Keyboard zoom for HTML viewer

The HTML viewer pane is a wonderful feature of Opus. I keep a lister on the left, and then, as I click on various html files, the html is fully rendered and displayed on the right in the viewer pane.

However, often I find I need to zoom-in in order to read the rendered page. The HTML viewer does contain "zoom in" and "zoom out" icons at the top; however, these tiny buttons do not lend themselves to efficient workflow. Ideally, I'd like to use the keyboard (or, even better, ctrl-mousewheel) to zoom in and zoom out. Is there any way to configure it like this?

Also, since I often find that I need to look at a series of HTML files which are all formatted similarly, I'd really like to be able to set a default zoom to be used for all HTML files, rather than needing to zoom in each one individually. Is there any way to do this?

The HTML viewer is an embedded instance of Internet Explorer so you can use the standard ctrl + and ctrl - hotkeys to zoom in and out, and you can use Internet Explorer's accessibility options to override font sizes and so on.

Hi Leo,

The Ctrl + and Ctrl - hotkeys do not work for me in the Opus browser, even though they do work for me when I am inside Internet Explorer (version 9).

Similarly, Ctrl-Mousewheel does zoom my Internet Explorer window in and out, but when viewing an HTML page in Opus it does nothing at all.

Is there something that is preventing these actions from reaching the embedded instance of IE? Or is the embedded instance of IE not exactly the same as the regular IE version 9 that I run on my machine?

They work for me in IE 10. I didn't do anything special to make them work, I just clicked on the viewer and then pushed the keys.

1] Well, they don't work for me at all. How can we debug this? Is there any sort of logging we can turn on to see what is happening to those keystrokes, to see why they are not being passed on to the embedded viewer?

2] Another function that would be very very useful to have keyboard access to is the "next file" button, from the toolbar on top of the embedded viewer. Presumably this is an Opus function and not part of the embedded viewer? If so, would it possible to allow us to assign a keyboard shortcut to the "next file" button?

1] Do other keystrokes make it to the HTML viewer, e.g. the cursor keys to scroll the page? If they do then IE is processing keystrokes and what it does with them is up to IE, not our code. Maybe it doesn't work in IE9 but does in IE10.

2] You can run Select NEXT to select the next file. (If you need to follow-up on that, please start a new thread so we can keep this one on the topic of zooming in the HTML viewer.)

Hi Leo,

Thanks for the tip regarding Select NEXT. That works perfectly!

The cursor keys do make it in to the HTML viewer. As you note, this indicates that not all versions of the IE embedded viewer support keyboard zoom shortcuts. Nevertheless, the "zoom" icons on the "top bar" above the viewer do work. Given that that is the case, would you consider adding a command such as "Zoom Viewer", which would do whatever the zoom icons on the "top bar" do?

If I understand correctly, that top bar is implemented by Opus, not by the embedded viewer. So, just as you have a command-version of the "Next File" button, which lets users so elegantly assign keyboard shortcuts for that function, can you also please add command versions of the other buttons on the top bar, such as "Zoom in" and "Zoom out"?

Is the problem just that the buttons are too small? There is an option to turn on a larger toolbar at the bottom of the viewer which will contain zoom buttons.

The "control bar" option is slightly bigger and thus slightly easier to use; however, when cycling through dozens and hundreds of files, the need to move the mouse to any specific location is a serious impediment to the workflow. What I really need here is a keyboard shortcut which would trigger those "zoom in" and "zoom out" buttons.

I'm consistently amazed at how much of Opus is controllable via Opus commands, and, hence, via keyboard shortcuts. I'm hoping that you'll be able to extend this versatility to the zoom buttons on the control bar of the viewer as well.

A keyboard shortcut would not work when the viewer has the keyboard focus, because IE processes the input itself and overrides Opus's hotkeys. (But you shouldn't need the shortcut there, I guess, because IE has its own shortcut, at least in IE10.)

