Web Studio 4.0 Newsletter

There's great news in this newsletter. Most obvious is the new design of the newsletter. We decided to change our "corporate look" to better reflect the abilities of Web Studio. It is created 100% in Web Studio.

Most importantly, we've released Service Pack 2 for Web Studio 4.0. This release is free to 4.0 owners. It includes 10 new features and enhancements and over 40 fixes to reported problems. It's our desire to provide additional value and free support to our valued customers.

We've got lots of new, updated stuff on the website as well, look below.

Web Studio 4.0 Service Pack 2 is Available Now!

We at Back to the Beach Software are excited to release the second service pack release for Web Studio 4.0. This release includes 11 new features and over 40 fixes. This service pack continues our commitment to providing additional value and continual improvement to our existing products.

Here's a description of some of the new features:

Button Studio

Greatly simplify your site creation with editable text in buttons, any button. Any non-rollover button dragged from the Button gallery now brings up the Button Studio dialog. This dialog enables you to add editable text to your buttons. You can also change the font, style, size, and color of the text.

HyperStudio Support

HyperStudio is, it is the #1 best selling educational software of all time. It enables students, and anyone, to create “stacks” that are basically pages with multi-media content on them.

Web Studio is now the only web authoring program that has drag and drop (or any) support for HyperStudio. Web Studio support for HyperStudio is one of the most requested features from educators around the world!

New Add/Edit Links Dialog

The Links tab enables you to add new links to an object or selection of text as well as edit existing links in objects or text. You can add any of the available types of links with this dialog: Site links, Anchors, URLs, Downloads.

There are also over 40 fixed to reported problems, here's a few:

● Self-Healing Project files. Corrupted files will be fixed automatically when opened.
● Text doesn't move when viewed in Netscape.
● Thin graphics doen't move down the page anymore.
● Text colors, sizes, fonts and background colors are well behaved.
● Objects don't change size when a Project is opened.
● Graphic text objects with links work fine.
● Over 30 more problem fixes are included.

Service Pack 2 is a free download for all Web Studio 4.0 owners. Just click here to download the installer.

Once you've downloaded the installer, just run it and it will install the Service Pack 2 upgrade. None of your files will be affected in any way.

...Text that moving in Netscape is solved in Service Pack 2

A new checkbox has been added to the Website Properties dialog that lets you tell Web Studio that you want the program to accomodate Netscapes bug of moving text down. What WebStudio will do is change the HTML on pages you create from that point on to have Netscape put the text in the proper location. Note that this also works for Mozilla and FireFox which are all derived from Netscape.

To turn on this feature: Open your project; make sure a page in your site is open; go to the Website menu; choose Website Properties; click the Advanced Tab; put a check mark in the "Netscape Text Fix" check box. Then click OK. Once you re-build your site and upload it, the text will be in the correct position. Note that this check box will not be checked for your existing sites unless you check it.

...Thin graphics moving down the page is solved in Service Pack 2?

We finally found the cause of thin graphics moving down the page. This problem has been in Web Studio for six years, and for six years all the experts have said the HTML Web Studio is creating for these graphics is correct. However, the graphics still moved! Fortunately we found that Internet Explorer actually treats graphics like they were text. It allocates space for graphics based on whatever the last font size was. If the graphic is less than that font size, it places the graphic at the bottom of that space instead of the top. If it is larger than that space it places the graphic starting at the top and lets it go as far down as it needs to. If all this makes no sense, don't worry. The solution for you is simple. Just rebuild your website and upload it to the internet. The graphic's positioning will be correct.

If you have a website where you've modified the location of thin graphics to "work around" this problem, you'll want to go to the Advanced tab of the Website Properties dialog and place a check mark in the "Don't adjust location of thin graphics" check box.