HELIOS WebShare User manual

5 Using WebShare
This chapter explains step-by-step how to log on to the WebShare File Server, how to select a sharepoint and how to use the buttons in the sharepoint toolbar.
5.1 WebShare File Server login
Launch a browser and enter the WebShare WebObjects Server address using port 2009, e.g.:
http://<yourhostname>.company.com:2009
To log on to the WebShare File Server, fill in the WebShare File Server, User Name and Password fields, and click the Login button (Fig. 14).

Note: The login form must be completed within 2 minutes. Otherwise a time-out error will occur.
Fig. 14: WebShare login window

Note: The password field should be marked as Crypted in order to ensure a crypted password transfer. If it shows Cleartext, make sure to enable JavaScript in your browser to avoid insecure clear text password transfer. See also JavaScript in 8.1.1 "WebShare WebObjects Server".

After a successful login, the "Home" window appears, allowing the selection of a WebShare sharepoint from the Name list (Fig. 15).
Fig. 15: WebShare "Home" window

To open the desired WebShare File Server sharepoint window (Fig. 16), click on the respective link.
You can also open a new window for browsing by clicking on the "New" link in the "Window" column. Note that you can only have one window open for each sharepoint per login (see 5.5 "Supported browsers").
If you logout from one window, all other windows belonging to the same session will also be disconnected. When you click on a link in one of these windows, you will be redirected to a "Missing Session Error" page with the message: Your session has timed out. Use the link Click here to enter again. to login again.
Fig. 16: WebShare "Sharepoint" window

"WSTableColor1" and "WSTableColor2" respectively are preferences for the WebShare WebObjects Server which specify the color used for the lines in a table listing. More information on the preferences can be found at WSTableColor1 WSTableColor2 in 6.5 "Preference keys".
5.2 Work in a sharepoint
This chapter describes how to work in a WebShare sharepoint. The buttons in the toolbar (Fig. 17) are available according to the sharepoint access rights that have been assigned in the "Sharepoint Administration" section (see 4 "Administration").
Fig. 17: WebShare sharepoint toolbar

"WSToolbarColor" specifies the WebShare toolbar color. More information on the preference can be found at WSToolbarColor in 6.5 "Preference keys".

Note: If an item in the toolbar appears grayed out then you do not have sufficient permissions. Ask the Administrator.

Logout
This button closes whatever window you are currently in and exits to the WebShare Logout window (Fig. 18).
Fig. 18: WebShare Logout window

If a user fails to log out, the connection will be closed after 1 hour idle time. See WOSessionTimeOut in 6.5 "Preference keys".
The Click here to enter again link leads directly to the login window (Fig. 14).
Refresh
A click on this button reloads the page from the WebShare File Server. This may be necessary e.g. after one or more files have been uploaded to a WebShare sharepoint or have been modified by other users, in order to display them correctly in the sharepoint window.
Home
Opens the sharepoint "directory" where all sharepoints which are available to the logged-in user are listed.
Set View
Changes the view of the sharepoint listing, e.g. adds or extends column types, and displays the listing in a set of 4 predefined designs. Note that one of the view options displays file permissions. This is convenient to see who is allowed access to specific files and folders. These permissions can be changed by using the Permissions option in the pop-up menu (see 5.2.1 "The "Actions" pop-up menu").
Another view, the icon view, displays custom icons for files uploaded from Macintosh clients. If EtherShare is also installed, or if the volume is an OS X HFS volume, then Macintosh application and document icons can be displayed as well. Otherwise, a default document icon is used.
Download
After one or more files have been marked by a click in the "Select" checkbox, clicking the Download button will download the file(s) to the specified destination. Files/folders selected for download will be transfered to the client in the Zip file "download.zip". In addition to the selecet items, a file "DownloadLog.txt" is included. It contains a list of successfully downloaded items, as well for the omitted items a short description why these were omitted.
Delete
After one or more files have been marked by a click in the "Select" checkbox, clicking the Delete button will delete the files from the sharepoint. As a means of security and to avoid inadvertent deletion, you will be asked to confirm the deletion by clicking the Remove Selected items button, or Cancel to remove all checkmarks.
Copy Selection
Marks one or more selected files or directories for later pasting.
Paste Selection
Pastes one or more previously copied files or directories into the currently opened sharepoint directory path. Existing files are not overwritten, but will have "dup", "dup 1", "dup 2", etc. appended to their name, before the suffix.