I guess there could be a command which let you zoom in and out of the viewer when, say, the file display has the focus... I think it would be a lot of work to implement, document and maintain just for this one case, though.

By the way, ctrl+mousewheel on the HTML viewer works to zoom in and out for me, as well. Maybe you just need to update IE?

I just tried on IE9 (W7 work machine) and IE10 (W7 virtual machine). ctrl+mousewheel works in the viewer on the latter, but not on the former. This is consistent with your IE9 report and Leo's experience with IE10.

Regards, AB

[quote="leo"]A keyboard shortcut would not work when the viewer has the keyboard focus, because IE processes the input itself and overrides Opus's hotkeys. (But you shouldn't need the shortcut there, I guess, because IE has its own shortcut, at least in IE10.)

I guess there could be a command which let you zoom in and out of the viewer when, say, the file display has the focus... I think it would be a lot of work to implement, document and maintain just for this one case, though.[/quote]

OK, I'm happy to update IE. However, now that you've clarified the focus issue, I've realized that what I really need is to have keyboard shortcuts for "zoom in" and "zoom out" on the Opus side, which specifically work when the file display has focus, just like the "Select NEXT" command (which also only works when the file display has focus).

The real-world scenario that I envision is as follows: The user has a directory full of many html files, and needs to quickly review them, one after another. The user has "Select NEXT" on hotkey1 and "Viewer ZoomIn" on hotkey2. The user can thus efficiently review the whole directory, as follows: the user hits hotkey1 to go to the next html file; the user then hits hotkey2 to zoom it in to a readable level; the user then looks for the relevant data; and the user then hits hotkey1 to continue with the next file, and so forth.

The beauty of these hotkeys is that the user doesn't need to switch focus to the viewer in order to zoom in, and the user doesn't need to switch focus back to Opus in order to go the next file. It would be a seemless workflow within Opus.

If you've got focus on the file display, why would you need a special hotkey to select the next file? Just push cursor-down.

I don't see how you can really review the HTML file without giving focus to the viewer, since you will usually need to scroll around in it, not just zoom in and out. I don't think it makes sense to add hotkeys to scroll and zoom the viewer from the file display, either. Just push tab to give the viewer the focus, then you can use IE's hotkeys, and push ctrl+tab to go back to the file display when you want to.

Hi Leo,

1] You are correct that my special hotkey was unnecessary, and cursor down was perfect. Thanks for pointing that out.

2] In my case, I want to quickly review the top of each html file, so I don't need to scroll at all; I just need to zoom. But you are correct, for the general case it would make sense to have both scroll and zoom commands. I think it would be very helpful to all power users to add Scroll and Zoom commands that could be invoked by a hotkey or by dopusrt, which would allow us to navigate the viewer without needing to switch focus to the viewer.

3] I have installed IE 10, and it does indeed support hotkeys for zooming. However, Ctrl-Tab does not work. That is, I can Tab to switch focus from Opus to the viewer, whereupon I can use the ctrl-+ and ctrl-- combos to zoom in and out. However, at that point, ctrl-tab does not work to take me back to Opus, and the only way I am able to get control back to Opus is with the mouse. All in all, it would be MUCH easier and smoother if it would be possible to send "zoom" commands to the viewer directly from Opus, without having to switch focus back and forth. This is a feature that would be appreciated very much.

I think that is a bug in IE. Ctrl-Tab works sometimes but not others. The first time you Ctrl-Tab it cycles you to the last link on the page, and you can then push Tab to give the focus back to other elements in the lister (usually the address bar). I found some other combinations of Tab and Ctrl-Tab where Ctrl-Tab would also return focus to the file display, but I'm not sure exactly what they were. I don't think that's inside our control, but equally it may be fixed in an IE update if Microsoft notice & care.

If more people ask for it, we'll consider it.

The Show VIEWPANECMD has been added in Opus 10.5.2.3 beta to do this kind of thing.

Thank you very much!!!