I am monitoring a jobs board with a single line of text alternating between two strings. I don’t care about that line. I am already focused on the largest section that can contain job postings (if I go narrower, I won’t see updates when a job is posted). Without any conditions, I get a notification every few seconds since that one line changes every few seconds, even though new jobs are not being inserted into the table.
How can I tell Distill that I don’t care about the first line of text in this container, or how can I tell it not to notify me if the only thing that changes is either of those two strings?
I also need this badly. The challenge for me is that expanding and contracting the view (lately) isn’t helping me focus just on elements that exclude the noisy data. The noisy data is included inside the container that is changing, and the container doesn’t exist when there isn’t a posting. I can’t contract to a more precise element that will notify me when a new posting appears. Moreover, the noisy data isn’t even in the text on the page. It’s hidden and only appears in the notification on the watch list.
Let’s explore selections as the way to filter out the noise.
Selection can contain visually hidden elements that can only be seen using the browser’s in-built element inspector. Check it out. It makes understanding selected content easier.
I am assuming that the page contains a list of posts, and you need to monitor that list for changes. Please correct me this is incorrect.
Can you try to figure out if the element containing the list of posts has the noisy element or not? You can do this by initially selecting the first post in the list. Once selected, expand the selection to select the list. While expanding, keep an eye on the text preview shown in the preview panel. The text preview panel is to the right of the list of selections and deselections.
