Thank you for using the GoT Tracker!
This very nice piece of DHTML is presented to you by: MickMack (the inventor) and crisp (the scripter).
What does this fantastic program do? Well, it keeps track of all the topics on this terrific forum called Gathering of Tweakers.
Like many other forums this forums is divided into subforums; since it is virtually impossible to be in all the subforums of your interest at one time this program scans those subforums for the active topics and presents them to you in a list.
Since this 'program' is all written using DHTML you just need a suitable browser to use it. No webserver and/or PHP is required. At the moment IE5.0 and higher and the most recent versions of Mozilla/Netscape are supported.
So far so good, but you probably already know what this program does, and came here for help. Well, it's all very simple; you know how to start this program, else you wouldn't have stumbled onto this screen, but anyhow I'll explain:
If you downloaded the tracker.zip file you should unzip it in a new directory of your choice if you haven't already done that. Make sure to leave the build-in directory structure intact!
Because of the very strict security settings in Mozilla/Netscape browsers it is also necessary to allow access to certain properies of the XMLdocument object if you intend to use the Tracker with this browser. Therefor you need to add the following 7 lines to the all.js file in the ../Mozilla/defaults/pref/ or ../Netscape xx/defaults/pref/ dir (where .. is the directory where Mozilla/Netscape is installed):
pref("capability.policy.default.XMLDocument.getElementsByTagName", "allAccess");
pref("capability.policy.default.XMLDocument.documentElement", "allAccess");
pref("capability.policy.default.Element.childNodes", "allAccess");
pref("capability.policy.default.Element.tagName", "allAccess");
pref("capability.policy.default.Text.nodeValue", "allAccess");
pref("capability.policy.default.HTMLCollection.length", "allAccess");
pref("capability.policy.default.HTMLCollection.item", "allAccess");
These settings can also be implemented user-based in the prefs.js file in the user directory; in that case change 'pref' into 'user_pref'
Optionally you can restrict these settings to the location of the XML output script, which is http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/hottopic_xml.
For more information about editting the all.js policy file, please refer to http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/ConfigPolicy.html.
Now there are a number of ways to start the Tracker:
1) By doubleclicking on the file tracker.html; this will bring up the Tracker in a normal browserwindow, nothing fancy.
2) By doubleclicking on the file loadtracker.html; this will bring up the Tracker in a popup screen. Fancy huh?
3) By setting the file desktop.html as your desktop background (Active Desktop - Windows only). When you disable your desktop icons you can even drag the Tracker around (and you thought the second one was fancy!)
During startup of the script Mozilla/Netscape users will receive a security warning, which needs to be accepted before the Tracker will work.
Now we come to the fun part: customize it! What's there to customize you will wonder; well, basically everything if you have some HTML, JS and CSS knowledge (tutorials are out there somewhere).
For the colors, font-types, mouse-over colors etcetera have a look at file style.css and play around with the values. You'll be surprised how easy it is!
All the program preferences are basically stored in file tracker.html, but we have included a nifty user interface to change these preferences while running the program. These preferences are stored in a cookie, so you don't loose them when restarting the Tracker!
Let's go by the options using the icons in the Tracker:





Now there's a lot more to tell you, for instance the


You can even track topics without notification. These topics can be found back later in the organise screen, where they will be presented in bold if there have been new replies.
The organise screen has a context menu that will pop up if you click your right mousebutton on a topic. This menu has 3 options:
-Open; opens the topic as if you had clicked on it normally.
-Mark read; when it is marked to have new replies, it can be unmarked with this option without actually opening it.
-Remove; this will remove the topic from the follow-up topics list (thus it will not be tracked anymore).
The follow-up topics screen also has 2 additional icons:

Another way of adding topics quickly to your follow-up topics list is by means of your clipboard. There is a special option in your preferences that can enable or disable this feature. When you copy a topic-url from the addressbar of your browser, the add new topic window will automatically appear with the topic-id already filled in! (Note that this is an IE-only feature; on Mozilla/Netscape browsers this option is disabled)

Furthermore the follow-up topics list has a nifty sort feature; you can click on the column titles to sort on a particular property. Although the number of follow-up topics is limited to 30, this can be very slow on older computers. In that case it is recommended to disable this feature altogether from your preferences.
The forum select window also has an icon that looks like this:

