Configuring viewers used to display documents in the web client

IBM® Content Navigator works with several types of viewers. The IBM Content Navigator administration tool includes a default viewer map that specifies which viewer is used to open each file type.

About this task

A viewer map defines which MIME types are associated with each viewer that you want to use. For example, if you want to use the Applet viewer for a desktop, you associate it with the MIME type ANY. You then can add the backup viewers to use, such as Ajax or HTML, if the JRE failed. You can create multiple viewer maps if you want to use different viewers for different desktops, then go to any existing desktop and select a viewer map on that desktop.

The order in which you list viewer in your viewer map is important. The order determines which viewer is the fallback viewer if a mapping does not work.

You cannot edit the default viewer map. However, you can create a custom viewer map if you want to use different viewers or add file types to the mapping. You can associate only one viewer map with each desktop in your environment. If you create a viewer map, you must create a desktop to use that viewer map.

If you are creating a custom viewer, the viewer must be integrated as a plug-in before you can add it to the viewer map.

Procedure

To configure viewers:

  1. Open the administration tool in the web client.
  2. Click Viewer Maps.
  3. Click New Viewer Map to create a map or select an existing viewer map. Then, click Edit.
  4. Specify the viewers that you want to use to open files.
    Important: Specify the order for the viewers according to which viewer that you use the most. For viewers that implement fallback behavior, map a backup viewer to the same repository and content types. When fallback occurs, the backup viewer launches. For example, map a PDF viewer to open for Linux® on System z®, with an HTML viewer configured as a backup. If the PDF viewer did not open, the HTML viewer would open. You can use multiple viewers that implement fallback to back up one another, in order of preference.
    Important: For security reasons, you might want to prevent users from opening or previewing certain types of documents. You can prevent users from opening or previewing specific types of documents by adding viewer and previewer mappings with the No Viewer option. When this option is set, and users attempt to preview or open a document of the file type that you specified, they receive messaging that informs them the document cannot be opened. However, it can be downloaded. For HTML documents, you can prevent scripts from being run by adding viewer and previewer mappings with the PDF Conversion option.
  5. Save the settings.