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diff --git a/chrome/help.html b/chrome/help.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4534d96 --- /dev/null +++ b/chrome/help.html @@ -0,0 +1,182 @@ +<!-- $Id$ --> +<html> + <head> + <title>Redirector Help</title> + <style type="text/css"> + body { font-family: Verdana, Arial; color:black; background-color:white; font-size:0.9em;} + a { color:blue; } + </style> + </head> + <body> + <h1>Redirector Help</h1> + <h3>Table of contents</h3> + <ul> + <li><a href="#whatisredirector">What is Redirector?</a></li> + <li><a href="#basicusage">Basic usage</a> + <ul> + <li><a href="#exampleurl">Example url</a></li> + <li><a href="#includepattern">Include pattern</a></li> + <li><a href="#excludepattern">Exclude pattern</a></li> + <li><a href="#redirectto">Redirect to</a></li> + <li><a href="#patterntype">Pattern type</a></li> + <li><a href="#unescapematches">Unescape matches</a></li> + </ul> + </li> + <li><a href="#wildcards">Wildcards</a></li> + <li><a href="#regularexpressions">Regular expressions</a></li> + <li><a href="#examples">Examples</a> + <ol> + <li><a href="#ex1">Static redirect</a></li> + <li><a href="#ex2">Redirect using query string parameter and wildcards</a></li> + <li><a href="#ex3">Redirect using query string parameter and regular expressions</a></li> + <li><a href="#ex4">Redirect to a different folder using wildcards</a></li> + <li><a href="#ex5">Redirect http to https using wildcards</a></li> + </ol> + + </li> + </ul> + + + <a name="whatisredirector"></a> + <h4>What is Redirector?</h4> + + <p>Redirector is an extension for Firefox that allows you to automatically redirect from + one webpage to another. For example, every time you visit http://abc.com you will automatically + load http://def.com instead. This can be useful for instance to always redirect articles to printer friendly + versions, redirect http:// to https:// for sites that support both, bypass advertising pages that appear before + being able to view certain pages and more.</p> + + <a name="basicusage"></a> + <h4>Basic usage</h4> + <p>To add a new redirect you can go to the <em>Tools</em> menuitem and select <em>Redirector</em>. That will + open the <em>Redirector settings</em> window which shows all your redirects. The window can also be opened + by right clicking on the <strong>R</strong> icon in your statusbar. + There you can press the <em>Add...</em> button and then you can enter the details for the new redirect. A redirect + consists of a few things: + <ul> + <li><a name="exampleurl"></a><strong>Example url:</strong> This is an example of an url you want to redirect. It is not really used for anything, + it's just there to show what types of urls you're targetting. You can leave this out, but then you can't use the <em>Test pattern</em> button.</li> + + <li><a name="includepattern"></a><strong>Include pattern:</strong> This is pattern for the urls you want to redirect. In the simplest case, where you just want + to redirect one specific url to another then this will just be the exact url you want to redirect. For instance, if you just want http://aaa.com to + redirect to http://bbb.com then <em>Include pattern</em> will just be http://aaa.com. For more complex patterns that match many + urls you can use either <a href="#wildcards">wildcards</a> or <a href="#regularexpressions">regular expressions</a>.</li> + + <li><a name="excludepattern"></a><strong>Exclude pattern:</strong> Urls that match this pattern will never be redirected. This is not necessary to + fill out, but can be useful when you want to redirect all urls that contain some text except if they contain some other text. + Redirects like that can often be done with a complex regular expression, but using an exclude pattern makes it much simpler. The exclude + patterns can use wildcard characters or regular expressions like the include patterns.</li> + + <li><a name="redirectto"></a><strong>Redirect to:</strong> This is the url that you will be redirected to when you open any page where the url matches the + include pattern. You can use the special signs $1, $2, $3 etc. in the url, they will be replaced by the results of captures with regular + expressions or stars with wildcards. For instance, if you have the include pattern <em>http://google.com/*</em>, redirect to <em>http://froogle.com/$1</em> + and you open the page http://google.com/foobar, then you will be redireced to http://froogle.com/foobar, since 'foobar' was what the star replaced. $1 is for the + first star in the pattern, $2 for the second and so on. For regular expression $1 is for the first parantheses, $2 for the second etc.</li> + + <li><a name="patterntype"></a><strong>Pattern type:</strong> This specifies how Redirector should interpret the patterns, either as + <a href="#wildcards">wildcards</a> or <a href="#regularexpressions#">regular expressions</a>.</li> + + <li><a name="unescapematches"></a><strong>Unescape matches:</strong> A common usage of Redirector is to catch urls like + <em>http://foo.com/redirect.