FAQs for OutWit Hub, Images and Docs for Firefox

76 Responses to “FAQs for OutWit Hub, Images and Docs for Firefox”

1. HAL Says:
   December 21st, 2008 at 5:29 am

   Dear Dev. Team:

   This may be cool and useful but until you provide an example it will remain….arcane.

2. kl Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 3:45 pm

   In the tutorial section of the blog, you can find instructions for various uses of OutWit Hub.

3. Chandra Peters Says:
   December 23rd, 2008 at 6:56 pm

   An extremely useful study tool for art history. Very useful to browse through a multitude of paintings very quickly (especially when cramming!)

4. OnusS57 Says:
   December 23rd, 2008 at 7:22 pm

   I LOVE LOVE LOVE this program. If you’re looking for a hassle-free way to look at hundreds of pictures, this is perfect. Plus you can click and drag images and not worry about losing them if you change your website, or your search terms. Honestly, the image browsing is just amazing.

   Great job!

5. PJ Says:
   January 19th, 2009 at 1:26 am

   OutWit has detected an error while loading.You seems to be on Windows, so you probably need to install a DLL.You will be redirected on OutWit FAQ now.

6. JP Says:
   January 21st, 2009 at 1:47 pm

   Thank you for excellent program. I would like to see more flexibility in The ‘Next in Series’ button. I am trying to save tables from a website which only shows 10 results per page. The next button code is a JavaScript.

   javascript:__doPostBack(‘ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder1$GridView1′,’Page$Next’)

   Is it possible that the next in series button can be made user configurable so it can be changed according to user, rather then guessing it. Further the program can ask user to enter number of loops or something of that sort so data can be automatically saved for particular number of pages.

7. Ed Says:
   January 22nd, 2009 at 1:34 am

   Awesome program, this is going to solve a lot of my problems.

   Within an hour, I had one OutWit window scrape running, watching a web page that reloads itself every minute and capturing the results on each page reload. (This is a status page for a realtime system). OutWit is *exactly* what I need to monitor this system! I plan to leave this OutWit running for seven consecutive days, at the end of seven days I will analyze the catch to determine how well the realtime system is running.

   One question: I have several web pages in this system that I need to monitor. Is it possible to have two (or more) OutWit windows open simultaneously?

   Thanks!

   ed

8. kl Says:
   January 22nd, 2009 at 11:53 am

   For the moment, it is not possible to have more than one instance of OutWit Hub open at the same time, however, we have discussed adding this feature in upcoming updates.

   Thank you for the compliment!

9. wwni60 Says:
   February 2nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm

   I have installed the Outwit without problem. But id does not display current page in Firefox 3. I have both msvcr70.dll andmsvcp70.dll in the “c:\windows\system32″
   Any hints?

   Thanks

10. kl Says:
    February 3rd, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    Please do the following to test if the files were installed properly:
    Shortcut : windows + R
    Then enter: regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\msvcr70.dll and afterwards regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\msvcp70.dll
    You will receive a message telling you if the files were installed successfully or not. It is possible that the files are there but not being recognized by the system. If they are not recognized, you will need to reinstall msvcr70.dll and msvcp70.dll.

11. wwni60 Says:
    February 3rd, 2009 at 5:25 pm

    Thanks for your response. The regsvr32 gives this response: dll was loaded, but the DLLRegisterserver point was not found. I actually downloaded micrsoft vcredist_x86.exe and reinstalled the package, restarted the computer But Outwit still does not display any web page.

    I have both msvcr70.dll and msvcr71.dll (and msvcp70.dll/msvcp71.dll). The **71.dlls were there before outwit installation. Should I delete one set of them?

12. query Says:
    February 12th, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    Outwit seems to have been disabled after firefox update 3.0.6
    I can neither uninstall or update the extension.

13. kl Says:
    February 12th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    Thank you for the notification. We are looking into the problem and will get back to you shortly. We apologize for any inconvenience that this has caused you.