Note: Copy Selection and Paste Selection is allowed according to your UNIX file and folder permissions. The setting of the Always Allow Reading and Always Allow Read/Write checkboxes (see 4.4 "Sharepoint Administration") has no influence on that.

Select All
Marks all checkbox items in a sharepoint at the same time. Clicking this button again will unmark all items.
Duplicate
Duplicates one or more marked files or directories into the same directory. Duplicated files will have "copy", "copy 1", "copy 2", etc. appended to their name, before the suffix.

Note: The difference between copying/pasting a selection and duplicating is that copied items can be pasted into different sharepoints or different directories. However, duplication is only possible within the same sharepoint, i.e. directory.

Upload
This link opens a new window (Fig. 19) in which the button Choose File allows choosing a file to upload (Fig. 20).
Fig. 19: WebShare sharepoint file upload
Fig. 20: WebShare sharepoint upload file selection

After confirming the selection with the Choose button, the file name and icon appear next to the Choose File button (Fig. 21). For best performance, and to upload multiple files, it is recommended that a Zip archive be created to upload. This is easily done using StuffIt DropZip on Macintosh clients. Windows clients (XP or later) can use the Zip archiving and extracting capability built-in to the Windows Explorer. Uploaded Zip archives will automatically be extracted on the WebShare File Server (see 5.4.1 "Supported upload formats").
Fig. 21: WebShare upload selected file

After clicking the Start Upload button the file is uploaded to the selected sharepoint (Fig. 23). It may be necessary to click Refresh before it becomes visible. When the upload is done, details in terms of file size, upload performance, etc. are displayed (Fig. 22). Note that the Close Upload Window link only works if JavaScript is active in the browser. Alternatively, the "Close Window" icon can be used.
Fig. 22: WebShare upload complete
Fig. 23: WebShare uploaded file in sharepoint

If the name of a file to be uploaded already exists in the destination folder, the uploaded file will have "dup", "dup 1", etc. appended to its name, before the suffix. This refers only to a duplicate name, not to the actual file content, which may or may not be the same.
5.2.1 The "Actions" pop-up menu
Create Dir
Allows creating a new directory in the sharepoint:
Choose Create Dir from the "Actions" pop-up menu and enter a name for the new directory. Then click on go.
The new directory will immediately appear in the sharepoint.
Rename
Allows renaming a file or directory in the sharepoint:
Mark the file or directory which you wish to rename. Choose Rename from the "Actions" pop-up menu and enter the new name for the item. Then click go.
The file or directory will immediately appear renamed in the sharepoint.
Permissions
Allows one to view and change file or folder permissions.
Mark the file or folder and choose Permissions from the "Actions" pop-up menu. Then click go.

Note: Changing permissions is only allowed if also Allow Rename is allowed (see page 36).

A new section appears in the sharepoint window (Fig. 24), which is similar to that known from Mac OS X. The modified permission parameters must be confirmed with the Save button.
This feature is of great value, to allow setting permissions so that other users can be allowed or denied access to files and folders.
Fig. 24: WebShare file/folder permissions

Color labels
Macintosh operating systems up to Mac OS 9.x, and then again from Mac OS X 10.3 on, allow assigning color labels to files and folders. This feature "marks" files and folders in terms of e.g. importance or priority.
HELIOS WebShare offers the same functionality in its "Sharepoint" toolbar menu:
Mark one or more files/folders in the sharepoint list with the checkbox and choose the desired color label from the "Actions" pop-up menu. Then click the Go button.
Color labels are only displayed when Set View displays files in icon view.
5.2.2 Note on file access permissions
When setting permissions on sharepoints and files, it is important to keep in mind the following file system rules that affect who can rename and delete files and folders.
File permissions
The write ("w") permission for a file controls only the changing of the file content. This permission has no control over the renaming or deleting of that file.
Folder permissions
The write ("w") permission for folders controls the changing of folder content, i.e. files and subfolders within that folder. The permissions set on a folder control the changing of file names and the adding or deleting of files within that folder.
Hence, if you wish to create a folder where users can read and modify files, the folder would need read/write permissions. However, if you wish to save a reference file to that folder, and do not want anyone to be able to rename or delete it, then the only way to do so is to save it into a different folder (or a subfolder), which has read-only permissions. Generally, when a WebShare user attempts to perform an action that is not allowed, either no action occurs, or an explanatory error message is displayed.

