XDP9 preview on port 8000

[slavelle]

Hey all - question about previewing:

In DPX, when previewing a page in a browser like Firefox or Chrome from within Xara application, it would simply open the file from the temporary export folder. Now, when doing the same (preview, then select a browser on the top bar), it loads the page with an address like this:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/virt5c5bd168/index.htm

What's up with the port 8000? Is it now using some kind of hosting application instead of just opening a temporary file directory?

(Aside: it seems that it's not working in Internet Explorer - of course, I'm using Windows 8.1 on this laptop, so it's IE11, so it might just be my problem here, but curious nonetheless. I think it may have to do with the "private" nature of the browser that's new to 8.1.)

Digging in: Going to the command prompt and doing a netstat -a -o, I can see that the process ID that is using port 8000 is Designer Pro X9. So if I launch my preview in Firefox, then close out of DPX9, then refresh the Firefox page, it does a page cannot be displayed.

Interesting change that I didn't see noted anywhere and something that COULD introduce a conflict with something else (like Xampp or some other local hosting service) that wasn't a problem before - and relates to a similar question posed by someone about port 80 just yesterday - obviously not a problem in this case for port 80, but could conflict with other things.

So - mostly doesn't matter, but what is the reason for the change to not just using a simple local file structure? Anyone know?

[Big Frank]

isn't there a setting in firefox to ignore //localhost?

[PeteS]

New to version 9 is a built in web server for the web preview. This still previews the same temporary folder as it always has, but does so through a built in web server. If you are getting problems with the page not displaying either in the internal preview window or in some other external browsers then refer to this Microsoft support article and use the Microsoft FixIt tool provided. Once that has completed, please see whether you can then preview web pages within Web Designer again.

[csehz]

New to version 9 is a built in web server for the web preview.

That sounds promising, based on that maybe later but will be feasible for Xara preview to be able to show even .php codes?

[PeteS]

It's a simple web server implementation for previewing HTML pages with a http address, it's not using trying to be like WAMP/XAMPP, so no I doubt it.

[PeteS]

Interesting change that I didn't see noted anywhere and something that COULD introduce a conflict with something else (like Xampp or some other local hosting service)

WAMP/XAMPP etc generally use port 8080 by default (from memory). But what Web Designer does, is when it previews it tries port 8000 and if something is using that port then it will increment the port number until it finds an available port to use so it shouldn't get into conflict with any other running service on your computer.

[slavelle]

So just out of curiosity, there must have been a reason to take the time to add the webserver component. Was there an issue with the way it was working before? If not designed to be a Xampp replacement, what is the purpose if this new method?

[PeteS]

Many widgets such as Facebook, AddThis, Twitter and some others have already changed and others are planning to switch over the code they use to only display the widget when the page is being served from a http or https protocol, which of course it won't if you're viewing a HTML file locally (it'll use the file:/// protocol in the browser).

So this just puts the pages through a built in web server and uses the localhost to display them. So it won't be able to process PHP or anything else that XAMPP/WAMP do because it does not support that.

[slavelle]

Thanks for the explanation Pete. Makes sense.