DOpus has managed to make nearly all my WinXP tweaks and add-ons redundant; DOpus does them all. Especially the viewer, and it is so good to be able to view offline web files in the viewer pane. When can we - ahem - expect online web viewing? This would be critical mass!
I'd like to add .URL file support to the ActiveX plugin when I can find the time, so you can quickly open the viewer pane for an Internet shortcut, but anything beyond that in Opus seems like overkill to me.
What's wrong with Firefox/Opera/IE? (Actually, plenty of things but...) Given that making a good web browser is a full-time job for entire teams of people, and there are already several good web browsers, what is there to gain from Opus becoming another web browser?
What's wrong with Firefox/IE/Opera? they're all bloated, that's what. A nice little URL viewer as you describe would be sweet.
So you want Opus to become more bloated because other things are bloated? 
I think supporting everything you need to support to be a good web browser means you'll inherently be "bloated".
BTW, when you view an HTML file in the Opus viewer pane it's just using IE. Opus doesn't have its own HTML rendering engine or anything like that.
Either program, that can show "The Web" (or HTML files) on Windows uses the underlying IE engine.
Besides, as for "bloated": Why not read this here:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
Personally I would like to see support for the Mozilla ActiveX component in the Dopus ActiveX plugin. I know it works, since I had a HTML editor, that would allow to use the Mozilla ActiveX component for in-editor preview.
This way one could view/preview:
SVG (and soon SVG anim)
MathML
(X)HTML
XML with named XSLT
XUL
and soon SMIL
Seems he does not quite support your point of view.
[quote="amix"]
Personally I would like to see support for the Mozilla ActiveX component in the Dopus ActiveX plugin. I know it works, since I had a HTML editor, that would allow to use the Mozilla ActiveX component for in-editor preview.[/quote]
And then add separate bookmarks for web browsing, repair support for CSS, add History, download manager, and then add full-blown mail client with contact manager, RSS agent and then....
Let's leave web browsing to web browsers.
X.
[quote="Xyzzy"][quote="amix"]
Besides, as for "bloated": Why not read this here:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
[/quote]
Seems he does not quite support your point of view.[/quote]
?? What is my view ? And why would it be different to mine ?
[quote]
[quote="amix"]
Personally I would like to see support for the Mozilla ActiveX component in the Dopus ActiveX plugin. I know it works, since I had a HTML editor, that would allow to use the Mozilla ActiveX component for in-editor preview.[/quote]
And then add separate bookmarks for web browsing, repair support for CSS, add History, download manager, and then add full-blown mail client with contact manager, RSS agent and then....
Let's leave web browsing to web browsers.
X.[/quote]
SVG is another Vector Graphics Format. With addition of scripting and Anim support it is like Flash.
MathML is a document format for mathematic formulas.
XML + XSLT is any XML, that comes with an accessible stylesheet.
XUL is what Firefox and Mozilla are made of.
SMIL is an animation and multimedia format
What I tried to line out, that with a working Mozilla ActiveX component we would get
- a picture viewer for SVG pictures and a SVG movie player
- a document viewer for MathML formulas
- a generic help-viewer for any XML that comes with a stylesheet
- a way to preview XUL interfaces (nice for people who do actually program this)
- a SMIL animation player
I don't see your reason why you talk about web-browsing ?
I am talking about the good chance to get a 5 in 1 viewer. Plus one can show HTML pages in a standard conform way intermixed with any of those formats.
The FireFox ActiveX control is something I've had on my list of stuff to take a look at for a while. Not sure when it'll happen, though.
A dedicated SVG viewer is also a possibility as it looks like a nice format, although doesn't seem to be used very much.
Actually, whatever browser you prefer, could it be done to dock the browser window in a Dopus pane, like when you drag a Dopus window onto another title bar? That's what would be really cool.
We already support the IE ActiveX control, although it's only currently used for HTML files and PDF files (that will change when I get around to it).
Not sure if there's an Opera ActiveX control that would let us support Opera.
My only worry with the Firefox ActiveX control is it isn't part of the official Firefox install and isn't made by the Firefox team, so I don't know how stable it will be, especially as new versions of FF come out. Maybe it's fine, though; I haven't even tried it yet! If it's easy enough to support then I will.
Docking other program's windows into Opus, when those windows weren't created by Opus to begin with, would be very difficult and error prone so it's unlikely to happen. It's hard enough making that sort of thing work reliably when launching things like Word via ActiveX.
Not sure on this, but as far as I remember, it is semi-official. That is, that while not being part of the release, it is an ongoing project, with some of the core developers knowing about it and referencing it. Afaik it is even in the official CVS, however, it does not get checked out for release.
[quote]so I don't know how stable it will be[/quote] Why not give it a try ? I do rarely use it (since the only program supporting it native is some HTML editor I do not use anymore), while other ones are already hacked to support it by a patch-utility, that comes with the Mozilla ActiveX control. For example, you can patch TopStyle Lite to use the Moz-ActiveX instead of the IE one. Though, patches... we all know them 
As for a native SVG viewer. Why ? If you can make the Moz ActiveX plugin work you will have native SVG viewing. Automatically. Stativc SVG is close to being fully supported native by Moz with animation support on the way. In addition we'd get a MathML (math formulas) and SMIL viewer. Actually, as it seems Mozilla can render any XML, that has an XSL stylesheet embedded.
Good to know the Mozilla ActiveX control sounds well supported. I will give it a try when I get the time.
As for a native SVG viewer, because it would be much better to have a viewer which works the same as the other Opus viewers, e.g. you can scroll the image by dragging with the left mouse button etc. But using a web browser to display the format instead is a good place to start if it's something we get for free on the back of other useful work.
The html preview works great. I understand it uses IE internally, but would it be possible to have a button to kill the preview and view only source?
You can view the source, by right-clicking on the gray title bar above the Viewer Pane and selecting Use Plugin > Text. This will switch the currently viewed file to the Text viewer and you can see the HTML source.
Personally I find it better to have Opus default to just showing the source - if I want a preview I launch the file in IE or Firefox with a button.
If anyone reading wants to do that but isn't sure how, it's easy:
Go to Preferences / Plugins and configure the ActiveX Document plugin, then remove .htm and .html from its list of extensions.
Now HTML files will drop through to other plugins such as Text of SourceCodeViewer.
Or, if you use the source code viewer plug-in as I do and prefer to view/edit the syntax colored source code, you can leave the Active X plug-in configured for html and htm files and set up a button to turn the Active X plug-in on or off as needed.
Show PLUGIN docs.dll PLUGINDISABLE
Note if you do it this way you have to first close the viewer before toggling the button in order to see the change.
I'm the opposite of Leo. I store many HTML documents, such as release notes and ReadMe files from Intel about their chipsets and processors. Whenever I'm using the Opus Viewer Pane, it's usually because I just want to read (view) something. And maybe copy the text. So I'm only interested in HTML source if I am actually copying and pasting HTML to some HTML document I'm editing elsewhere.
I guess it should also be noted that the ActiveX viewer supports the IE Context Menu item View Source. So if you are viewing an HTML file, you can always right-click on it and open up the HTML source in whatever IE has defined as your source viewer (Notepad is the default).
Cheers for the info everybody.