Not seeing altrnative browsers in Web Desiger 18

[handrawn]

I am just going by how herself's new lenovo 5 laptop works; on that she needs to press Fn+F6, F6 alone does not work as she found out when trying to copy/paste from firefox to email

[Acorn]

I have found a way to restore the rubbish IE Preview window for v18 and Pro+ using a setting in the Microsoft Registry.

This kludge is primarily for web designers wishing to quickly test their web design in as many browsers as possible.
The "better" implementation has bypassed the internal-IE feature where you only get Previews in your default browser.
This is laudable as IE is struggling to handle modern web capability.

I previously advised a JavaScript function that assists the current URL into re-opening into MS Edge. Sadly, this is not possible for other browsers.

• Close XDPXv18.
• Open MS Registry and locate: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\XtremePro x64\18\Options\WebPreview\UseDefaultBrowserForPrev iew.
• Change the entry value from 1 to 0.

As always, if you are uncertain about twiddling the Registry, don't. At least back it up first.

Xara Pro+ is also under ..\18\Options\WebPreview\UseDefaultBrowserForPrevi ew.
I have not check v17 or XWD(P) entries.

@Xara - this is another of of the little UI fixes that would overcome a lot of designers' angst.

Acorn

[gcellison]

I use a slightly different technique to see my work in progress. It requires an additional step, but it works well.

Choose “Export website” from the File menu. Create (or choose) a directory, and the site will be exported there. This includes all pages and the index_htm_files directory. Open the directory you created in File Explorer and click on any page to open it in your default browser.

Afterwards, if you make changes to a particular page, you can choose “Preview web page” and it will replace the old page in the same directory. You can again open the page in your browser directly from File Explorer to see the changes. You can also click refresh on the browser, and the changes will show up. If you want to compare the old and new copies, leave the first one open in the browser (without refreshing) and open the new one. It will appear in a different tab.

Note that when you do a preview, the other pages that were exported will be replaced with blank pages. Nevertheless, if you preview them again later, they will come back into the directory. Personally, I copy the whole thing after the initial export into a second directory in case I want to reference the pages later without previewing.

The nice thing about this method is that you can right-click a page in File Explorer and choose “Open with” to select any other browser that is installed on your computer. So, you can easily see how the page appears in Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Edge, etc. You can even see it in IE.

One downside is that every time you close the app, the connection to the directory is lost. So, when you reopen, you have to repeat the export website procedure. To make sure there’s no interference, I recommend that you delete all the files in the directory before the next export.

Hope this helps!

[Boy]

I have found a way to restore the rubbish IE Preview window for v18 and Pro+ using a setting in the Microsoft Registry.

Thanks for this 'regressive fix,' Acorn, it works well. This feature should be reinstituted w/o having to go through IE.

[Acorn]

Thanks for this 'regressive fix,' Acorn, it works well. This feature should be reinstituted w/o having to go through IE.

Boy, IE came with lots of hooks that allow this. Modern browsers are more circumspect. IE is totally obsolete, unsupported and therefore easily subject to Day Zero attack.
Xara might argue its IE use is internal but having an IE link connecting to the Internet is potentially dangerous so use the IE Preview for checking local Export websites, just don't following external links.

It is possible to "invent" your own web protocols in W10 but they remain local to your installation.

Acorn

[Boy]

I only use it for previewing changes made to a website I'm working on and it's convenient -- just one click -- to check the site in all browsers installed on my machine. Only use is local, so no internet browsing as IE has been deprecated and is full of security holes.