***XURL Review for PD and Shareware - 320 words - Mike Kerslake ***
Two screen grabs - no captions required
XURL1.GIF & XURL2.GIF
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XURL V2.50   80%

Communications
Freeware, all Ataris

To access any web site you need a URL. This address, which is often long is 
a real pain to type in. CAB offers a hotlist facility which makes getting 
to often-visited sites much easier, but what happens if you see a web site 
address in a text file on Usenet or on a BBS?  You either have to copy it 
to the clipboard or write it down on a piece of paper. Either way you're 
bound to forget or lose it. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just point a 
program at a folder full of files or just one file and extract those URLs?

XURL (pronounced ZURL) does exactly that. It extracts URLs such as http:// 
from a file and adds them to a html document which can be loaded into a 
browser. The URL can then be clicked on and the browser will jump straight 
to the given URL (if you're online). 

Setting the program up is straightforward and entails selecting a 
couple of paths, one to a file or folder, and one to a html document of 
your choice. You also need to set a couple of environment variables to be 
able to launch a web browser automatically.

Author Gary Priest, of CoSTa fame, is actively supporting and improving the 
program and the latest versions include BubbleGEM and Olga support.

As it is now, the program is in almost daily use on my system and has 
proved to be very stable. I save URLs to my CIXREAD notebook file and then 
run XURL over it. The program also gets pointed at my various NEWSIE Usenet 
folders and it extracts from them painlessly.

An excellent and useful utility, and as it's freeware it's well worth 
trying out. I liked XURL so much I registered CoSTa (which I don't use) in 
payment!

Mike Kerslake