WWW Address Book - created by Rolf Breuning

Introduction:

The AddressBook provides a group of users with a common, network-wide database for phone, fax, email and mail addresses, including remarks and URLs e.g. holding road maps.
The hierarchical structure of the database allows to inherit address parts from parent addresses thus reducing the amount of input necessary to create or change addresses. Persons listed in the database may have an arbitrary number of addresses.
The AddressBook is implemented as a small server side Java application, therefore any WWW browser may be used as a client to display or create addresses, to send emails to the addresses or inspect the stored URLs.

Fast access:

Create a new address page by a click on the  icon.
Create a new parent address by a click on the  icon.
Create a new personal address by a click on a  icon.
Edit / remove a parent address or a personal address by a click on the  or  icon in front of it.

Concepts and Usage:

Figure 1 below shows the user interface of the AddressBook for a very small example. An icon bar at the top is followed by a list of address pages (here only one page named "Example"). The selected address page is marked by a bullet; its contents is shown in the table below which occupies the major part of the screen space. All icons displayed are buttons which may be used to access the features of the address book.

The AddressBook may hold an arbitrary number of address pages. An address page is used to store a number of related addresses, e.g. all your contact addresses at the various locations of a customer or supplier. New address pages can be created by a mouse click at the icon bar's  icon. Using the same icon, the selected address page may be renamed or removed. If the AddressBook contains more than one addres page, a special page named "[all]" is automatically created which contains all the other pages. This page can be used e.g. to print the contents of the whole address book or to search the whole book using the browser's "find in page" function.


Figure 1: A small example

An address page holds two kinds of addresses: Parent addresses are marked by a leading  icon. A parent address holds data common to a number of following personal addresses which are marked by a leading  icon.
The "Example" page in the example above shows two parent addresses "Example Dallas" and "Example Munich". The "Example Dallas" address e.g. provides the phone number prefix common to all phone numbers at "Example Dallas", thus the two personal addresses below do not need to contain the prefix. In the same way "Example Dallas" provides the email domain to which the personal email addresses below belong. A mouse click on e.g. the Email address "t.jones" will start the browser's email program on the combined address "t.jones@example.com" (Feature can be deactivated for email addresses not following the common scheme).
A parent address is created in the selected address page by a mouse click on the icon bar's  icon. It may be changed or removed using its leading  icon. A personal address is created by a mouse click on the  icon of the parent address from which it is to be derived. It may be changed or removed using its leading  icon.

A person is not explicitely listed on the user interface. It exists, however, on database level. When creating a new personal address, you may decide to add an address for an already existing person. The number of personal addresses registered to a single person will be displayed in brackets at each personal address. A click on the  icon of a personal address will show all personal addresses attached to the same person.
 

License:

Use of the WWW AddressBook is granted on the conditions contained in the license agreement.  The free edition of the WWW AddressBook allows to enter  addresses. You may also obtain an extended license valid for a single server. To do this, please:
  1. Install the free edition of the AddressBook on the machine you want to use as your address server. Test and check it as long as you like.
  2. If you are sure that the AddressBook fits your needs, you need a licensed version. There is a licence for <150 addresses and one for 150..500 addresses. If you need a license for more addresses, please don't hesitate to contact me.
  3. The license is valid for an unlimited number of clients and a single server, so please do not forget to include the name by which clients access the server machine (currently "") in the comment field of your order or send it directly via EMail to the author (see below).
  4. You will then get a license file which is to be placed in the same directory as the server.

Contact the author

To contact the author of the WWW AddressBook, send email to "WWW AddressBook" <Rolf.Breuning@t-online.de>.
 

Planned future extensions:

Some of the following features may be included in future versions. Some of the features are easy to implement, but it is hard to find a good WWW user interface.
  • Export to Netscape *.vcf and *.ldif formats
  • Copy / move / link addresses to other pages.
  • Multiple selection to send e.g. emails to a number of addresses.
  • Automatically mark addresses which have not been changed over a selectable period of time and which might therefore be no longer correct.
  • Other features not connected with the AddressBook like file and directory access independent from operating system or file structure.