MiniBrowser Feature Requests

This page is where the scripting community gets to post MiniBrowser-specific feature requests. Request any additions that you think will enhance the game. Things to keep in mind:

• We are unlikely to add a feature which breaks any existing content.
• The MiniBrowser is for high-performance interface layout, not web browsing. We are not going to spend significant resources on adding the functionality or standards compliance found in a regular browser. If you need a regular browser, try Trainz Online instead.
• We are far more likely to add features which are directly blocking something that the community is working on. If you have something cool, and need just a few minor additions then please detail what you're working on (ideally, on another wiki page linked from both here and your Content Creation Groups page) and why you need the additions.

Requests

Requests are placed in this section by the community, for discussion and possible inclusion. Requests here may or may not make it into TS2009.

• Refering to the 'Image' class that is currently only used in servlets (I think), it'd be nice, if we could use it via the trainz-object minibrowser tag :) - callavsg

• I'm looking for an option to take the property window of an asset out to a browser object, that is visible in the GUI. - callavsg

• I refer to the Asset 'Properties Window' or 'Dialogue Box' - Since TS 2010(09?) its been possible to copy and paste to the asset 'Name:' area. Could it be extended to allow 'copy' from the Properties Window itself? Some of my assets have encoded values in the Properties Window that allow saving settings to a map, (Route). At the moment these have to be typed-in to the 'Name:' area. Copy and pasting this changing data would reduce errors here and make it simpler. - Boat.

• I would like to ba able to open a minibrowser and load a HTML page that is located outside of the Trains Asset environment. If you could provide a variation of the loadpage command that could open an HTML file located any where on my PC, it would be a big help to me.. I know the minibrowser has limited html capability, but it is sufficient for my proposed application... Thanks, PEV

Short List

Requests are placed into this section by Auran if they are somewhat likely to make it into the TS2009 product. Requests from this list will be serviced by Auran as time permits.

Complete

• MiniBrowser to have left/right/center text image alignment.

• Positioning text and images freely in the 2D space of the browser would have been also a great relief. - Klausm

• MiniBrowser: my TrackView rule periodically replaced the content of the browser. Unfortunately, if a user clicked on the link shortly before or after the update (could not be determined exactly), the click was somehow lost in the system. It could have been my fault, but back then I believed it was Aurans' - Klausm

I'm not aware of any bug that fits this description. We'll need more details and/or a repro case if you want anything done about this. ~chris

if you download my TrackView Rule, add it to a layout of your choice and configure a rather high update rate (eg. 100-200ms or even below), you will notice that with an increasing update rate, more clicks on facing junction symbols are lost. Since the processing of the clicks does not depend on any internal state, I see the problem within Trainz itself. Source code can be provided if need be.

Okay, i think I understand what you're describing. There will be a one-frame delay between you refreshing the HTML string, and the layout engine formatting it. If you are doing this often enough, then clicks against the browser could easily fail due to no formatted text being present at the time of the click. I'd strongly recommend changing your code so that you don't have to submit changes this often - try using trainzobject or trainztext tags instead - but I'll leave the request open for now. ~chris

Rejected

If there's a request that we're clearly not going to entertain at the current time, we'll move it to here. This includes both flat rejections and also requests which sound good but won't be done for the next version of Trainz.

• Minibrowser able to show animated gifs (including tranparency) ~Jenolan

GIF is a pretty dated format in general, and not one that we want to promote. TGAs support transparency and we don't support animated textures so there won't be any animated image support in the MiniBrowser. ~chris

• MiniBrowser: well, it probably would deserve an own page for the wishes. One improvement could be some kind of DOM like access to the content. This would reduce the need to regenerate the content of the window from scratch each time. - Klausm

Are you aware of the ability to embed child browsers and update their content without modifying the parent? It's not clear what you're looking for here so I'm not sure if that is sufficient for your needs. ~chris

Rejected due to lack of updates. ~chris