** 0.3 page PD/Shareware / 318 words **

XURL v2.50
Rating 80%

Communications
Freeware, all Ataris

To access any web site you need a URL. These are often long and sprinkled with characters which are awkward to type making them a real pain to type in. CAB provides a hotlist facility which makes accessing often-visited sites much easier, but what happens if you see a web site address in a text file on Usenet or on a BBS? You either have to copy it to the clipboard or write it down on a piece of paper. Either way you're likely to lose or forget it. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just point a program at a folder full of files or just one file and extract those URLs?

XURL (pronounced ZURL), programmed by Gary Priest, does exactly that. It extracts URLs which begin "http://" from files and adds them to an HTML document which can be loaded into a browser. The URL can then be clicked on and your browser will jump straight to the given URL (so long as you're online). 
Configuring XURL is straightforward and entails selecting a couple of paths, one to a file or folder, and one to an HTML document of your choice. If you want to launch a web browser automatically a couple of environmental variables have to be set and this is covered in the documentation.
XURL is actively supported and developed - the latest versions include BubbleGEM and OLGA support.
As it stands, XURL is in daily use on my system and has proved indispensable. I save URLs to my CIXREAD notebook file and then run XURL over it. I've also pointed XURL at my Newsie Usenet folders and it extracted the URLs effortlessly.
Although XURL is freeware I liked it so much I registered CoSTa (which I don't use) in payment!
** Italics on **
Mike Kerslake
** Italics off **
** Images **
** XURL1.GIF
** XURL2.GIF