14. Dave Says:
    February 25th, 2009 at 11:07 am

    I am being asked for DLL file, I have installed msvcp70 and mavr70 so which dll am I looking foe

15. kl Says:
    March 2nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    Please do the following to test if the files were installed properly:
    Shortcut : windows + R
    Then enter: regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\msvcr70.dll and afterwards regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\msvcp70.dll
    You will receive a message telling you if the files were installed successfully or not. It is possible that the files are there but not being recognized by the system. If they are not recognized, you will need to reinstall msvcr70.dll and msvcp70.dll. If they are recognized then it is another issue. Please, let me know what happens and we can go from there.

16. giocar Says:
    March 20th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    Why don’t grab also POPUP javacript link ?

17. kl Says:
    March 20th, 2009 at 7:35 pm

    OutWit Hub currently does not grab pop-up javascript links due to the difficulty of working this feature into the existing application and the security issues that it raises. It is something that has been considered in the past and may be included in a future update.

18. RaiulBaztepo Says:
    March 29th, 2009 at 2:22 am

    Hello!
    Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
    PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
    See you!
    Your, Raiul Baztepo

19. sfab07 Says:
    April 19th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

    How to create a script to retrieve information on the Yellow Pages.

    Comment créer un script permettant de récupérer des informations sur les pages jaunes.

20. eric gans Says:
    April 20th, 2009 at 1:22 am

    I installed two different outwit apps (images and hub) at two different times, uninstalling the first one between tries, and in each case clicking the button produces a message: “OutWit has detected an unexpected error while loading. Please check the FAQ on our website, or contact us.” So I am doing the latter. I’m running the latest FX (not the beta), Vista Home Premium; lots of other add-ons, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

    Thanks for your help,
    -eric

21. kl Says:
    April 20th, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    You can refer to our online tutorials for building scrapers:

    Creating a Scraper for Multiple URLs Using Regular Expressions: http://blog.outwit.com/?p=121

    Creating a Scraper for Multiple URLs, Simple Method:
    http://blog.outwit.com/?p=116

    Create your First Scraper:
    http://blog.outwit.com/?p=55

22. Bill Says:
    April 22nd, 2009 at 8:18 pm

    Dev Team:

    Excellent tool. My only wish is the ability to copy and paste information directly from excel sheets into the catch. It would make my life very easy.

23. bubill Says:
    April 23rd, 2009 at 6:29 am

    great software …

24. Wolvenpaw Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 11:48 am

    WOW

    I downloaded all three outwit programs and was immediately amazed at the picture search. I used the OutWit Doc on Google to search for PDF books and was overwhelmed by the results. Not in 10 minutes but in 10 seconds. Between these search programs and Zotero for my research library I have an incredible set of research tools.

    One request… can the picture file format .djvu for the DjVu high resolution viewer be added to the search criteria?

25. kl Says:
    April 27th, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    I am glad that we could help and I have passed your suggestion along to the developers for consideration in a future update.

26. CJ Says:
    April 28th, 2009 at 1:21 am

    How can I scrape emails with this tool?

27. kl Says:
    April 28th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    Please, refer to our list of tutorials: http://blog.outwit.com/?cat=21

28. Bill Says:
    April 28th, 2009 at 6:17 pm

    Another suggestion: the ability to catch the “text” tab results.

29. Bill Says:
    April 28th, 2009 at 7:55 pm

    Also, can I import a list of URLs to scrape? If so could you direct me briefly?

30. Brain Says:
    April 30th, 2009 at 4:14 am

    Catch is missing a great feature: User should be able to copy-paste or import links from excel … so that user can highlight the rows in ctach and make a right and ask Outwith Hub to Auto-Browse through those links

    This will make it possible to capture data very quickly without visiting all pages when we can make URL’s ourselves in Excel

31. Phil Says:
    May 5th, 2009 at 9:40 am

    Hi,

    Awesome tool. Like JP (see comment number 6 above) I would like to see more flexibility in the “Next in Series button”. Ideally I would like to specify where the button is (maybe using regex like for the scraper) and have Outwit press it a user-defined number of times…

    /phil

32. pr Says:
    May 7th, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    @Bill: You can catch the text result by dragging it to the catch, but you’re right, we could add a bottom panel like in the other views to make auto-catch possible.

    @Bill, too: Just wait for the next release (today?), and create a text file containing the urls you want to scrape. Then go to links, select all, right-click, apply scraper. Yo can do this if your urls are in the catch, too.

