Inside the User's Web Browser

In this case, your COBOL program starts inside the user's browser window. Nearly all of the ordinary functions of your COBOL program are available to your user and your program has access to library routines that can be used to communicate with the browser.

In this mode, users also have access to browser functions like Forward, Back, and Search, but when they use these functions, the COBOL program terminates. To avoid losing data, the COBOL program should be designed to handle the closing action gracefully within ten seconds. If users return to the page from which they launched the ACUCOBOL-GT application, it reloads like any Web page.

Note that because of a Microsoft child window restriction, applications running inside a browser window cannot display a main window menu bar as you or your users might expect. To work around this restriction, you can program your application's menu functions to be accessed from a toolbar or a pop-up menu that is activated with the right mouse button.