Interactive Page Editing

ArcWeb supports the Computer Concepts' OLE protocol to allow you to edit the HTML sources for the pages you are looking at. Currently, only pages accessed with local: URLs can have their changes saved permanently. In the current version, the FTP and HTTP re-upload facility is deliberately disabled (although if you are editing the page locally, you can use the FTP upload facility to transfer it to an FTP server.

Software Required

You will need an OLE-aware editor in order to be able to edit the pages. StrongEd is such as editor but you don't appear
to have that on your system - or you haven't seen it in a Filer window yet

but you don't appear
to have that on your system - or you haven't seen it in a Filer window yet

version 1.31 is also such an editor. Other editors such as Zap

1.30 (or earlier) or Edit

require the assistance of the OLESupport module.

Editing a page

At the moment, starting the editor is tricky. Eventually there will be a toolbar tool and a menu entry for it, but for now you're stuck with this:

Click SELECT in the URL writable icon at the top of the page you wish to edit
Hit CTRL-E to start the edit.

If you have the software mentioned previously, then an editor window will appear containing the HTML source of the page that is being displayed in the ArcWeb window, and you will see some of the comments I have added to the HTML source for this page.

Make changes to the file, and when you have finished, or you want a preview of the file, just use the usual Save mechanism (F3 usually) to save the HTML file. You must not change the filename! All being well, ArcWeb will notice the new version and immediately rerender the page so you can see the effect of the changes. When you have finished editing, close the editor window.

Drag'N'Drop

You can take advantage of the URL link drag'n'drop implemented by ArcWeb in order to assist you in construction of hypertext links. Using

as an example, if you click on the Anchor tool to insert the <a href=""> text then you can pick up a URL visible in ArcWeb's URL icon or a link or the hotlist window or the history etc. and drag it into the StrongEd window. The StrongEd cursor will follow the mouse around your document allowing you to place the insertion precisely. The only disadvantage to doing this is that the links are then fully qualified and not minimally relative.

Known Problems

Apart from the fact that the automatic uploading of edited files to the original location is not currently supported (the code is in there, but disabled since I'm not confident about leaving it in a new version just before going on holiday), there are no known problems.

Stewart Brodie
28th September 1996