NetDirect component, version 1.0.0, freeware.

This component is A "Delphi Direct" like implementation. drop it on your
application main form, set one property, add one line of code and your app
users could get news about updates or new software from your web site.

This version uses Delphi's UrlMon unit instead of the ICS HttpCli component,
the result is A reduction of 38 Kb in the executable size.

Tested with Delphi 5.01.

It's freeware, use at your on risk.

Installation:

pNetDirect.dpk requires D5 packages, you can edit it for D4 or use
the component PAS, DFM and DCR files and install it in some existing package.

Usage, Application side:

 1. Drop the component on the main form, set the URL property to the web path
    of the file containing the information to be displayed:
    http://mysite.com/netdirect/netdirect.inf
 2. Use A button or menu item to call NetDirect1.Execute.
 3. You can use the Title property to set the caption of the NetDirect window.
 4. The OnURLSelected event is called whenever the user clicks on one of the
    links in the NetDirect window and return the selected URL in the aURL var.

Usage, Web side:

Prepare the information file and upload it to your server. This file can contain
0..99 main items and 0..99 sub items for each item in the format:

item0=[Item text]
subitem0-0=[Sub item text]|[Sub item URL]
...
...
item99=[Item text]
subitem99-0=[Sub item text]|[Sub item URL]
...
...
subitem99-99=[Sub item text]|[Sub item URL]

Example from the demo file:

item0=LGM Software News
subitem0-0=28/10/2000: New plugins page|http://lgman.freeyellow.com/plugins/plugins.html
subitem0-1=22/11/2000: New components page|http://lgman.freeyellow.com/components/components.html
subitem0-2=24/11/2000: WWW Monitor update|http://lgman.freeyellow.com/wwwmon/wwwmon.html
item1=General Software News
subitem1-0=23/10/2001: Borland announces Delphi 7|http://www.borland.com
subitem1-1=15/9/2002: Microsoft announces Windows 2001|http://www.microsoft.com
.....
.....
.....

Sub items that point to A ZIP file will show A ZIP icon, those that point to an EXE file
will show the default D5 EXE icon, all others will show A document icon.

The component will save this file to the app directory and will use it as A previous
version if it can't download A newer version from your server.

The demo folder contains the nedirect.inf file used by the demo app.

Send bug reports to lgm@earthling.net
