Using Webapp to Track Webpage Changes

Add Monitors in Distill Web App

There are two ways to add webpages to Watchlist:

  • Using “Distill Page” bookmarklet. It is the recommended way to add new monitors to your Watchlist in cloud.
  • Using “Remote Browser”. It is described below. Some webpages that prevent loading scripts from external sources, bookmarklet does not work. In those cases, use a Remote Browser.

Using “Distill Page” bookmarklet

Step 1: Drag “Distill Page” link to your bookmarks toolbar. You can find “Distill page” bookmarklet in page footer. You may need to enable “Show bookmarks bar” in browser’s setting to make it visible.

bookmarklet

Step 2: Open a webpage to be monitored in a tab. Once page has finished loading, click “Distill page” bookmarklet in bookmarks bar. A Visual selector toolbar will load in the page.

Step 3: Hover mouse around the content in the page that you want to monitor. Once your desired content is inside the black box, “click” to select it. This makes the selection fixed. You can make multiple selections if you want to monitor different parts in the page. To “Expand”, “Contract” and “Delete” a selection, click the caret icon for the selection.

Step 4: Once you have made selections, click “Save Selection” from the Visual Selector toolbar.

Step 5: An “Options” page will open. Make changes to actions, schedule etc and save them.

You will be able to view all of your monitored webpages in the Watchlist.

Step-by-Step process to Monitor webpages Using Distill

Using Remote Browser

In this method, Distill opens a browser in the cloud that lets you select content from it.

  • Click “Add Webpage” button in your Watchlist. You can also select other types of sources too. Remote browser is only used when selecting content from a webpage.
  • Enter URL to be tracked for change.
  • Click “Select dynamic parts of page”
  • Make sure the webpage has loaded fully. Click “Select” in the Visual Selector toolbar present at the bottom.
  • Follow steps from Step 3 onwards for bookmarklet method as given above.

You will be able to view the monitored webpage and its updates in the Watchlist.

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