    @Brain: This have been added to our todo list.

    @Phil: Same answer, this have been requested by many people and we’ll work on it soon.

33. Bill Says:
    May 7th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

    @Bill, too: Just wait for the next release (today?), and create a text file containing the urls you want to scrape. Then go to links, select all, right-click, apply scraper. Yo can do this if your urls are in the catch, too.

    —————

    this does not work, as when you paste a large block of URLs from a text document, the link page does not display them, and when you try to catch it it mushes all the URLs into one sprawling block of text with no spaces. I tried to paste from Excel after running a macro to turn all the URLs into hyperlinks and that didnt work either.

34. Bill Says:
    May 7th, 2009 at 4:53 pm

    -note: i meant paste them into the area in the “text” tab in the HUB

35. pr Says:
    May 7th, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Sure, my first words were “Just wait for the next release (today?)”.
    We just implement the loading of text files. It will come in the next hours.

36. MMakana Says:
    May 11th, 2009 at 8:48 pm

    In Google and other search engines I get a wall of thumbnails that are linked to larger images. OutWit downloads the larger images. Works perfectly. Then all I have to do is set it to automatically dowen,oad whatever ai drag to The Catch. Really awesome.

    But I cannot get it to work on other sites that aren’t’ search engines per se – like desktop wallpaper sites, that also have larger images linked to thumbnails. All I’m I’m getting in that wall of images are the thumbnails. I’ve looked at Options and everything you can possibly click in this program, and I don’t see how to get it work with those sites the same way it works with Google, Yahoo, Flickr, etc.

    Is there a scraper for images? I’m no novice – and I know others who are giving OutWit a real close look, but are coming up with the same issue. Can you kindly please help me out here?

37. pr Says:
    May 14th, 2009 at 2:41 pm

    @MMakana: we are always working to make OutWit more generic, so that it works on every websites. We just made an update, please make sure it does not fix your problem.
    If you find websites where OutWit don’t find images, just send us a bugreport with the URLs and we’ll work on them, if possible.

    Unfortunatly, there is no scraper for images yet.

    Regards.

38. Anubis Says:
    May 17th, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    I love outwit hub and images, unfortunately outwit docs just wont do anything at all. I even installed those dll files, to no avail. No documents turn up, no activity at all.

    I would appreciate if a reply could be sent to mail ID>

    Thank U and thank U all the more for such brilliant addons.

39. Nate Says:
    May 18th, 2009 at 4:52 am

    Bill,
    In regards to your question:
    “Also, can I import a list of URLs to scrape? If so could you direct me briefly?”
    Here is a workaround I came up with for this problem (if you are familiar with php).

    To scrape sequential URLs you can use a PHP script.
    NOTE: You must first create a custom scraper for the webpages you wish to scrape.
    Follow the tutorial for doing so here: http://blog.outwit.com/?p=55#more-55

    1. Open a text editor.
    2. Paste this code into a new file:
    

    URLs I Would Like to Scrape

    <?
    $i=1;
    while($i<=50){
    print "Page $i";
    $i++;
    }
    ?>

    
    3. Modify the code in the file for the website you would like to scrape.
    i.e.- change 50 to the number of pages to be scraped.
    Change the URL from “scrapethispage” to the desired URL.
    Change the “page” parameter in the URL, if necessary.
    4. Save the file as: links.php and upload it to a server with php installed.
    5. View this file in FireFox –
    6. If you did everything correctly, you will see a lot of links on the links.php page.
    7. Open OutWit Hub on your links.php page.
    8. Click the “links” view on the left of the page.
    9. You will see your desired urls to be scraped.
    10. Select all of the rows (ctrl-A).
    11. Right click the selected rows and choose “Apply Scraper to Selected URLs.”
    12. Now you can view your custom scraper’s results by clicking the “scraper” view on the left of the page.

40. Nate Says:
    May 18th, 2009 at 4:56 am

    Re-posting code from my comment above.
    Please replace “[" and "]” with “less than” and “greater than” signs respectively.

