How to Create a Browsable Copy or CD of the Session Overview

You can use ConfTool Pro to create the conference schedule. As result you get an overview page as list or table view, with all the sessions of your conference (see two examples below). You can use this page as starting point to create your conference CD or your Web pages with the "official" conference schedule.

Below are some hints how to "export" these dynamic pages to a static format, that can still be browsed but also be saved and edited.

To create a browsable copy of the session overview, you need the Firefox browser and the  browser extension "Scrapbook". It can be found here:

http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook/

In fact Scrapbook is probably one of the most useful extensions for Firefox, as you can use it to create copies (like "screenshots") of any page in your browser. The copy is stored on your local hard drive and will be accessible later at any time. Scrapbook also works with dynamic pages (AJAX), so you can e.g. make a local copy of a flight booking, a receipt, an invoice or a message of your Webmail account.

To create a browsable copy or a CD of your conference session overview, please first set the parameters of the session overview page:

  1. You can set the accessibility of downloads for each contribution type separately. Please go to "Settings" => "Manage Submission Types / Conference Tracks" and for each contribution type enable or disable "Accessibility of File No. 1, 2, or 3" in the section "Download Settings".
  2. On the page "Conference Program Scheduling" => "Main Settings for Conference Session Overview" you can enable or disable general settings for the session overview, like the display of email-addresses. (Please note that all e-mails are JavaScript encoded against spam robots.)
  3. For each session you can define, if abstracts and downloads shall be displayed. Go to "Conference Program Scheduling" => "Create and Modify Sessions" to do these settings.

 

If everything is fine, please go to the page "Show Conference Sessions" for "normal" ConfTool users (the page code is "browseSessions"), and select the according view. To create the browsable copy, please activate the "Export view with Page Head" or the "Print View" first.

Now open the Scrapbook menu and select "Capture Page As..."

Please set the parameters as shown below: Enable images and styles and also doc and pdf (or any file type you want to include in the exported version) and set the "In-depth Capture" to 3.

Then start the download process by clicking "Capture". Scrapbook will now download the current page and also all linked pages and required files of the selected types.

After the download has finished, you will find all files with modified links and file names in the latest sub-folder of the folder "scrapbook" of your personal Firefox directory.

This is for instance for Windows XP: 

C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\
   Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxx0x0x0.default\scrapbook\

To browse this copy, use the file index.html as start page. Please test the downloaded version, and do this test also with a PC without network connection.


Feedback is welcome!

Harald Weinreich

 

NB: If you have problems locating your profile folder, please have a look at the Firefox Profile help. You can also change the location of your Scrapbook save folder, if you go to the configuration page of Scrapbook.