Examples Processing Image Surfer Pro Forms

Image Surfer Pro Forms are created by the ISP Form button on Image Surfer Pro toolbar button. This powerful tool will separate the media files used and referenced by the current webpage from the text and layout of the page, showing you exactly what media content is available from the page and how it was delivered.

It is 100% safe to use the ISP Form button on Image Surfer Pro toolbar button on any webpage, however the results may not always be what you expect. You will get more out of your surfing experience and understand the web much better if use this tool on a variety of pages.

ISP Forms consist of four different tables:

All four tables are always present, though if no matching content was found for a table it will have only the table header.

In these examples, the image on the left will link directly to the webpage used as the starting point. The other images will each link to full size images. This allows you to follow along by setting your preferences, going to the website and performing the actions - thus duplicating the results.






Adding Direct Image References
Image Surfer Pro user preferences Forms Tab dialog with selected inputs enabled
Description
Our first page to be processed is a thumbnail post from Ace-Clipart.com Which was also used in the Auto Processing a Free Hosted Gallery examples. In the user Preferences we have enabled the following fields:
  • {Auto select URL links to images in forms}
  • {Auto combine individual Images into fusked images}
The only two actions taken are to first process the original page with ISP Form button from Image Surfer Pro toolbar and then immediately process the generated form with Auto Process button from Image Surfer Pro toolbar
Before
Original webpage: Ace-Clipart.com
Image Surfer Pro Form Generated
Intermediate Image Surfer Pro Form webpage
After Resulting view of fusker collection view and IE dispaly window
After you create the ISP Form with the ISP Form button on Image Surfer Pro toolbar button notice the "Add all direct image references to collection" check box is selected in the header of the Links column of both the Images Table and Links Table. Because the {Auto select URL links to images in forms} configuration is enabled, this check box is selected when the form is created. Selecting and un-selecting this check box will change each of the "Add Image To Collection" check box for each URL in the Links column where the URL links to an image file.

If you have read though the examples of Auto Processing Free Hosted Galleries, the result will look very familiar. In the intermediate Image Surfer Pro Form page you will see that right column links which point to image files (based on their file extensions) have been selected because their check boxes were automatically marked. The most appropriate link is chosen - Clean if it exists is chosen by default, then Sterile, and finally the Original link.

Processing a page this way is exactly like initially processing the page as a FHG with the Auto Process button from Image Surfer Pro toolbar button. FHG processing always uses the Clean links and never the original links.





Adding Video References
Image Surfer Pro user preferences Forms Tab dialog with selected inputs enabled
Description
To demonstrate how video is broken out of the webpage by the ISP Form button on Image Surfer Pro toolbar button we will process another page from the Auto Processing a Free Hosted Gallery examples. In the user Preferences we have enabled the {Auto select video files in forms} configuration.

The only two actions taken are to first process the original page with ISP Form button from Image Surfer Pro toolbar and then immediately process the generated form with Auto Process button from Image Surfer Pro toolbar

We have chosen to not enable the {Auto combine individual Videos into fusked Videos} configuration because we want each video to have a unique poster if they do happen to fall into the same directory path.
Before
Original webpage: Shutter Stock page for one of ther slow motion water surface videos
Image Surfer Pro Form Generated
Intermediate Image Surfer Pro Form webpage
After Resulting view of the fusker collection view and IE dispaly window
After you create the ISP Form with the ISP Form button on Image Surfer Pro toolbar button notice the "Add all videos to collection" check box in the header of the Videos Table is selected. Likewise, the selection box for each of the 21 individual videos found referenced on the page are also selected.

If you have read though the examples of Auto Processing Free Hosted Galleries, the result will look very familiar. Processing a page this way is exactly like initially processing the page as a FHG with the Auto Process button from Image Surfer Pro toolbar button. FHG processing always uses the Clean links and never the original links.





Performing A Directed Search
Image Surfer Pro user preferences Forms Tab dialog with no inputs enabled
Configuration
In this example we want to walk through a directed search which will access multiple pages to find videos. Showing how a directed search differs from directly processing the webpage with the Auto Process button from Image Surfer Pro toolbar button.

We have specifically turned off all of the {Auto Collect} configurations:

{Automatically collect direct image links}DISABLED
{Automatically collect embedded image links}NEVER
{Automatically collect video information found}DISABLED
{Automatically collect frame information found}DISABLED

We have also disabled all of the configurations on the Forms Tab as shown.
Original Page
Original webpage: Shutter Stock page for one of ther slow motion water surface videos
Description
In this case we will start with the same video FHG page from Shutter Stock used in the previous example. In that example we used an ISP Form to add the 21 videos referenced by the page. This produced the same result as if we had simply used the Auto Process button from Image Surfer Pro toolbar button on this original page - so the you may be asking yourself what the value of using an ISP Form really is. There are two advantages to using the ISP Form. First, you can select the data you wish to add to your fusker collection rather than simply grabbing all of the data on the page. Secondly, you have to opportunity to search additional pages for similar content automatically.