    [!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"]
    [HTML]
    [HEAD]
    [TITLE]URLs I Would Like to Scrape[/TITLE]
    [META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"]
    [/HEAD]
    [BODY]
    <?
    $i=1;
    while($i<=50){
    print “Page $i“;
    $i++;
    }
    ?>
    [/BODY][/HTML]

41. pr Says:
    May 18th, 2009 at 8:54 am

    @Anubis: Replied by mail

42. Bill Says:
    May 18th, 2009 at 8:49 pm

    Thanks for the help.

    Another easier workaround that i figured out was making urls with an obvious sequence (www.x..com/x/pg1/joe.php) delineating them in excel by fixed width, and putting the numbers up to whatever i need. then i run a macro to make them all hyperlinks, and save as a webpage. That way outwit doesnt have to do the work, and it will run faster will no crashes.

43. Randy Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 9:11 pm

    Does the Outwit collection work on Iceweasel 3.0.6? I installed them successfully but when I try to run any of them I get “…unexpected error while loading…”

    thanks

44. Alain Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Dear developers, a huge “bravo” for your work: I did with your tool a task that took weeks if not month and a lot of java development for gathering flight timetables. When the results came under my eyes I couldn’t believe it!
    Nevertheless I am facing a limit.
    The catch on my computer reaches about 500 000 lines. But then I cannot save in any file format, the export script ends without error message. Would you have a solution for me?
    Alternatively, could it be possible to save the lines sent to the catch directly to an external (mysql) database?

45. pr Says:
    May 25th, 2009 at 8:14 am

    @Randy : mailed and added to the FAQ

    @Alain : Thanks! I’ll try to see what is the problem with a 500000 lines catch.
    For now it is not possible to send directly catch data into a SQL database, but this could be a great feature, I’ll add it to our todo list.

46. Jose Says:
    May 29th, 2009 at 5:07 pm

    Is there any way to automate across urls that look like regular links but are really java script links?

47. pr Says:
    June 2nd, 2009 at 7:38 am

    @Jose: Unfortunately, we can’t do that for now. But this is in our todo list.

48. Jose Says:
    June 15th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    You guys should set up a discussion forum for users of this wonderful software. I’d like to compare notes with some of the other users outside of the blog or faq responses

49. Bill Says:
    June 24th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Just want to say thanks for the insert row function! Great great great tool. Please remove the 15 row max limit!

50. seb Says:
    July 9th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    You should open a forum for users in order to share our experience and compare experiences with some of the other users.
    BR
    S

51. jcc Says:
    July 10th, 2009 at 11:02 pm

    You should be able to add it from the View menu: Toolbars:Customize…
    But I must say that what is strange is that it disappeared in the first place.

52. How to Extract Any Web Page Information and Export it to Excel Says:
    July 17th, 2009 at 5:32 pm

    [...] try to extract the tool FAQ using two possible [...]

53. doh! Says:
    July 17th, 2009 at 8:30 pm

    How do I add the Outwit icon to the toolbar? I just installed in FF 3.5 and do not see any icon anywhere in my browser, and the only way to start Outwit is from the Tools menu. Besides being slow, this is useless for pages that open a browser window without a menu toolbar. Ugh.

54. Top Positions - How To Extract Any Web Page Information And Export It To Excel « TopPositions.org Says:
    July 18th, 2009 at 7:26 am

    [...] try to extract the tool FAQ using two possible [...]

55. ddwit Says:
    July 18th, 2009 at 9:47 pm

    Just installed outwit-images
    Interesting and promising
    1. Using the “viewing feed” window I can set the target-folder for saved images, but I do not know if “catch” saves images and where? Can I set the “catch-folder” to my pref. location?
    2. Could you allow access to settings (“tools/options” in the viewing feed menu) through the regular options for your ffox extension?

56. pr Says:
    July 20th, 2009 at 10:23 am

    @ddwit:
    1. You can set the catch autosave folder simply by clicking on “autosave”. If you have already set it, you can modify it in “options”.
    2. Do you mean accessing them for the addons list for example? Yes, it’s a good idea.

57. Sprauch Says:
    July 30th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    Great software!

    Like so many others I’m missing a “variable step” to go through a series of webpages, but I’m sure you clever people will get that feature in as soon as you can. Have my own todo-list, and really not jealous to have yours

    Again, way to go!

