article and generate pdf file. Very useful program. Exapnd tree to different levels. Now users can expand the tree folders to different levels. This feature is convenient if you have very complicated tree structure. New England Journal of Medicine automatic download pdf. NEJM uses their own ways of archiving pdf files and one of the users requested for automaticl download feature from this journal. So this feature was added. If you have some journal that you would like to have a convenience of automatic download pdf file, please let us know and it will be added immediately. Print button. Now a convenient Print button is added in the main window. It lets you quickly print the content of the browser. 8. Bug fixes. Adding a new journal title was fixed. Fixed the runtime error during drag-drop in empty area of TreeListbox. Transfer articles from two database bug fixed. Link Pdf from Journal website has been fixed with non-High Wire Press journals. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can find detailed info at http://www.synaptosoft.com/EasyArticles/. If you already have the demo program installed, you can upgrade to the latest version by going to our Upgrade Page at http://www.synaptosoft.com/EasyArticles/UpgradeOnly.html. Please follow the instructions. Remember the program is being upgraded very frequently. We strongly urge you to visit our website to find out about the recent changes and to upgrade to the latest version. If you would like to be removed from our newsletter list, please reply to mailto:Reply@synaptosoft.com. Synaptosoft, Inc. web@synaptosoft.com http://www.synaptosoft.com http://www.EasyArticles.com