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Web pages on the canvas

Web nodes

Put a website on your canvas, recognise its preview and open it in the view the page supports.

A web node puts a website among the ideas on your canvas. You can keep an article beside your research, arrange several references together, or open a page without losing your place in Glob. A PDF can have a web node too.

The node has a title, a place on the canvas and the usual node actions. Its website adds a preview and a choice of ways to open it. Adding a link does not publish the node: where you place it and how you share it still matter.

A web node is drawn larger than an ordinary node, and a provider's player larger still. Nearby nodes keep their distance from the whole card or player, not just its centre, so several of them on one canvas settle side by side rather than piling over each other.

  1. Copy the complete address of the page, starting with https:// or http://.
  2. Open a canvas you can add to. Leave any text field or editor so the canvas can take the paste.
  3. Put the pointer where you want the node and press Ctrl+V, or ⌘V on a Mac.

The link becomes a web node under the pointer. When the pointer is outside the canvas, it lands near the centre of your view.

You can also drag a link onto the canvas. It lands where you drop it. To place it precisely with the menu, right-click the canvas and choose Paste. That uses the point where you opened the menu.

For keyboard access to the canvas menu, focus the canvas and press the Menu key or Shift+F10. Move through the menu with the arrow keys and choose a row with Enter.

The paste must be one address. A sentence containing a link is text, and pasting while a text field has focus goes to that field. A bare domain without https:// or http:// does not become a web node through this paste action. Addresses can be up to 2,048 characters and cannot contain a username and password.

If the menu cannot read your clipboard, use the keyboard paste. No link on the clipboard means Glob did not find a supported link or PDF there. See web page problems for other messages.

A link to a Glob node is handled as a link to that node. Pasting it can place the existing node on the canvas, subject to its access and placement rules. It does not make a website preview of the node's Glob address. Copy node is the useful action when you want another placement of the same thing; see linked nodes.

Other Glob Social page addresses can remain links that open separately. They are not loaded as a second live copy of Glob Social inside the node.

Pasting an outside website address creates a web node of your own. Using Copy link on someone else's shared web node can also let your new node remember where the reference came from. That relationship appears in its web discussion.

Read the preview

From far away, the node shows the site's small icon, or a globe when no icon is available. Closer in, a page image can fill the node, with the site's icon beside it. A node without a title of your own can use the page's title.

Rest the pointer on the node to see a larger preview. It can show a screenshot, a page image or a simpler fallback, along with the site and title. Its hint tells you what entering the node does: open the site here, read it in Glob reader, or open a new tab.

Hover previews use a mouse pointer. On a touch screen, use the node's opening action to read it rather than waiting for a hover picture.

A preview is a picture of the page. It is not a live website you can type into. A missing picture also does not mean the saved link is broken. Glob can keep a link even when the site will not supply a preview.

Refresh preview asks for a new picture where that action is available. Recheck website checks how the page can open. These actions do different jobs: refreshing a picture does not choose a new website mode.

Open the node

Click a web node to open its panel where available. A readable page opens Glob reader; a PDF opens the PDF panel. For other web nodes on a canvas you can edit, the ordinary node editor opens.

Double-click or zoom into a web node to use its opening view. Depending on the page, that can be the live website, a provider's player, Glob reader, the PDF panel or an external tab. A site does not have to support every view. See website views.

The usual canvas permissions still apply. A web node cannot be added to a canvas you cannot change, and the room's rules can refuse a placement. For moving, linking and arranging the result, use the ordinary canvas controls.