We start a directed search by first extracting the media file and link information from the webpage in the form an ISP Form created with the ISP Form button on Image Surfer Pro toolbar button just as we did in the previous example.
Top Of Generated ISP Form
Intermediate Image Surfer Pro Form webpage
Top Of Images Table
Top of the Images Table of the intermediate ISP Form webpage showing other pages selected for a search
Directed Search In Progress
Screen capture with Directed Search in progress
An ISP Form consists of a small header and four tables. The tables are always in the same order: Videos, Frames, Images, and Links. Here we see the top of the form with header information about the page the form was created from and the Videos Table header. Because all of the configurations on the Form Tab were disabled, none of the check boxes in the table headers have been turned on.

As noted in the previous example, the Videos Table has 21 videos in it. We can use the "Add all videos to collection" check box in the Videos Table header to have the videos added to the fusker collection as in the previous example.

If you scroll down a bit you will find the Frame Table which may have a couple of frames. These frames don't appear to provide any immediate value. One seems to show the 404 File Not Found page for ShutterStock.com while the other is blank. This is typical and one reason we don't suggest automatically collecting frame data.
If we scroll down past the Frame Table we find the Images Table. Just above each table there are also links to each of the tables which can make navigating the page easier.

The Images Table contains 26 rows - one for each image found embedded on the original Shutter Stock page. Looking closely at the images and associated links we see these are mostly the thumbnail images at the bottom of the page which when moused over showed the videos which are in the Videos Table. The links appear to be links to the page at Shutter Stock which highlights to referenced video. There are some generic thumbnail images and links to things like certifications and privacy statements etc. at the top and bottom of the table as well.

Selecting Links To Search
This is mostly a matter of taste and can be done in many different ways for many different reasons. It may depend upon how specific what you are looking for is, how well the thumbnail images represent the content you are looking for, and how well you know the pages you are searching. Our general advice would be:

  • Avoid searching the "generic" pages typically found at the top and bottom of the table
  • Avoid following generic ad links from banners.
  • In most cases the links you want to search will be in the Images Table - not the Links Table

In this case we used chose to search all of the links associated with the video thumbnail images. We specifically avoided the generic pages at the bottom of the Images Table. We did this by first selecting the "Search for information on the linked pages" checkbox in the Images Table header and then unselecting the single check box in row 46 of the form.
Once the additional pages have been selected for searching, we execute the Directed Search using the Aut Process button from Image Surfer Pro toolbar button. The first step of the search will process the Add selection boxes on the ISP Form and add those media files to your fusker collection (in this case the 21 videos in the Videos Table).

Once the selected additions have been processed, IE will begin navigating to each of the pages selected for search in order from top to bottom on the ISP Form. During the search an interactive task status window will be visible at the top right corner of your screen (you can move this around). As the search progresses through pages the status will inform you have how many videos, direct images, embedded images, and frames it has found during the search. And from time to time a progress bar may appear in the bottom right corner of your primary screen. This progress bar will only appear when Image Surfer Pro is processing a page and the processing takes more than two seconds to complete.

It is not uncommon to find the number of pages to search increasing. This will happen if a search page doesn't directly link to some media content. The way Image Surfer Pro decides whether or not enough media content was found on a page and whether or not to add additional links from the page to the search list has been developed and optimized strictly through trial and error and is not currently part of the user provisioning. It was specifically optimized to work in cases where the original page is a Thumbnail Post which links to Free Hosted Galleries and the thumbnails on the FHG link to content pages or directly to the content.

In this specific case you will not see the number of pages increase as each Shutter Stock page has sufficient video content for Image Surfer Pro to feel it has found the data you were looking for.

From time to time you a window may pop up saying "Navigation to the following page seems slow... shall we continue to wait?". This happens when IE takes longer to download and display the page than Image Surfer Pro expects. The amount of time Image Surfer Pro will wait is configurable on the Process Tab of the User Preferences.
Choosing What To Add
Screen capture of dialog presented after the directed search
Results Of The Directed Search
Result of the Directed Search shows updated fusker collection and original ISP Form
When the Directed Search completes it will prompt you to return to the original ISP Form. In most cases the pages searches will not show up in the browsing history.

In this case we specifically turned all auto collection off - so we are presented with a dialog window reporting what information was found and asking us to chose what information to add to the fusker collection. Our search found 174 videos, 21 frames, and 53 embedded images. We selected the videos and images but not the frames.

The collection now has a total of 220 galleries with 174 videos and 53 images. You will note that the total presented at the end of the search included the videos selected from the original ISP Form in the video count. As in the previous example a Content Delivery network was used to deliver the video and image content. We have "organized" the fusker collection to show how the video content was found on ak#.picdn.net servers while the image content was found on il#.picdn.net servers. The few images found which were not hosted at the picdn.net domain are simple page graphics of little interest.
Displaying The Collection
Zoomed out view of some of the videos
While you can display several videos on a single Image Surfer Pro generated webpage, you should exercise caution in doing so. In some cases (such as with Shutter Stock) if a content delivery network receives too many requests from the same IP Address for videos at essentially the same time, not all of the content will be delivered. In this case we have shown the videos from the ak0.picdn.net server with zoom of 50%. We have several of the videos playing at the same time with the others simply loaded.

Videos are also require much more memory to load onto a page than a simple image, so be careful with too many videos on a page and make sure to limit your items per page based on the memory available on your system and the number of simultaneous video connections allowed by the content provider or IE may become unresponsive.