Switchable renderers

The Sidewinder architecture supports renderers built using a cascaded rendering approach. This means that documents received in one language can be rendered using another language, and a cascade renderer will manage any language mappings that are needed.

The current release of Sidewinder is geared towards XHTML 1.1. If Internet Explorer is selected as the renderer then the document will be converted to HTML 4.01. However, if Gecko has been selected, the document will be left intact.

(Gecko functionality is currently obtained by using the Gecko ActiveX control, which must be installed.)

If Sidewinder detects a renderer that it can use (currently Internet Explorer and the Gecko ActiveX control) then a corresponding menu option will be created on the Rendering menu:

The Rendering menu is also available when Sidewinder is running in embedded mode within Internet Explorer:

You can switch between renderers as you like--no page reloads will take place since Sidewinder manages the source document. And since Sidewinder also manages the navigation, you can navigate in one renderer, switch renderers, and then continue navigating in another--a major boon for testing.