Web Studio Newsletter

Vol. 2, No. 1
In This Issue
	Feature Article
	Did you know?
	Tips & Techniques
	President's Corner
	New in WS 3
	New Online
	HTML Corner
Reference
	Web Studio 3.0 Upgrade
	Online Forum
	Newsletter Archive
	Subscriptions

Feature Article - The New Web Studio Forum

Web Studio users have access to a great resource - the Web Studio Forum. This moderated forum is packed with useful information.

In the Web Studio Forum, you'll find a friendly community of knowledgeable users. Our moderators ensure you get fast answers to your questions, either from the moderator team, other Web Studio users, or from our extensive archives. They will even check your site for content, design and browser compatibility!

Gene, Gord and Mary, our moderators, are extremely knowledgeable and dedicated. Gene and Gord have been answering Web Studio forum questions for years and know the program inside out. They also have their own Web Studio help sites accessible from the forum. Mary is an HTML super expert - she's an HTML author and can answer any of your HTML and server-side questions.

The forum covers a broad range of topics, from Web Studio-specific to adding HTML, JavaScript, Java, Flash, MP3s, music and video to your site. You'll find product announcements and updates, FAQs, more than 3000 searchable archived postings, and announcements of free content and CoolStuff from Back to the Beach Software.

Also in the forum are links user-posted links to hundreds of Web Studio sites (great examples). Web Site of the Month winners are featured in a permanent showcase, and you can even talk directly with the winners!

So, if you have questions about how to use Web Studio or your site - or just want to chat with other Web Studio users - our new forum is for you! Check it out at www.webstudioforum.com.

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Did You Know...

…that you can preview any page or site online – even without a hosting service?

Web Studio 3 has a cool new feature - Trial Hosting - that lets you immediately view any page (or your entire site) live on the Internet. Just choose Save This Page to Internet or Save Web Site to Internet under the Web Site menu, and click the Trial Hosting button.

If you don't yet have a hosting service, you can use Trial Hosting to preview your pages and get feedback from friends and family. Just email them the temporary link to the pages (it's good for 18 hours).

If you already have a hosting service, you can use Trial Hosting to view and QA new site designs, page content and scripts without impacting your live site.

You can also use Trial Hosting to "test drive" some of the CoolStuff offered by our iHostStudio hosting service, including email forms, hit counters and site search. guest books and password-protected pages. (See What's New Online in this issue for more on CoolStuff.)

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Tips & Techniques

How to Create Instant Animations

With Web Studio 3, you can instantly create animations using any objects on your page

Step 1. Select two or more objects. The order you select them determines the order they will appear in the animation.

Step 2. Drag the Ani-Maker effect from the Special Effects Gallery onto one of the selected objects. Ani-Maker will then ask you for the animation delay (the delay between frames of the animation).

Step 3. Enter a different animation delay (if desired) and click OK. That's it - your animation is ready! To view it in motion, just choose Preview This Page from the Preview menu. If you want to change the animation delay, just double-click on the animation to get the settings dialog back.

You can use Ani-Maker to create animations for serious business purposes (and for fun). Check out our tutorial on how to create animated banner ads and animations of digital photo sequences..

Got a cool animation you created in Web Studio? Tell us about it in the Web Studio Forum!

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Manage Your Subscription

You are receiving this newsletter because you are a registered user of Web Studio or because you indicated you are interested in learning about products like Web Studio.

To subscribe or unsubscribe from this newsletter, please visit our subscription management page.

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President's Corner

Our product team recently reviewed a large number of sites created with Web Studio.

To our surprise, more than 70% are business sites!

Although we originally designed Web Studio for home use, it clearly has great appeal to small businesses.

In response, we plan to add important business-specific features to future versions of Web Studio.

If you have suggestions on which features to add first, please email us your thoughts. We will carefully evaluate your comments.

Steve Cochard
President
Back to the Beach Software, LLC

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What's New in Web Studio 3

New Frames Feature Lets You Share Objects Across Multiple Pages

Ever wished you could create shared items - like navigation bars and buttons and copyright text - that appear on all of your pages?

Now you can! The full power of HTML "frames" is available in Web Studio 3, without the hassle of programming in HTML.

First, create new pages for your header, left side navigation and footer (choose any or all). For headers, put your content at the top of the page; for the sidebar, at left; and for the footer, at the top.

Then choose Frame Properties under the Web Site menu, select the pages you just created - and you're done.

To view your new frames, choose Preview Web Site from the Preview menu.

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What's New Online

iHostStudio "CoolStuff" Scripts

As described in the last newsletter, Web Studio 3 is fully integrated with our new iHostStudio hosting service.

This tight integration lets us create new Galleries of drag and drop CoolStuff - like hit counters - that require special services from the hosting web servers.

If you're an iHostStudio subscriber - or you want to try CoolStuff capabilities using our Trial Hosting feature - just click one of the CoolStuff links and follow the instructions.

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HTML Corner

Adding Flash Animations Using the HTML Object

You can easily add Flash animations to your Web Studio pages, using the powerful and versatile HTML Object. Just follow these steps:

- Create a Flash animation and save it as a .SWF file. In your Flash authoring software, find and make a note of the pixel height and width of the animation.

- In Web Studio, drag an HTML Object from the CoolStuff Gallery. (The HTML Object is labeled "HTML".)

- Double-click on the HTML Object and paste in the following HTML:

- Replace both instances of "filename" in the HTML with the name of your .SWF file.

- Insert the height and width you recorded in the HTML (two instances each).

- Click the Save button to save the HTML in the HTML object.

- Right click on the HTML object and choose Properties. This brings up the Properties dialog.

- Click on the Attached Files tab, and then on the Add Files To List button. This brings up an Open dialog.

- Navigate to the location of the Flash file, select it and click the Open button. Then click the OK button in the Properties dialog. (Don't move the Flash file after this or Web Studio won't be able to find it for previewing and uploading.)

- Finally, choose Preview This Page from the Preview menu to view the animation on your page. If the animation height or width looks wrong, go back to the HTML object, double click and edit the width or height.

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