Losing place on page in Windows iSilo 4.05

[amalis]

This is a problem I've been complaining about in iSilo for Windows since it was first released. I'll keep complaining after every new release until it's fixed! :-) I'm running iSilo for Windows 4.05 on Windows XP.

The bug is if you're reading a long page (long enough that you need to scroll down to continue to read the page) and you click on a link, when you return to the previous page you were reading by using the "Back" arrow on the control bar, you do not return to your previous position on the page, but rather you are returned to the top of the page. This is a huge bother when you're reading a long page, since you then have to scroll down again to find where you were before. And that can be harder than you think if you're on a long page with tons of links. This is NOT a problem on iSilo on PalmOS - that program has handled this correctly since day 1.

Note: I'm a registered owner of iSilo for both PalmOS and Windows, going back to when each of these were first released. Thanks for your consideration.

[iSilo]

The problem you are experiencing is probably due to the page having a table layout. In "iSilo for Windows", open the document, go to the Tools menu, click Options, and on the Display tab, set the option to "Disable table layout". Then click OK and see whether you still encounter the problem. Assuming you don't encounter the problem, read further for an explanation.

One of the limitations of iSilo's table handling is that when you jump to a location in the document that is within a table, the jump occurs to the beginning of the row of the top-level table containing the content. This is not an issue for tables that are used as true two-dimensional tables with tabular data, where each cell usually only contains a single data point value. That is what iSilo currently handles okay with regard to tables.

However, many webpages use tables to layout a page so that the area of a page can be divided into rectangular sections for precise placement of various parts of the page. In many cases, such a page will have multiply nested tables. In some cases, a page will have a table with only one cell and all the content is in that single cell. In this latter scenario, the table should really not be necessary.

Back to iSilo, when you view a page containing tables, iSilo must format the entire page before it can display any tables in their tabular layout format. The behavior of how this happens differs between "iSilo for Windows" and iSilo for the PDA platforms, which would explain why you see a difference.

In "iSilo for Windows", iSilo immediately goes through the entire pages and performs the layout before displaying the page. Assuming you have a relatively fast processor compared to the size of the page you are viewing, this will be nearly instantaneous and you won't even notice it happening. If the page is large, then "iSilo for Windows" displays a progress dialog until it finishes completion of layout.

In iSilo for all other platforms, which are currently PDA platforms, iSilo determines whether it can complete layout of the page within one second. If it can, it completes the layout of the page before displaying it. Otherwise, if it can not, it displays the page in free flow format and while you are viewing the page, iSilo performs the layout in the background. When it finishes the layout, it redisplays the page with tables displayed in tabular format. In "iSilo for Palm OS", you can tell that iSilo is busy performing layout in the background by the presence of a blinking dot in the upper left of the screen.

The above behavior was implemented with the assumption that "iSilo for Windows" would run on desktop computers with "fast" processors and that iSilo for PDA-based platforms would run on "slow" processors.

So the pages in the document you are viewing are probably relatively long and thus in "iSilo for Palm OS", the layout does not complete, so the hyperlink jump occurs to the actual target in the page before layout has completed. Whereas, in "iSilo for Windows", the layout has already completed so the jump occurs to the row of the top-level table containing the target of the hyperlink.

Because you have not mentioned anything about the content looking noticeably different between the two platforms, my guess is that you can just disable table layout without it affecting your ability to view the content.

[amalis]

I disabled table layout and sure enough, the problem is fixed. Many thanks for the speedy reply and detailed explanation.