The HLOM Window
The Naming of Parts
Once you have clicked Grabber you should have noticed a new window pop up, looking alot like the following. Only bigger:
HLOM is designed to be as intuitive as possible. Most buttons have self-explanatory names. And those that don't have carefully explained labels. Feel free to click around and experiment.
Equally, if you're the instruction reading kind, the rest of this guide explains exactly how HLOM works...
Main Navigation
The top box of the HLOM window always looks the same, reliably containing
the following menus:
The Settings Menu
This is, unsurprisingly, where you'll find your account settings like passwords,
list sizes and cool gadgets for things like importing links from existing
favorite/bookmark lists. More about that kind of thing here:
The Settings Menu
The Sharing Menu
Sharing links with other users, managing your address book, receiving links
from other HLOM users, that kind of thing:
The Sharing Menu
The Publish Menu
Sharing your carefully selected links with the world: The full story here:
The Publishing Menu
Search
Re-finding those links. Everything you need to know:
Searching Links
User Info
Your HLOM identity. Handy for making sure that you are logged into the
right account.
'Links' shows the total number of links you've added to your HLOM account.
(Don't worry, there's no upper limit).
'In' shows you two numbers; first the number of new, unread, links that your
HLOM-using friends have sent you, followed by the total number of links on
your incoming list. It's almost like a popularity-o-meter...
Functions
This button bar lists all the available functions for the current
view. It changes slightly from one screen to another, but don't worry,
it'll make sense when you use it.
Status Message
When you first add a link, this is where you'll see something useful like
'Link Added'. When you use that 'Update' button it's where you'll
see the reassuring message 'Link Updated'.
It'll also let you know in the unlikely event of something failing to happen.
Delete
This deletes the Link you're currently looking at. There's no messing with
trash can analogies here; if you don't want it any more, you just delete it.
Make it gone. Vanished. No more.
Update
If you edit any part of a link in HLOM you'll need to click the 'Update' button in
order to save those changes. This small but important fact is something that we'll
keep reminding you of through the help guide. It'll probably get a bit annoying
after a while, but not half as annoying as loosing all those edits...
Share
Click this to share the link with other HLOM users. It's like dropping a link into
an email only easier. There's no annoying wrapping/cropping or long URLs and
no need to leave your browser.
You can also append notes/messages to links.
Everything you need to know about Sharing can be found here:
The Sharing Menu
Publish
Click on this to publish a link to your own HLOM links page/blog.
You can find out about setting up and using your public page here:
The Publishing Menu
Open Link
OK, it's one thing to get links into your HLOM account, but the point of
links is to follow them. Click 'Open Link' and HLOM will open that address
into a shiny new window for you.
You can set the size of that new window by going to the 'Settings Menu' and
selecting 'Display'.
The Link
Link Title
This is the title of the HTML page that you just grabbed. Sometimes these are useful
and descriptive. Just as often they are the entirely useless 'Untitled Document', or
'ProductXYZ127Foo'.
In the latter case, you can just edit the title into something resembling the former.
Changing the title has no effect on the page/site that link will take you to.
NB; If you edit any part of a link in HLOM you will need to click the 'Update' button in
order to save those changes... Really.
URL
This is the actual link. URL means Uniform Resource Locator and is the technically
correct name for a web address. If you copied and pasted this into the address bar
of a new window, it'd take you to the page you grabbed. If you pasted it into
and email the recipient would be able to do the same.
You can edit
the URL. Can being distinct from should in this case.
Making changes to the URL will change the page/site that the link points at.
And rather defeat the purpose of using HLOM.
If you're not familiar with the structure and rules of URLs we'd strongly recommend
against editing URLs.
If you are a seasoned hacker with a passion for messing with other people's Session IDs
then feel free to hack away; just remember to hit 'Update' if you want to save those
changes.
Notes
If you have any text on a web page selected at the moment you hit Grabber you'll
notice that this text gets pasted into the Notes box for you.
You'll learn to love this little feature.
Notes can be edited. Notes can searched when you're looking for this link at a future date.
Notes can contain any text you care to add. And, yes, you need to hit 'Update' in order
to save those changes.
Categories
HLOM allows to create and assign their own categories. We have no preconceptions
about you're going to want to organise your links. You can use any keyword that makes sense
to you as a category.
The great thing is, you can also assign multiple categories to a link; no more agonizing
of whether www.badgerbadgerbadger.com should be filed under 'Pointless Flash', 'Insane
Genius' or 'Wildlife', just mark it as all three...
To add new categories just type into any of the three blank category boxes. Once you
create a category it will be available as a checkbox.
There's more on working with Categories on the next page...
There's also a checkbox for 'Use Daily'; links that are marked on your daily list (ie
links to sites you tend to check out every day) appear on your HLOM home page.
You can get to your HLOM home page at any time by clicking the HLOM logo top center.
Info
Just a date and time stamp, showing when you added a link, and when it was last modified.
Handy for finding something that you know you grabbed a week last Wednesday
but can't for the life of you remember anything else about...
You'll also notice a Create Cache button; click this and HLOM helpfully makes a copy
of the content of that page. In the near future that cached content will be searchable
along with the links' details, but for now it is purely a handy reference tool. Very
handy for those times when you grab a link to some really vital information that
you suspect may soon vanish.
Once you've made a cache you'll see a date Cached stamp and two buttons;
Click 'View Cache' to see that content, and 'Update Cache' to overwrite the content
with an up-to-date version.
Google Site Search
We do like Google. Google lets you do some very cool things. One of these is
limiting a search to within a specified domain.
You can achieve the same effect by going straight to Google and entering
'site:www.foo.com search terms'. HLOM just saves a bit of time by automatically
entering the address of the link you're looking at.