Displaying a URL
You can display a web site or web application on the dashboard using an HTML gadget. For example, using a URL such as http://www.actuate.com loads the Actuate web site into the HTML gadget.
Some web sites and web applications support receiving additional parameters in the URL. If the additional parameters in the URL require special encoding you can encode the URL or consider using JavaScript redirection with the same URL in the HTML gadget.
To use an unencoded URL in an HTML gadget, replace the unencoded characters as shown in
Table 7‑1.
Table 7‑1 Encoding URL characters for an HTML gadget
Character | Replacement text |
Backslash (\) | Slash (/) or the URL encoding of %5C |
Space ( ) | The URL encoding %20 |
Ampersand (&) | The HTML character entity & |
For example, the following URL does not work in an HTML gadget:
http://localhost:8700/iportal/iv?__report=\Home\US sales.rptdocument&__page=3
The following rewritten URL works in an HTML gadget:
http://localhost:8700/iportal/iv?__report=%5CHome%5CUS%20sales.rptdocument&__page=3
Similarly, to use a URL inside a JavaScript redirection, replace any backslashes with a slash or the URL encoding of %5C. The following code shows JavaScript redirection used to display a URL:
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
window.location = "URL"
//-->
</script>
Place this code in the HTML section of the HTML gadget, replacing URL with the URL that retrieves the Actuate document. For example, the URL to a BIRT report document file is:
http://localhost:8700/iportal/iv?__report=\Home\US Sales.rptdocument&__report=3
The following JavaScript redirection script loads the BIRT report document into an HTML gadget:
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
window.location = "http://localhost:8700/iportal/iv?__report=/Home/US sales.rptdocument&__page=3"
//-->
</script>
Some web sites do not permit embedding their content in another web site or attempt to control the browser display to present their content. For example, JavaScript code using "parent" or "top" to access HTML components can overwrite parts of the Information Console interface.
When displaying an external site in an HTML gadget, hyperlinks in embedded web sites can redirect the user to other locations or web sites. How this link resolves depends on the HTML code of the remote site. If the link attempts to load a new page in the place of the existing page, it is possible for the user of an HTML gadget to browse different web sites on the internet.