quick & dirty

The Fastest & Easiest Document you can make with Anthracite.

Note: You may want to review the QuickStart Guide in addition to this document to understand all the details that aren't discussed here.

Note: In some cases different artwork may be shown than in your version of the software.


Start with by loading a webpage in your browser that has some links on it that you want to collect, like the Metafy Sample Sources page.




Drag the tiny icon next to the URL of the webpage you're visiting from the "Location" field of your Browser and into the Anthracite document window.



A new spherical red Source Object icon is added to your Anthracite document named after the site you chose.


Click on the "Extract Links" Orange 3-D Plus icon in the tool bar at the top right hand side of the Anthracite document window and another object will be created in your document.

Then, click on the cubic blue "Result" icon in the tool bar and a third object is added to your view.

Next, with the Command (cloverleaf) key held down, click on the Spherical Red Source icon (the website) and hold down the mouse button while dragging to the Orange 3-D Plus ("Extract Links"). After that connection is made, use the same technique to drag from the Orange Hexagon to the Blue Box ("New Result Object").

At this point, all three of your objects should be connected like so:



And now we're ready to run our first process, click the "Run" icon at the top left of the tool bar in your Document window (or choose Run from the File Menu, or type Command-R).

After a moment or two, you should hear a chime sound and see a "plus" badge added to the Results Object (blue box) to indicate that results were added.


Double-click on the Results Object and a sheet will present itself from the top of your window containing a box area that holds a single line that starts "Process Results" and has a current date (you just ran this process).

Single-click on the small triangle to the left of "Process Results" and another line will be revealed that is named after the process path you just designed (in this case, "metafy.com-Extract Links-").

Single-click on the small triangle to the left of this line, and a line will be revealed that indicates the URL from which you got these results.



You can widen this results outline view by dragging on the lower-righthand corner of the sheet.

To use these results, you have three choices:

Double-click on the results entry and a window will open displaying the Results within Anthracite.



Click the "Preview" button and you will be switched to your web browser where your results will be displayed as a sample web page which should look like this one:

Easiest Results Preview

Click the "Export" button and you can save these results to a file for use in another program as plain text (in this case a snippet of HTML), like this:

Easiest Results Export Sample