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbar%2Ecom%2Fpath</em> and try to catch the url parameter and redirect to it. A pattern + like <em>http://foo.com/redirect.php?url=*</em> might be used for that purpose. However, if the url parameter is <em>escaped</em> (also known + as <em>urlencoded</em>) then that won't work. In the url above we see that it starts with <em>http%3A%2F%2F</em> instead of <em>http://</em>, and Firefox + won't accept this as a new url to redirect to. So, in cases like these you can check the <em>Unescape matches</em> option and then all + matches will be unescaped (turned from e.g. <em>http%3A%2F%2Fbar%2Ecom</em> to <em>http://bar.com</em>) before being inserted into the target url. + </li> + + </ul> + </p> + + <a name="wildcards"></a> + <h4>Wildcards</h4> + + <p>Wildcards are the simplest way to specify include and exclude patterns. When you create a wildcard pattern there + is just one special character, the asterisk *. An asterisk in your pattern will match zero or more characters and you can + have more than one star in your pattern. Some examples: + <ul> + <li><em>http://example.com/*</em> matches http://example.com/, http://example.com/foo, http://example.com/bar and all other urls that start with http://example.com/.</li> + <li><em>http://*.example.com</em> matches all subdomains of example.com, like http://www.example.com, http://mail.example.com.</li> + <li><em>http*://example.com</em> matches both http://example.com and https://example.com.</li> + <li><em>http://example.com/index.asp*</em> matches http://example.com/index.asp, http://example.com/index.asp?a=b&c=d.</li> + </ul> + $1, $2, $3 in the redirect urls will match the text that the stars matched. Examples: + <ul> + <li><em>http://example.com/*</em> matches http://example.com/foobar, $1 is foobar.</li> + <li><em>http://*.example.com/*</em> matches http://www.example.com/foobar, $1 is www, $2 is foobar.</li> + </ul> + </p> + + <a name="regularexpressions"></a> + <h4>Regular expressions</h4> + + <p>Regular expressions allow for more complicated patterns but they are a lot harder to learn than wildcards. I'm not gonna + create a regex tutorial here but normal javascript regex syntax works, look at <a href="http://regular-expressions.info" target="_blank">http://regular-expressions.info</a> for + an introduction to regular expressions. $1,$2 etc. can be used in the redirect url and will be replaced with contents of captures in + the regular expressions. Captures are specified with parantheses. Example: http://example.com/index.asp\?id=(\d+) will match the url + http://example.com/index.asp?id=12345 and $1 will be replaced by 12345. (A common mistake in regex patterns is to forget to escape + the ? sign in the querystring of the url. ? is a special character in regular expressions so if you want to match an url with a querystring + you should escape it as \?).</p> + + <a name="examples"></a> + <h4>Examples</h4> + + <ol> + <li> + <strong><a name="ex1"></a>Static redirect</strong><br/> + Redirects from http://example.com/foo to http://example.com/bar + <p> + <strong>Include pattern:</strong> http://example.com/foo<br/> + <strong>Exclude pattern:</strong><br/> + <strong>Redirect to:</strong> http://example.com/bar<br/> + <strong>Pattern type:</strong> Wildcard<br /> + </p> + + </li> + <li> + <strong><a name="ex2"></a>Redirect using query string parameter and wildcards</strong><br/> + Redirects from http://example.com/index.php?id=12345&a=b to http://example.com/printerfriendly.php?id=12345&a=b + where 12345 could be any number. + <p> + <strong>Include pattern:</strong> http://example.com/index.php?id=*&a=b<br/> + <strong>Exclude pattern:</strong><br/> + <strong>Redirect to:</strong> http://example.com/printerfriendly.com?id=$1&a=b<br/> + <strong>Pattern type:</strong> Wildcard<br /> + </p> + </li> + <li> + <strong><a name="ex3"></a>Redirect using query string parameter and regular expressions</strong><br/> + Redirects from http://example.com/index.php?id=12345&a=b to http://example.com/printerfriendly.php?id=12345&a=b + where 12345 could be any number. + <p> + <strong>Include pattern:</strong> http://example.com/index.php\?id=(\d+)&a=b<br/> + <strong>Exclude pattern:</strong><br/> + <strong>Redirect to:</strong> http://example.com/printerfriendly.com?id=$1&a=b<br/> + <strong>Pattern type:</strong> Regular Expression<br /> + </p> + </li> + <li> + <strong><a name="ex4"></a>Redirect to a different folder using wildcards</strong><br/> + Redirects from http://example.com/category/fish/index.php to http://example.com/category/cats/index.php + where fish could be any word. The exclude pattern makes sure that there is only one + folder there, so for instance http://example.com/category/fish/cat/mouse/index.php would not match. + <p> + <strong>Include pattern:</strong> http://example.com/category/*/index.php<br/> + <strong>Exclude pattern:</strong> http://example.com/category/*/*/index.php<br/> + <strong>Redirect to:</strong> http://example.com/category/cats/index.php<br/> + <strong>Pattern type:</strong> Wildcard<br /> + </p> + </li> + <li> + <strong><a name="ex5"></a>Redirect http to https using wildcards</strong><br/> + Redirects from http://mail.google.com/randomcharacters to https://mail.google.com/randomcharacters + where randomcharacters could be anything. + <p> + <strong>Include pattern:</strong> http://mail.google.com*<br/> + <strong>Exclude pattern:</strong><br/> + <strong>Redirect to:</strong> https://mail.google.com$1<br/> + <strong>Pattern type:</strong> Wildcard<br /> + </p> + </li> + </ol> + </body> +</html>
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