XANA Web Browser Q & A

Why XANA ? How To Start ? Link In New Window ? Read To Know More !

Why XANA ? How To Start ? Link In New Window ? Read To Know More !

 XANA Web Browser Q & A

• Q. Why should I bother?
  A. You definitely don't have to... But there is a chance you will find the program quite useful...
  
  
• Q. Why XANA?
  A. Read about XANA.
  
  
• Q. I got the program. How to use it?
  A. Run it and press F1 or choose Help | About from menu. Then move the mouse on the words About XANA, Hints & Tips or Known Issues right under XANA image. Read the text in popup notes in place of the picture.
  
  
• Q. Most important hint to start with the program?
  A. Use the right mouse button to access context sensitive menus anywhere in the window client area and see hints on the status bar. Main menu has status bar hints as well.
  
  
• Q. I noticed XANA browser will not open a new web page when a link you click on is designed to open a new browser session. For example, on many web pages when you click on a link, instead of the new page loading into the current browser session, a new browser is opened, and the web page loads in the new browser. We have one web based application where it is essential that it work that way. Can XANA browser support that?
  A. Instead of opening a new window the requested document is loaded in the same browser component. It is the one of XANA browser features, it's designed to work that way. I'll try to explain why. On the background of this intentional design decision stays the fact that XANA browser was aimed to be a web browser application that does keep all the browsing stuff inside, like a bag. There are many reasons for doing this:
  • main purpose of the program is serving as a follow-up browser client. Web pages are delivered in predefined user interface configurations to make watching and manipulation of several loaded documents as easy as possible. It's nice to keep all your specific stuff in one application that may include such XANA features as Lock On Minimize, Refresh All etc. Creating extra new windows, tabs or browser instances would change and, possibly, even destroy the pattern logic of in advance designed configuration. Obviously, it can not be allowed
  • several opened windows would introduce the conflict with the basic XANA browser GUI design approach - handling all the stuff on glance, in one single container
  • MDI interface, like used in Opera browser, leads to GUI that is more difficult to manage. Windows' caption bars for titles and frames are taking a lot of useful space. And, the extra, - minimizing child windows leads to even worse ambiguity for user - "Where is my specific window - is it minimized, hided, partly obscured or what?"
  • attempt to close a browsing window, for example from JavaScript, leads to disposing underlying web browser component, which in turn would destroy the program GUI as such. That is the reason why closing the browsing window is prohibited. Instead, navigate Back command will be issued
  • fewer problems with security of web application (having cookies valid until the application shutdown, process-based variables, etc.)
  • multiply html document windows have usually very weak binding as an application entities. Meaning the windows possibilities to interact with each other are highly limited
  • for many other reasons, keeping and managing multiply independent browsing windows (like MSIE, Netscape) is usually not efficient and should be avoided by design of web site / application
  • the last two items above are common reason for choosing another solution - using html frames as a web site / application basis. This makes the site heavy, inflexible and depressing. Much lighter coupling and using normal simple (frameless) pages brings another advantage - ease of maintenance
    
      Sure, using underlying MSIE browser for applications requiring multiply windows or browser instances is the obvious choice for users of these web applications / sites. For developers, consider making some minor changes to decoupling browsing windows (if possible), so that placing them side by side (or in tabbed mode for size reasons) in XANA browser would be possible. As with frames, sometimes loading exact location into browser component may work.
      When using XANA browser, you can force opening the required link that has keyboard focus in a new MS Explorer window outside the program by pressing Ctrl-N.

   

  Important Notice

      Once again, please keep in mind that XANA Web Browser is not designed as nor supposed to be a full-blown generic purpose web browser. It is not a program for everybody's comfortable web surfing. The generic browser should have a plenty of 'a must' nice features such as smart managing of thousands of bookmarks, history tree list, built-in search panels, drag-n-drop support, etc.
      Instead, in the first place, XANA browser is a watching and follow-up tool for predefined and bookmarked web locations. The idea is that you are browsing documents loaded from those locations in the user interface that designed and created in advance. You have complete control on grouping, positioning and sizing individual browser components. Each browser component has its own list of associated bookmarks. Think it as a grouping of documents according to their size and functionality. You can design several differently looking separate configurations (a kind of web portals) for various tasks. Thus, XANA Web Browser complements (not competes with!) the underlying generic MS Internet Explorer browser.

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