Browser Tips

This page points out some ways you can use your web browser to get the most out of P4Web.

Using bookmarks
Right-clicking on links
Using the "Back" button
Resetting the page content limit
Displaying file content
Reducing P4Web's impact on the Perforce Server
Workspace file link

Using bookmarks

You'll find that there are some P4Web pages you return to over and over. Use your browser's bookmark (or "favorites") feature to store quick access to those pages. Simply navigate to a P4Web page that you'll be returning to frequently, and bookmark it. You may want use your browser's bookmark editor to give the bookmark a more meaningful title.

You can use bookmarks to store any non-default settings you choose (current client, file display preferences, etc.) with the Settings tab. You can also use a bookmark to save your Jobs list view preferences.

Right-clicking on links

In most browsers, right-clicking on a link lets you open the target page in a new window. In P4Web you can use this to look at two pages at once. For example:

• Right-click on "Help" whenever you want to be able to see both the Help page and the page it describes at the same time.

• Right-click on subdirectory links in the Files tab to browse a subdirectory without losing the page showing its parent.

Using the "Back" button:

Your browser's "Back" button can be used in combination with P4Web "Preview" buttons to preview a command first, then run it. For example, if you want to preview an integrate command to make sure files will be opened correctly, and then run the command, do this:

1. Click P4Web's Integrate... menu option

2. Fill out the form to indicate how you want files opened for integrate

3. Click the "Preview Integration" button and confirm that the files will be opened as you expected

4. Click your browser's "Back" button to return to the form -- it should still contain the input you provided for the preview

5. Click the "Integrate" button

Resetting the page content limit:

P4Web normally limits the amount of per-page data it sends to your browser to 1024K bytes. You'll see the message "WARNING: page content limit exceeded: data on this page has been truncated!" at the end of the page if that limit has been reached. If you have particularly large amounts of data you'd like to browse (extensive file histories, for example) you can increase that limit. Or, if your browser gets swamped displaying pages at the 1024K byte limit, you can decrease the limit. To reset the limit use the Settings tab.

Displaying file content:

P4Web provides two kinds of file content display:

• The first is used with all file types, and can be used to make your browser display file content using the appropriate associated application. (For example, HTML content and GIF content would be displayed by the browser, whereas PDF content would be displayed by Adobe Acrobat.) The Edit file Action menu option in the Files tab is an example of this kind of display.

  Most browsers successfully use the filename suffix and/or the first few bytes of the file content to determine how to open the file. If you have a file whose suffix P4Web does not recognize, you'll either see garbage characters displayed in the browser or an error message. Note that P4Web has some MIME information for files stored in Perforce, but it may send file content to your browser without a MIME type header, and let your browser decide what to do with it.

• The second is used with text file types only, and displays the plain text content of a file within a P4Web page. The View - depot file text Action menu option in the Files tab is an example of this kind of link. All browsers can display text file content this way.

Reducing P4Web's impact on the Perforce Server:

If you are working with very large Perforce depots, you can reduce P4Web's impact on the Perforce Server by:

• Leaving the recent activity display turned off when browsing paths at a high level.

• Limiting your client view to a subset of the depot. The fewer depot files there are mapped in your client view, the less work the Perforce Server has to do for P4Web. See Editing Client Specs for information about setting your client view.

• Browsing in workspace mode instead of depot mode. See Depot Browsing vs. Workspace Browsing for more information.

• Browsing the client view of the depot instead of the entire depot, when browsing in depot mode. See Settings and Preferences to for more information.

Workspace file link:

When you are viewing a file's Revision History, you may see a field entitled Workspace: which is followed by a link to the file on your workspace. If that link is displayed and you click on the file name, the contents of the file are displayed in your browser window. Note the following restrictions:

• The file must be local to the machine running the browser.
• Some browsers do not support this functionality.