The browser window

The browser window is the most important window of AWeb. It is the place where World Wide Web pages are displayed. On top of the window there are some gadgets.

Scrolling the page

You can scroll the window contents horizontally and vertically, provided the size of the document is larger than the window.

Of course you can use the scroll bars and arrow buttons to scroll, but AWeb also understands the following keys:

cursor up/down (both cursor keypad and numeric keypad) scroll up and down over a short distance.
shift + cursor up/down (cursor keypad) scroll up or down a page.
PgUp, PgDn (numeric keypad) scroll up or down a page.
Space, Backspace scroll up or down a page.
Home, End (numeric keypad) jump to the beginning or the end of the document.
cursor left/right (both cursor keypad and numeric keypad) scroll left and right. This is only possible if the document contains an image or preformatted text wider than the window, because otherwise AWeb will keep the text formatted to fit within the window width.
shift + cursor left/right (cursor keypad) scroll left or right a full page width.

Note: these are the default keys, you can configure different keys, or different actions for these keys.

Many pages on the World Wide Web use a feature called frames. Effectively frames are a subdivision of the browser window, to allow the display of several different documents simultaneously. When frames are displayed, the main window scroll bars are probably set to full-size (not scrollable). Instead, some frames may contain a scroll bar you can use to scroll the frame contents.

In many framed pages, one frame contains the main document, and other, smaller, frames contain additional things like a banner or a navigation bar. In such cases, AWeb will make a reasonable guess of what frame would be a likely candidate for scrolling. In this frame, you can scroll with the same keys as explained above. If you want to scroll another frame than the one AWeb selected, you just have to click in it once (or use its scrollers), and that frame will be selected for subsequent scrolling with the keyboard.

Sometimes the Web page author defines frames explicitly without scrollers, even if the contents is larger than the visible portion. Although there are no scrollers, you can still scroll such a frame with the keyboard.

Frames have their own popup menu. It is selectable in the top left corner of each frame.

You can always resize frames. Just grab the edge of a frame with the mouse and move it until the desired size is reached. Use the Control / Reset frames menu item to reset all frames to their initial size.

On small windows (like those on 200 or 256 high screens) a framed page often appears squeezed, and is not easy to use. In that case you can configure AWeb to use a larger height to layout the page against. Then you can use the window scrollbar to scroll the framed page in its entirety.

Following links

One of the most important features of the World Wide Web is the ability to include hyperlinks in documents. A hyperlink is displayed in another colour, and by default underlined. You can change the colour and the underlining in the Options page in the browser settings requester.

Images that are also links have a frame drawn around them. If you have deselected the link underlining in the browser settings requester, then this frame isn't drawn.

Click the text or image to follow the link, i.e. retrieve and display the document "behind" the link. The URL (network address) of the document that is linked to, is shown in the status indicator when the mouse pointer is over the hyperlink.

FTP links

Sometimes a hyperlink doesn't point to another document, but to a file or directory via FTP instead. You can recognize such hyperlinks by their URL (network address), that starts with "ftp://". If you click on a FTP link to a directory, AWeb will show the contents of this directory. There is no standardized format for this, but usually you will see the names of files or subdirectories on the right-hand side of the listing. These are made hyperlinks again, so you can browse through a directory structure by clicking the links. Often the listing also contains file sizes and dates.

If you click on a link to a file, AWeb will load the file and display it if the file is displayable. If the file cannot be displayed, a file requester will pop up to let you save the file.

Standalone images

Sometimes a hyperlink does not point to another document, but to an image instead. By default these images are displayed in the AWeb browser window. You can, however, configure an external image viewer that will be used to show these images.

Note that when the image linked to is already in AWeb's memory, the external viewer is not used. This may be the case if the link points to exactly the same image as appears in a document. Since the image is already decoded and in memory, it would be a waste of resources to let it decode again and take up more memory by an external viewer. If you like to view the image in the external viewer, you have to flush the image from AWeb's memory first. One way of flushing an image is by using the popup menu.

Inlined images

A document can contain inlined images interspersed with the text. If an inlined image is not (yet) loaded, AWeb displays an icon for that image. You can select if you want images to be loaded immediately or not using the image loading chooser in the settings requester.

AWeb displays different icons under different circumstances. You can tell AWeb to use your own images here.

This icon depicts an unloaded image. Click it to load the image.

If an unloaded image is also a link to another document, there is a diagonal line through the image. Click in the upper left half of the icon to follow the link directly, or in the bottom right half to load the image.

This icon depicts an unloaded clickable map. Because a clickable map is always also a link to another document, the diagonal line is here too. Click on the bottom right half to load the image. Once it is loaded you can pick a spot from the map.
You can click in the upper left half of the icon to follow the link without map coordinates. Servers should recognize this as a request to a text-only version of the page.

If an image cannot be loaded for some reason, this icon is shown.

For an inlined image, a so-called ALT-text can be defined. This is a text that can be displayed if the browser doesn't display the image. Of course, AWeb understands this ALT-text and will display it instead of the icon imagery. With ALT-text, unloaded images look like this:

Unloaded image.

Unloaded image that is also a link or a clickable map.

Downloading

Instead of following a link and display the new document, or loading and displaying an inlined image, you can download a document or an inlined image. To do so, hold the Shift key while clicking the link or image icon. The document or image is retrieved, and a standard save requester will pop up to let you specify a file name.

If the document or image is already in cache, it will only be saved, not retrieved again over the network.

Note you can also save a displayed image in this way. Just press the Shift key and click the image. This will work even for background images (only if background images are displayed): just shift-click somewhere in the background and you will be asked for a filename to save the background image.

If the image is also a link, shift-clicking the image could be ambiguous; therefore AWeb will save the image in this case. If you want to download the document "behind" the link, you should use the pop-up menu.

Pop-up menu

If you hold the ALT or the Ctrl key while you click on a link or an image, AWeb opens a pop-up menu with several very useful choices that were not easily accommodated otherwise.

You can configure AWeb to open the popup menu also when you hold down the SHIFT key, or when you use the middle or right mouse button.

Clipboard usage

The clipboard is supported in several ways.

You can copy the current URL to the clipboard, so you can easily include it in other programs. Use the Control / Copy URL menu item.

You can also paste the clipboard contents to the URL field. Use the Control / Paste URL menu item for this. Only the first line of text will be pasted.

Finally, you can select text from the page and copy it to the clipboard. Drag-select the section of text to be copied, and use the Control / Copy block menu item. If you hold the Shift key while drag-selecting, an existing selection is extended to the mouse position.

Although this is a very useful feature, sometimes it can be annoying. Like when you click on a link, and accidentely you move the mouse a bit while the mouse button is depressed, and your click-on-link has turned into a drag-select. To avoid this, you can turn on or off drag-selecting in two ways. First, you can use the Control / Dragging menu item to turn drag-selecting temporarily on or off. Second, you can configure AWeb so that drag-selecting is disabled (or enabled) by default. You can then always turn it on temporarily by the Control / Dragging menu item.

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