Personalities

General information

Personalities are sets of resources and settings joined by some common topic or theme. MegaBrowser^tm is a preprogrammed highly intelligent browser.  What makes MegaBrowser unique is its ability to instantly change its functionality and appearance to meet the needs of specific industries, market segments, or market areas.

By clicking a simple “Personality Selection Button” on the browser, the user can select from a preprogrammed personality list.   Once the user selects the desired personality, the browser becomes dedicated to that selected personality.

Lets look at a personality called “Insurance”.  This personality may be password protected and dedicated to insurance industry professionals.  Its functionality and appearance can enable an insurance agent to find the insurance service and information that meets their client’s needs within one or two clicks.

MegaBrowser is not just limited to industry professionals.  Another personality can be dedicated to Insurance end-users that buy insurance for their home, cars, boats, health, life etc.  When the browser is changed to this personality, all of the preprogrammed buttons open sites, and channels designed to meet this market.

Another example of a personality is one that is dedicated to a specific city.  In this instance the personality contains buttons, menu selections, channels, and appearance that are preprogrammed for that city.  This can include buttons that link directly to hotels, restaurants, and vertical businesses in that city.  

Each personality can contain any number of drop-down menus, buttons, channels and directories that are preprogrammed to display categories containing lists of sites, or single site.

Characteristics of the Personalities are transparently loaded and updated from the Megabrowser server. A particular personality can vary in appearance.  Appearance changes include:

• The main color, background images of the Megabrowser window, icons of the toolbar and main menu, and so on.

• Bookmark sets which are organized in bookmark bars.

• The default tab set, which initially appears when you open the Megabrowser or select the personality.

• Default content of some browser windows.

The figure 6 shows Megabrowser with another personality selected.  You will notice that it has a pink background and different button icons.

When you first install MegaBrowser, there may not be many personalities loaded.  However, there are many personalities currently available.  Megabrowser will automatically update itself with the latest personalities after you install it.  It can take some time as this process happens in the background and is designed not to use too much of your available bandwidth so it intentionally goes rather slowly.  For more information see the Personality download section that follows.

 The user can choose from the Personalities by using the Personalities submenu of the main menu (fig. 7). All personalities are grouped into categories, and this submenu allows you to walk through the whole personality tree. The current personality and the corresponding current category are noted by a checkmark. The Personality submenu also shows the icon associated with each personality wherever possible (if the personality is not protected with a password).

Figure 7. Personalities submenu.

Protection of Personalities

Megabrowser Personalities can be protected with a password.  This is especially useful when a Personality contains information that should not be made available to everyone.  For example: mature content, or industry specific resources.

Each personality can be:

1. Unprotected.

2. Protected with a user defined password

3. Protected with a hard-coded password

The 1^st type is the same as the 2^nd type with an empty password.  Likewise the 2^nd type is just the 1^st type, which you have protected with a password.

Personalities of type 3 are protected with the hard-coded permanent password when they are created, and this password cannot be changed ever. Though Megabrowser may display all personalities, a user cannot choose a personality protected by a hard-coded password if he does not know this password, nor can the user change the hard-coded password.

 If you want to change the non-hard-coded password of some personality, choose Change Password from Main menu->Personalities and enter the password you want.  If you leave the password field blank the personality will become unprotected. It should be noted that there is always a default personality For All/Common that may not be password protected. This personality is installed with Megabrowser and is the displayed personality when the user selects no other desirable personality.

Personality download

There is a background process (a thread to be exact) that periodically goes to the Megabrowser server and looks for new or updated personalities. If such personalities are found, this thread silently downloads it and they automatically appear in the Personality submenu. You can always check the status of the personality download process by checking View Status in the Personality submenu. The Personality Update Status bar will appear (fig. 8). Although you cannot modify update of Personalities, you can see what is happening and what has already happened during the personality download processes.

Figure 8. Personality Update Status bar.

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