Amaya is mainly an editor with browsing capabilities. It allows you to edit and browse Web documents simultaneously. Browsing with Amaya is similar to browsing with other Web browsers except for activating a link and using forms.
Amaya allows you to display and edit HTML documents, as well as some XML document types: XHTML, MathML (mathematical expressions), and SVG (graphics). It also allows you to access other XML document types and to display their content according to their CSS style sheets. For these XML documents some editing functions are available.
Because Amaya is both a browser and an editor, you get different results when you single-click, double-click, or right-click a link.
If you have chosen a profile without the navigation feature, or if you are in help pages, the retrieved document is displayed in a new tab.
This behavior can be changed through the Browsing tab under the
Preferences dialog. By changing option Double click
activates link, you can browse documents with a single click as you
would in a traditional Web browser. You will then not be able to edit the
content of a link by clicking it, but you can move the cursor within a link
with the arrow keys.
Other browsing preferences such as whether images should be loaded or not,
whether CSS style sheets should be applied or not, can be set in the
Browsing Preferences dialog.
You can also use the keyboard to select links and to activate them. Key Tab allows you to move to the next link or form field in the document. Shift Tab allows you to move to the previous link or form field. Alt ↓ activates the current link. You can choose other keys to perform these commands.
Access keys provide shortcuts for moving the cursor to a form field, an area, or a link. This kind of access is crucial to people with motor disabilities, but there are other conditions where it could be necessary or useful.
When developing a web document, you can associate the accesskey
attribute with the following elements: a, area,
button, input, label,
legend, and textarea.
For example, if you associate the accesskey attribute with a
link in a document using accesskey="n" or
accesskey="N", command Alt-accesskey (Alt-n
or Alt-N in this example) will activate that link (on MacOS X, use
Ctrl instead of Alt). If the accesskey
attribute is associated to a form element, pressing Alt-accesskey
moves the focus to that element (or to the following element if associated with
a label or legend element).
Access keys overwrite Amaya shortcuts, but not the system shortcuts (shortcuts for menus, for instance).
As an example, these Help pages declare the following access keys:
So, if you have assigned shortcut Alt-p to an Amaya command, this shortcut won't work in a Help page; it will display the previous page instead.
By default, Amaya uses the Alt key as the modifier for access keys (Ctrl on MacOS X). However, you can change this modifier using thePreferences/General dialog box. You can choose the Ctrl key instead of the Alt key for a modifier, or you can disable the access key mechanism.
Targets are elements that have been given an id attribute, or
anchors (element a) that have been given a name
attribute. They identify possible targets for links.
You can easily recognize targets and set links to them: Amaya allows you to
display target icons 
in
front of all targets. These icons are not part of the document and can be
displayed or hidden in two ways:
Like most web browsers Amaya maintains a log to keep track of the pages you have visited during the current session. You can move backward or forward through pages in this log in several ways:
| File menu | Choose Back from the File menu to
view the previous page.
Choose Forward from the File menu to view the next page. |
| Keyboard shortcuts | Press Alt-← to view the previous page. Press Alt-→ to view the next page. |
| Navigation bar | Click the back  button to
view the previous page.
Click the forward |
Note that each tab has a separate log.
If you have chosen a profile without the navigation feature, or if you are in help pages, these commands are not available.
Documents can be reloaded by:
on the navigation bar.If you have chosen a profile without the navigation feature, or if you are in help pages, this command is not available.
As Amaya is an editor, some of the widgets associated with HTML form elements are different from those you are used to in browsers. This section mentions the most notable differences.
To activate a selector such as this one: , you have to click twice on the current entry ("apple" here). This will result in a popup widget showing all the entries. The widget can then be used both with the keyboard and with the mouse.
With the keyboard, you must first select an entry using the arrow keys. Pressing the Enter key validates your choice. You can abort by pressing the Esc key at anytime.
With the mouse, there are two kinds of behavior. A single click allows you to select an entry, whereas a double click on an entry means that you want to activate this entry. To abort, you just need to click anywhere outside of the pop-up widget. With very long menus, you can also use the scroll bar to quickly navigate through the entries.
Some menus, like this one : allow multiple entries to be selected simultaneously. This widget behaves much like a simple menu. When the widget is activated, it shows the current state of selection. You can abort by using either the Esc key or by clicking elsewhere.
button
to view the next page.