HTML in Row Labels - auto scroll to a particular position

In a Dialog or Grid, Row Labels can include HTML. Normally, your label might be something like "Customer Name", but you could add HTML tags such as <strong>Customer Name</strong> to make the label appear bold, like this: Customer Name. Obviously you can use Alpha's in-line row styles to do the same thing, but there are times when hard-coded HTML in the Row Labels (and elsewhere) are particularly useful.

For example, if you wanted your label to appear on multiple lines, you could type Customer<br>Name.

Here's another example; Customer Name<font color=#ff0000>*</font>; will yield Customer Name*, a nice way to show a field is required.

And one more - you can use bookmarks to automatically scroll the page to a particular position. If you created the same label above like this <a name="myBookmark">Customer Name</a>.

Assuming your A5W page was named Customer.a5w, then if you enter customer.a5w#myBookmark, the page will auto-scroll to that particular label position.

Open PDF in new window - always

A very common problem with PDF reports called from Alpha web application (or any other program) is that, by default, they open in the same browser window from where the report was called. This sets up the user to accidentally close the Alpha web application when they quite naturally click the browser's red X to close the report. Frustrating because they now have to re-log in.

I found a setting in Adobe Reader (v7) that forces all PDF's called from a browser to open in a new window. Here is how to make this setting:

1. Open the Adobe Reader from the Windows Start button.
2. Select Edit / Preferences and then select Internet under the Categories column.
3. See the top most box "Display PDF in Browser" - make sure that box is unchecked.
4. Click OK (it will take a minute to update)Try your reports again, they should open in a new window always.

The only real problem with this solution is that each individual user has to make this setting on their client machine, and you cannot effectively control this.