From version 6.8.3.0 TAD Designer Lite now has a simple, yet powerful mechanism to send commands from a browser directly into TAD Designer Lite running inside the same computer as the browser. It uses a special “localhost” server. The word localhost means that it will will ONLY work on the same computer where you had started it and nowhere else.

TAD Designer Lite internally recognizes some special links in HTML pages that can drive this localhost server. See the file tadprotocol.html that is in the same folder where you installed TAD. Load that file into a text editor and see how the links are created.

Note that the localhost server protects itself using your credentials. So when you try to use it; the browser will need to authenticate you. If you browse the tutorials page, you will be prompted for a username and password. The username there is “tad” (really!) and the password you give there is actually the registered username you had used when registering TAD. Your username is shown on the toolbar inside TAD Designer Lite.

Note that this mechanism deprecates the earlier TAD Hyperlinks system. In a few versions down the line, we may completely remove that system and only have the localhost mechanism.

The deprecated TAD Hyperlinks documentation is here