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Executive Summary
Using Firefox? A nice lightweight link-checking add-on is Kevin
A. Freitas' LinkChecker,
which works by checking links on the currently-displayed page.
Xenu's Link Sleuth is a free (as in "free beer") tool for checking a web document for broken links. It runs on Windows machines. This document describes very briefly how to install and use it. What It Can and Cannot Do for YouLinkSleuth works by acting like a web browser, loading documents using the web protocols HTTP and/or HTTPS. You specify a start document, and LinkSleuth loads the document, checking that each link in the document resolves to another web document that it can load. It then goes on to check the links in every other "internal" document, meaning documents that are at or below the level of the start document. For example, checking http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/farnsworth/research/index.html would also cause, say, http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/farnsworth/research/dog.html to be checked if it was linked to that index.html, but not, say, http://www.cs.washington.edu/hhome/farnsworth/index.html, because it's at a higher level. When LinkSleuth is done checking, it will display or email you a report of its results. Because it uses HTTP[S], LinkSleuth can be used to check any site you'd like, whether it's a .cs.washington.edu site or not. What it can't do is
Running LinkSleuthWhen you start up LinkSleuth, you will find yourself looking at a blank page. To start a scan, click on File:Check URL; that brings up a form for you to fill out with your start URL (see screenshot). You have a number of options:
There are a few more options, but these are the key ones. Installing LinkSleuthLinkSleuth doesn't come with an installer, which isn't as bad as it sounds-- it consists of a single .exe file and a .html file for documentaiton. To install it, you might follow this set of steps on a Windows 2000 machine:
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