Note: In EtherShare volumes, changed folder permissions will also change permissions of all files in this folder in order to be compatible with AFP 2.2, which only supports folder permissions. However, changing file permissions only affects the files.

Permissions
Owner, Group, Others
In addition to users who have permissions for a file or folder as described above, "root" and members of the groups "SysAdm" and "WSAdm" are also allowed to make modifications on file and folder permissions in WebShare (even if the file access permissions would not otherwise allow them to do so). Fig. 25 shows permissions for 2 folders and 2 files. The folder "Public" as well as the file "public.txt" are accessible by everyone. The permissions are:
drwxrwsrwx for the folder and -rw-rw-rw- for the file.
The folder "Private" as well as the file "private.txt" are only accessible by the owner ("root"), its group ("daemon") and by members of the groups "SysAdm" and "WSAdm". The permissions are:
drwxrws--x for the folder and -rw-rw---- for the file.
Fig. 25: WebShare permissions

Note: Check with your UNIX server administrator for questions about permissions.

5.3 My User Preferences
Click on Home > Administration to get to the "My User Preferences" window (Fig. 26).
It basically offers the same features as the "User Administration" window (4.2 "User Administration"), but allows the user to specify individual settings for downloading files, which may well override the settings specified by the administrator in the "User Administration" window.
Fig. 26: WebShare "My User Preferences" window

