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gbThreads Help |
gbThreads is an offline thread viewer for the PowerBASIC Forum.
If you do not have gbThreads, you can download it from here
OverView:
- Thread Count - gbThreads displays about 35K forum threads. Threads are displayed in a list.
- View Threads Locally - select a thread to display it in the embedded browser.
- Fields - Forum, Author, Date, Post Count, Title, FileName and URL are shown in the thread list
- Thread Format - all posts within a thread are shown as one long html page in the browser
- View Threads Online - double-click on a thread to open it onilne in the PowerBASIC forum
- Layout Control - settings button toggles display of thread list, embedded browser, or both.
- Bookmarks - threads and show only bookmarked threads
- Search - enter search term and press Enter to find matching threads. Searches are not case sensitive.
- Search Settings - Can search specified section of a thread - Author/Title/Thread
- Browser Search - browser search dialog
- PowerBASIC - open the PowerBASIC IDE or Help file
- Column Sorting - Click column headers to sort thread list on that column. click again to reverse the sort.
- Command Line Search - search term may be entered on the command line
Toolbar:
- Search Term - enter search term and press Enter to start a case-insensitive search
- Searches apply to all threads (not just those currently shown)
- Last 10 search terms available from a dropdown list
- Boolean searches supported. user must place "and" or "or" in the search term
- Boolean searches limited to one "and" or "or" (i.e., 2 search terms)
- Ctrl-D gives focus to Search Term edit box
- Can search Within previous search results
- Edit Box Context Menu: Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete/Clear Search Term
- All - display all threads
- Author - limit search to Author column
- Title - limit search to Title column
- Thread - search entire thread
- Mark - toggle bookmark on currently selected thread
- Show - show all bookmarked threads
- Layout - toggle between display of thread list, browser or both
- Search - open browser search dialog
- Next - go to next post or code section in browser
- Copy - copy checked code sections
- PB_IDE - open PB IDE
- PB_Help - open PB Help
- Help - open local help document in browser
Thread List:
Click on a thread to display it in the embedded browser.
Double-click on a thread to display it online at the PowerBASIC forum.
Embedded Browser:
The embedded browser is used to display threads selected from the threads list.
There is no custom context menu. Commands of likely value in the default menu are:
- Select All - Select all text to the clipbord (Ctl-C will then copy selection to clipboard)
- View Source - Display the source text for the thread
- Print - Print the page
Note that if you first select text in the browser, a different context menu is available that provides these useful options:
- Copy - Copy the Selection
- Select All - Select all text to the clipbord (Ctl-C will then copy selection to clipboard)
- Print - Print the page
Keyboard Shortcuts
The following keyboard shortcuts are available:
- C-B - toggle bookmark
- C-C - copy text from combobox or browser, whichever has focus
- C-D - give focus to the search term textbox
- C-E - open local, formatted thread in default browser
- C-F - open browser search dialog
- C-G - goto thread dialog
- C-H - scroll list to currently displayed thread
- C-I - show thread counts
- C-J - minimize
- C-K - colored lines
- C-L - hide logo
- C-M - toggle Maximize/Normal window size
- C-N - next search place (author, title, thread)
- C-O - colored columns
- C-P - restore default colors
- C-Q - toggle using beep sound
- C-R - remove bookmarks
- C-S - toggle font size
- C-T - reserved
- C-U - update EXE
- C-W - toggle WithIn search
- C-X - toggles hiding images
- C-Y - toggles return focus to SearchTerm after search
- C-Z - toggles between Search Term and Thread List focus on startup
These shortcuts allow users to select the background color of lines and the text colors of each field, as well
as to determine whether the colors are shown.
- C-K - colored lines
- C-O - colored columns
- F2 - select line background color
- F3 - select forum text color
- F4 - select author text color
- F5 - select date color
- F6 - select post count color
- F7 - select title color
- F8 - select file name color
- F9 - select url color
Update gbThreads Yourself
Adam Drake regularly updates the sitemap, which lists all URLs in the forum.
gbThreads can download a copy of that URL list and download the threads it
finds.
Downloaded threads are then formatted for display in gbThreads. The formatted threads
are part of the gbThreads distribution file and are found in the threads_formatted\ folder.
The shortcut Control+B will merge all formatted threads into a single file, "bigthread.htm". That
file is used for doing searches. Once bigthread.htm is complete, gbThreads is ready for use.
- CS-L - get URL list from SiteMap
- CS-D - download threads
- CS-F - format threads
- CS-B - create bigthread.htm
- CS-X - stop download/formatting
Suggestions Welcome!
Suggestions and comments are welcome: Gary Beene
