Web Studio 4.0 Newsletter

Collaborating with Web Studio 4.0
We get quite a few people asking if multiple people can use Web Studio to create one website. The answer is yes!

It is a pretty simple technique and uses the Save Page and Open Page commands in the Page menu. Here's how it is done.

You create your website's pages in Web Studio. You don't have to complete the pages, just create all the pages you think you'll need. You'll be able to add additional pages later so don't worry if you don't know all of the pages you'll need at this time.

Then you'll decide who is going to "own" each page. If you have two people, and two pages, then you will own one, and your collaborator will own the other.

Next, you send the Project file to your collaborator. He will use this project to create his page(s). You'll use your project file to create yours.

You will now go about creating the pages you are responsible for. The collaborator will go about creating theirs.

Once the collaborator has completed a page or pages, he emails them to you. He does this by first going to that page using the PageList. Then choosing Save Page in the Page menu to save the page to disk. He does this for all of the pages he wants to send you. He then creates an email and attaches each of the pages as an attachment to the email. He then sends the email to you. You get the email and save the emailed page files to a folder. Then you open your project.

Next, using your project, you delete the pages the collaborator sent you. Do this by going to the PageList, clicking the first page from the collaborator, then clicking the Delete Page button. Next, you go to the Page Menu and choose Open Page. You'll now locate the page that was emailed to you that has the same name as the page you just deleted. Open this page. It will now be added to your project with all of the changes the collaborator made. Do this for the remainder of the pages that were emailed to you.

Note that if you can share files with the collaborator on a network, for example, you don't have to email the files, just have the collaborator(s) place them in a pre-determined folder on the network. You can then open them from there.

If you add new pages to the site, you may have to send your current project file to the collaborators so their Site Links will be up to date. When you do this, make sure the project file has the latest pages from the collaborators. Otherwise, they'll have to delete and open their pages in the new project using the method given above.

If you use Protected Graphics, the collaborator will have to send his protected graphics files to you to include in the project. It is possible to lose protected graphics when moving pages so we recommend you don't use protected graphics when collaborating with multiple users.

This method will enable you to collaborate with any number of people, anywhere!.

Do you always use the Insert menu to add things to your pages? Do you want to see an easier way? How about Drag and Dropping files directly onto a page in Web Studio? You can, and it is easy if you know how to manage multiple windows on your desktop.

What you're going to do is "tile" two windows. One will be the Web Studio window, the other will be a Windows folder window.

To start, open Web Studio and open a page. Then go to the Start menu and choose MyDocuments. Open a folder in the MyDocuments window that contains a graphic, or sounds, or videos, or anything for that matter.

Now comes the cool part, Left Click on the Web Studio button in the Taskbar. The Taskbar is the bar at the bottom of the screen with the names of the currently running programs. Next, press and hold down the "CTRL key" on the keyboard and while holding it down Left Click on the name of the folder you opened. You'll see both buttons highlighted. Now right click on one of those buttons and select Tile Horizontally or Tile Vertically from the resulting menu. The windows are now tiled so you can now drag pictures, files, copy and paste text, select graphics in your browser and drag them onto your Web Studio page.

You can do this with any program, not just with a Windows folder. Use it with your painting program, your word processor, with your Internet browser, anything. One other little trick is to drag a file on to a button in Web Studio. If it is a file type that Web Studio doesn't normally create an object from, it will automatically add the file to the button and create a Download Link for it!

Adding Horizontal Rules to Text Objects

First, let's define "rule". In HTML-Speak, a Rule is a line; a horizontal line or a vertical line. Now, armed with that we can begin...

Web Studio doesn't require you to know any HTML and still, you can create awesome websites. If you venture into the HTML world, however, you can add even more awesomeness to your site (is that a word?). This is possible because Web Studio is programmable. By adding some HTML or other scripting languages to Web Studio you can do anything you see on the web. Here we will give you a place to start sprucing up your pages with Web Studio's programmability.

First, add a text object to a page. Enter some text, about 3 lines is enough. Then right click on the text object and select "Edit HTML Source"and place the following coding at the very top of the window. Don't worry about understanding anything else you see in the window, just enter the text below, exactly as it appears:

<HR style="WIDTH: 100%; COLOR: maroon; HEIGHT: 3px">

Now press the Save button. You'll see a horizontal rule above the text! If you're observant, you've figured out the horizontal line at the start of this article also uses this technique!

You can add spacing between the Rule and the text by adding <br> to the end of the HTML above, add more <br>'s for more space. It would look like this:

If you want to play around, try changing the Height, or the color, change the Width. See what happens!

One last tip, you can also add a rule at the very bottom of your text objects by putting the HTML at the very end of the existing HTML. Give it a try, you can't break anything, it's Web Studio!