Preview

Previewing a page before saving it

When you edit or create a page, the bottom row of buttons lets you save the page (i.e. create a new version and display it) or preview it.

Previewing a page opens a new window in your browser (if it understands JavaScript) and displays a preview of the edited page in that window. If you are not satisfied with the result, you can make more changes in the page edition form, and hit preview again to see the result in the preview window.

When you decide to Save your page (by hitting save in the page edition form), the preview window is closed and the saved version is displayed in the original window. The preview window is also closed when you Cancel the changes (by hitting the cancel button in the page edition form).

It is very important to realize that the page shown in the preview window does not exist for the server. If you don't explicitely save the changes, your edits will be lost.

To make it clear that the preview window is special, it has a different look and feel:

it has no toolbar, message line or decoration other than the scrollbar;
it has "Preview" banners at the top and bottom instead of the usual Wiki banners;
clicking on a link in the preview window displays the destination document in a new window.

Preview is very useful to fine-tune a page or to try different formatting. But don't forget to save!

Version 1, Tue 24 Nov 1998 08:51:13 [mbl]