Now for some standard questions you may have come up with:
Q: The Tracker doesn't work when I put it online on my website :(
A: That's right; this Tracker is designed to work on a local PC. For a web-solution you need to parse the XML from GoT using a serverside parser. The Microsoft ActiveX XML-parser only works locally; this is not a bug, but a security feature.
Q: How do I integrate the Tracker in my Active Desktop?
A: Have a look at the desktop.html file for an example.
If you are using a 3rd party's AD template, then just include the link to tracker.html, or tracker.html?type=desktop
Q: The Tracker doesn't work in Opera/Other browser!
A: Opera is a nice browser, but doesn't have much DHTML capabilities. The XML parse bit of the Tracker is compliant with the Microsoft ActiveX parser, and the XML/DOM parser from Mozilla, so most other browser will also probably not work... (NS6.x is also known to fail, since the last NS6 browser is using the Mozilla 0.9.4 engine, which doesn't work either; try the preview release of NS7)
Q: Why doen't the tracker work in version 4 of IE/Netscape?
A: Because these are browsers from the stone-age when XML didn't even exist. I strongly advice you to upgrade!
Q: Why does a link to a topic doesn't show me the last page?
A: You need to set the number of replies per page to the same number as your preferences on GoT. However, if you clicked an entry from the follow-up topics list, and you missed like 50 replies, the link will take you to the page of the first new reply since tracking by design.
Q: How do I make my icon textlabels transparant when using Active Desktop?
A: Use a 3rd party utility such as Window FX.
Q: Why doesn't the topics window resize in Active Desktop when I change the number of topics?
A: The Active Desktop feature isn't that dynamic unfortunately; you will need to set the window size in desktop.html manually. The height for the Iframe can be calculated as follows: (number of topics * 13) + 29.
Q: The Tracker on my Active Desktop doesn't load the topics list anymore!?
A: This is an error in the AD, it occurs sometimes after having changed it several times. The only remedy is to reboot your PC...
Q: Why can't I drag the layer on the Active Desktop?
A: You need to disable Desktop Icons first before you can drag the layer (right-click - Active Desktop - unmark Show Desktop Icons).
Q: When I want to add a follow-up topic I get a message that the maximum number of follow-up topics is reached?
A: Because I use a cookie to store all the topicinformation (timestamps, titles, topic id's etc.) as well as preference information, and a cookie can only hold up to 4Kb of information, the number of follow-up topics is limited. Adding more information than the cookie can hold will result in loss of information; if you feel confident your browser can handle larger cookies you may want to increase the value of CookieLimit in tracker.html
Q: Why is the sorting of the follow-up topics so slow?
A: Well, here's something new... I busted my ass off to make the sorting routine as fast as possible and you still think it's slow?
Buy yourself a new PC, or disable sorting altogether from the preferences; this may save a few seconds.
Q: Help! I'm getting errors and the Tracker doesn't work anymore!!!???
A: First of all: relax, don't panic! It's not the end of the world though it may seem that way ;) Have another beer, go to this topic on GoT and explain me the error.
Alternatively you can try the debug options mentioned on this page to try to revive the Tracker.
Q: How do I make the Tracker ignore my own replies to a topic?
A: Input your nick in the preferences; make sure it is spelled correctely. This will make the Tracker ignore your own replies.
Q: What does 'Clipboard checking' mean?
A: No, I'm not out to get your password. This is the previously mentioned option for easy input of new follow-up topics by just copying the url from your addressbar to the clipboard (IE only).
Q: I don't hear any sounds?!
A: First of all make sure that the filename mentioned in your preferences is correct. If the file is in the Tracker dir, there is no need to specify a path. Otherwise a full path is expected.
Furthermore you may require a certain plugin (don't know which one, since my browser probably already came with the correct one). If you experience any more trouble with sound, try disabling the option; at least this will prevent the Tracker from crashing ;)
Q: I am constantly getting the message 'Refresh timed out', what can I do about it?
A: Well, you are probably not blessed with a fast internet connection, and the Tracker cannot fully load the complete XML within the default 10 seconds alloted. You may want to increase this limit to say 20 seconds from your preferences.
Q: I can't log in to the forum when I use the sidebar!
A: Although I don't have this issue myself users reported having solved this by adding the URL to the forum (http://gathering.tweakers.net) to the Trusted Sites in the Internet Explorer security settings.
For feature requests and comments please go to this topic on GoT.
The official website: http://www.xs4all.nl/~crisp/gottracker/ (under construction)
Have fun!
crisp