User Settings
The Download Encoding pop-up menu offers MacRoman, PC850, ISO8859-1, UTF8, MacIcelandic, EUC-KR and SJIS encoding methods. In addition, OS Default uses the client OS default encoding, which was set by the administrator (see Fig. 8 in 4.1 "WebShare Server Preferences").
With the Zip Streaming Format checkbox ticked, the file download uses Zip streaming, which allows file compression on-the-fly, without creating any temporary files.
After changing your user preferences click on the Save User Preferences button. Otherwise your changes will get lost.
Change WebShare password
In addition, the "Change WebShare Password" section allows WebShare users to change their WebShare password on their own, without having administrative rights on the WebShare File Server. This is another means of security for Host Users who may not want to use their host user password over the Internet. For example, a remote login to WebShare from an Internet cafe bears the risk of a spyed host user password (e.g. keystroke logging spyware can capture a password as it is typed in, before the password is encrypted for transmission). If someone uses their host user name but a password that is only used with WebShare, the worst-case scenario would be a spyed WebShare login, with the host login not being affected. For more information on content security see also 8.1.10 "No content security".
Of course, Virtual Users can also change their password on their own in this configuration window.
Enter the old (existing) and the new password in the respective fields. To use the existing host user password again, Host Users just leave the New Password field blank. For Virtual Users, any attempt to leave the New Password field blank will yield an error message. In this case the "original" WebShare password has to be entered again.
All specifications made in the "My User Preferences" administration window are stored in the WebShare user configuration file "var/conf/webshare.passwd". See also 7.2 "User configuration file".
5.4 WebShare file format support
5.4.1 Supported upload formats
We recommend to use the Zip format for uploading. It offers the following benefits:
5.4.2 Supported download formats
5.5 Supported browsers
WebShare uses standard HTML web pages. Special browser plug-ins and Java are not needed. JavaScript is used for the password encryption if available. WebShare has successfully been tested with many different browsers on Windows, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and UNIX platforms. For power users, the chapter provides information about which browsers have intensively been tested by HELIOS, and some hints about possible problems.
Browsers for browsing and downloading files and folders
Internet Explorer supplied with Windows 2000, XP, 2003
Internet Explorer Mac OS X 10.2/10.3
Internet Explorer 5 supplied with Mac OS 9
Netscape 7 for Mac OS 9
Netscape 7 and Mac OS X
Mozilla 1.5 or newer on Windows 2003
Mozilla 1.5 or newer on Mac OS X
Safari 1.0 and newer on Mac OS X 10.2
Safari 1.1 and newer on Mac OS X 10.3
These above listed browsers have received more intensive testing and are considered to work perfectly with WebShare. Again, many other browsers will just work fine with WebShare but have only received limited testing.
Browsers limits when uploading files
1) Automatic MacBinary upload support:
Only Internet Explorer on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X detects Apple files with resources and will automatically convert these during the upload into MacBinary (".bin") to preserve the Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X specific resource, type and creator, etc. information. All other tested browsers skip this information and the document resource (e.g. preview picture, icon, document type) gets lost during the upload.
Solution:
Instead of uploading just files, generate Zip archives using Stuffit DropZip 7.0.3 on Mac OS 9 and DropZip 8.0.2 on Mac OS X with the MacBinary option always turned on, or use Mac OS X 10.3 Finder Zip archives. Uploading the compressed Zip files will work with any browser.
2) Uploading large files from Mac OS X (more than 50MB):
All tested Safari versions (up to 1.1.1) will first load the entire upload into memory, which requires at minimum twice as much main memory as the file size. E.g. a 600 MB image files requires 1.5 GB main memory!
Solution:
Use another browser for uploading very large files, e.g. Internet Explorer or Netscape.
Continuing browsing while uploading files
Some browsers do not accept additional requests while they are uploading files. A second login via new browser window, or using a different browser application allows logging in a second time and continuing with other tasks or monitoring the loading files. The disadvantage of the second login is that it will require one additional user session on the WebShare File Server.
Safari allows continuing while the upload is ongoing.
Previewing documents and images
Previewing an A4 page in 72 dpi requires at minimum 1.5 MB of main memory for the browser to display this image. Though JPEG or PNG previews are compressed, the browser needs to uncompress them before displaying. The same A4 page at 144 dpi requires four times the memory, e.g. 6 MB. Additional double buffering of the operating system or browser application may require additional memory for a second copy.
Internet Explorer and Safari will cache every preview image even if it is outdated (to allow for back button usage). This will result in very high memory requirements for the browser application for previewing many large documents and images.
Solution:
Log off from the WebShare server, quit and restart your browser application to free up all its used memory. Netscape/Mozilla do not have this memory problem.
Saving a password in your browser/keychain
As WebShare crypts all passwords with a random number as an MD-5 hash code for every login, re-using the same old password does not work for a second time. Browsers may cache the user name and passwords and try to re-use it a second time, which fails with the WebShare login. HELIOS considers this a security feature of WebShare.
In case JavaScript is turned off the password is sent unchanged (in clear text) to the server, and the keychain/browser feature remembering this clear text passwords works again. We recommend to keep JavaScript active to allow encrypted passwords for the WebShare Server login.
Downloading progress bar does not match downloaded file size
When downloading files, the WebShare Zip streaming technology compresses files always on-the-fly during the download. The browser progress bar shows the uncompressed original size. However, the download size will differ due to the zipstream compression and additional changes on the server before the download is completed. The very last file in every download is called "DownloadLog.txt" which includes a list of all downloaded files and possible errors (file was not accessible anymore, no permission, etc.). If this file is included after unpacking the "download.zip" archive you can assume a complete download.
Do not use the back/forward buttons of you browser
Webshare keeps some state about the current directory, selected files, etc. Using the back button, the client will request a page and may use the selection of the previous page instead of the current one. This can lead to unpleasant results, e.g. if the selection was "delete files". Only the home window allows to open a separate window for each sharepoint. Do not use the back/forward buttons or the "Open Link in new Window" option of your browser. The central Home menu or selectable URLs in the file browser allow you to go back to different locations.
5.6 Logout
Click the Logout button to exit WebShare. This will close all connections for that user, and abort any downloads in progress.
In the case where a user closes the browser without logging out, or the user has been idle for a time, i.e. no web activity has occurred, the session will automatically be closed, after the idle time period specified by the WOSessionTimeOut preference (default = 60 minutes).

© 2004 HELIOS Software GmbH