WMW Constraints And Limitations
Javascript Considerations
Due to the free form nature of javascript some hypertext links might not get remapped correctly by the link remapper. Amazingly though I have only found about half a dozen of these in my entire site. And all were easy to edit into a format that the remapper will treat as a valid link and adjust automatically:
Example 1
A perfectly valid bit of javascript to write a graphic (images/bike1.gif) to a page:
document.write("<IMG SRC=\""images/bike1.gif"\">")
But it won't convert automaically because the backslash character (\) between the equals (=) and quote (") prevents it from being treated as an sref=". Re coding as follows fixes the page so that these links can be adjusted automatically along with the other sref= links:
var gifsrc="images/bike1.gif"
document.write("<IMG SRC=\"" + gifsrc + "\">")
This works because WMW finds src="images/bike1.gif" and correctly treats the text between the quotes as a file path to adjust i.e. "images/bike1.gif" and in the document.write part the src= is not immediately followed by a quote so it is correctly ignored.
Example 2
The following custom javascript function takes the names of a web page, music file, and two graphics as arguments then does things (god knows what!) with them:
CustomJavascriptFunction( "pageName.html", "musicFile.mp3", "graphic1.jpg", "graphic2.gif")
Easily recoded as:
var pagenameHREF="pageName.html"
var music_href="musicFile.mp3"
var jpg_src="graphic1.jpg"
var gif_src="graphic2.gif"
CustomJavascriptFunction( pagenameHREF, music_href, jpg_src, gif_src )
Because I have used the HREF, or SRC suffix on my variable names WMW will theat the text in the quotes as a file paths and adjust them along with all the standard HTML SRC's and HREF's 8)
Example 3
var graphicsrc=PreLoadImage('../images/bikeani.gif');
This is a standard function re used throughout my site to pre load a graphic and assign the result to graphicsrc.
The fix is to simply add
PreLoadImage('
to WMW's list of link types. WMW can now adjust these automatically 8)
Note:- The src suffix for graphicsrc doesn't make any difference unless it is also followed by an equals (=) and a quote of the appropriate type (').
Example 4
SomeVariableNameHREF="FirstPartOfFilenameAndPath" + VariableContainingRemainderOfFilename + ".html"
Plainly this isn't going to convert correctly. WMW will find
HREF="FirstPartOfFilenameAndPath" and will attempt to convert
"FirstPartOfFilenameAndPath" only.
General
WMW was designed to work with standard HTML it does this wery well. The above javascript issues aren't really a major concern though. The home directory of my site contains over 100 pages, containing over 2000 href=" links
and more than 500 src=" links. Of these only half a dozen links didn't convert first time and these were all 'eye candy'. Anyone hard wiring a copy of the site to use with redirectors isn't going to care much if a few broken links result at the old domain - the important thing is to ensure that all the valid links point to the new domain so that the robots don't waste time re spidering the old pages.
User Knowledge of HTML
Users of this software program are expected to be webmasters with a good working knowledge of HTML and at least some knowledge of javascript.
Performance
The longest pause is waiting for the link tester to run: Difficult to say how long it will take for the link tester to varify your site. Obviously
this depends on how many pages you have, how heavily cross linked they are, the size of the pages, and the speed of your computer. As a guideline though when I test the www.machinehead-software.co.uk site on my AMD 1800+ Athlon
The machinehead link tester runs at a speed of approximately 5.9 pages per second or 249 links per second to test
2 protocols ( http:// and https://) and nine link types (href=", src=", @import url(", background=", PreLoadImage(', window.open(', option value=", popUp(', popUpLink(' ).
For two user defined link types ( href=", src=" ) this speeds up to 7.5 pages or 254 links per second. And if I just test href=" links only I get about 14.4 pages per second or 374 links per second.
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