58. Raoul Says:
    August 25th, 2010 at 4:55 pm

    Sorry to report, but none of the Outwit utilities works on my Browser FF 4.0b4

    “OutWit has detected an unexpected error while loading. Please check the FAQ on our website, or contact us.”

59. pr Says:
    August 25th, 2010 at 6:22 pm

    Hi Raoul,
    The latest online version works on Firefox 4.0b4. We still have some very little bugs but they will be fix for Firefox 4 release.
    Regards.

60. Paul C Says:
    September 11th, 2010 at 4:02 pm

    Just installed outwit-images
    Interesting and promising

61. Jasper van den Bergen Says:
    September 15th, 2010 at 4:36 pm

    Hey,

    when I use the ‘guess’ function, it says: limited to 100 rows in light version.
    I am willing to pay for this, but when I was searching for the pro version, it appears there isn’t one yet.
    How come you have this limitation then?
    Can I get a temporary pro version or something?
    Could really use it right about now. ^^

    Cheers for the development of this plugin!

    Best,
    Jasper.

62. jcc Says:
    September 15th, 2010 at 6:22 pm

    Until we release version 1.0, you can request a beta version key from the ‘Upgrade’ menu in OutWit Hub Light.
    To ensure the follow-up of your feedback tickets, please use the Bug Report/Suggestion system (from our Web site or from within the application), rather than this blog.

    Thanks Jasper,
    JC

63. Uli Kaiser Says:
    April 22nd, 2011 at 8:32 pm

    I like Outwit Hub … I hope you will release a Safari version?

64. zaqir Says:
    April 27th, 2011 at 8:28 pm

    Is there any option to import scrapped links to out wit hub links list to run the scrapper to those links I exported?

    I am trying to figure it out but couldn’t.

65. Rick L. Says:
    June 8th, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    Great product. Been working with it for several days now. But I am gathering a large number of images from a photo collection. It worked well for a day, but then Firefox started crashing. Now that it is back, I can’t get outwit to work properly. Sticks in the same place every time when downloading images. Checked for updates, none available. Any ideas?

66. Himanshu Says:
    June 27th, 2011 at 2:12 pm

    Installed the latest outwit hub on Firefox 4 beta 6 version getting the error” “OutWit has detected an unexpected error while loading. Please check the FAQ on our website, or contact us.”

67. pr Says:
    June 28th, 2011 at 10:17 am

    @Himanshu: Please try with the latest stable Firefox version (Firefox 5 is now out!). If you stille have problems, please report a bug on http://www.outwit.com/support/feedback/contact.php?type=1.

68. pr Says:
    June 28th, 2011 at 10:23 am

    @Rick: Please try with the latest Firefox/OutWit versions. If you still experience problems, please use the bugreport page. Cheers.

69. pr Says:
    June 28th, 2011 at 10:25 am

    @Zaqir: You can directly right-click => “Apply scraper” on any datasheet (including scraped results or catch). If you want to save them somewhere, the pro version offers a “queries” view.
    Best regards.

70. pr Says:
    June 28th, 2011 at 10:28 am

    @Uli Kaiser: Not for now. But we are planning a standalone version… One day!

71. disenchanted Says:
    September 7th, 2011 at 2:50 pm

    What is the licensing for this product?

    Can I install on a laptop and my desktop (I am the only user of both computers)?

    Thanks.

72. pr Says:
    September 27th, 2011 at 1:16 pm

    Sure you can.
    Best regards.

73. Phil J Reilly Says:
    December 6th, 2011 at 7:01 pm

    Please update the liboutwit-3.6.dylib for the PPC platform. Let’s get this working on TenFourFox!

74. pr Says:
    December 8th, 2011 at 3:16 pm

    @Phil,
    PPC platform is not officially supported by Firefox, and it’s not simple for us to keep compatibility.
    Furthermore, we’ll stop Firefox 3.6 support in the next release.
    We are a small team, and we decided to use our resources to improve our apps using the best of new Web technologies.
    Sorry!

    Cheers,
    –
    pr

75. Phil J Reilly Says:
    December 21st, 2011 at 9:38 pm

    Please update Images for PPC TenFourFox!

76. pr Says:
    December 23rd, 2011 at 1:47 pm

    @Phil,
    We’re sorry, but PPC is not supported anymore.
    Cheers.