Views

Amaya can present different views of a document simultaneously. Each view is displayed in a different window. This allows you to clearly see what is happening when you edit complex documents. It is also an aid for moving across a document. Six views are available:

Formatted view

Here you see a similar view of the document to that provided in other popular graphical browsers. It is a dynamic, direct manipulation view, in the sense that, at all times, it displays the changes you are making to the document. This is in contrast to editors which only provide a series of static snapshots of the document.

Structure view

This view shows the actual structure of the document being edited. Each element is represented by its tag name, followed by its attributes, on the same line. The elements it contains are represented underneath along a blue vertical line that shows the extent of the element. Parts displayed in black can be edited directly, by clicking and typing. Parts displayed in blue can be changed only by editing commands.

Alternate view

This view allows you to see how the document looks like when displayed by a text-only browser. It is useful for checking the accessibility of your documents.

Links view

This view shows all anchors in a document, but only the anchors and the elements they contain. You can focus on it when working on hypertext links.

Table of Contents view

This view displays all headings (Hn elements), but only those elements. If the document is well structured, it displays an overview of the document.

Source view

Here you see the actual source code of the document. You can use it to edit the syntax of your document.

You can open and close any view at any time.

Opening a view

To open a view, choose the corresponding Show ... command in the Views menu (only available in the Formatted view). The Show ... commands from the Views menu can also be used to raise the corresponding window when it is in the background.

Closing a view

To close a view choose the Close view (or simply Close in the Source view) command from the File menu of that view. In the Formatted view, the Close command closes the whole document, i.e. all views displaying the same document.

Using views

All views (except the Source view) are automatically synchronized: whenever you select some character or element in one view, the other views of the same document are automatically scrolled to show the same part of the document.

You can edit the document in any view. For optimum responsiveness when typing, the entered characters are displayed only in the view where you have clicked. As soon as you activate a command or click somewhere, these characters are also displayed in the other views.

The Source view behaves differently: you have to explicitly ask for synchronization, using the Synchronize command from the File menu. When you have made a series of edits in the Source view, you have to enter the Synchronize command from any view to update all other views of the document. Conversely, when you have made changes in any other view, enter the Synchronize command to update the Source view.

Synchronizing a document will cause Amaya to attempt to re-validate it. If markup errors have been introduced in the source view Amaya will attempt to recover as well as it can. You should check the document in the Structure view or Formatted view after editing in the source to ensure that synchronization has done what you expected.

Whenever you save a document, locally or remotely, from the Source view or from the Formatted view, a synchronization occurs automatically: all views reflect the state of the document at the time it is saved.