Folders are the primary means of organizing files in your projects. This section describes the different types of folders and the concepts you need know to work with them effectively.
There are two distinct folder types in HomeSite 4.5:
Physical folders are directly tied, or mapped, to a directory on your computer. The files that exist in the directory on your computer will also exist in the physical folder in HomeSite. Physical folders can be mapped to directories on local or network drives.
Virtual folders function as repositories for files that have no logical relationship to each other on a physical disk drive. You can think of a virtual folder as a "container" into which you can place whatever files you want. Virtual folders are a useful way to organize files that are scattered across your file system into one location in HomeSite.
Physical folders can be further broken down into auto-inclusive and manual-inclusive.
Note | Auto-inclusive and manual-inclusive refer to physical folders only. |
Both physical and virtual folders reference, or point to, the files on your file system. They do not create copies of the files or move them around. If anything happens to the original file in the file system (for example, it is moved or deleted), the reference between the HomeSite folder and the file is lost.
References to your the files in your project are stored in an .apf file. The .apf file is created and saved when you create a new project. As you make changes to your project's contents, the .apf file is updated automatically.
Note | In HomeSite 4.0, the project file had an .apj extension. This extension has been changed to .apf in HomeSite 4.5 to avoid versioning issues. HomeSite 4.0 .apj files can be opened in 4.5 but 4.5 .apf files cannot be opened in 4.0. |
The .apf file is stored in an XML-defined WDDX format. This format can be difficult to read and may change with future enhancements so, while it may seem like it, it is not the ideal location to view a list of files contained in your project. The VTOM scripting engine functionality is more suited to this task. See ../../scripting_the_visual_tools_object_model/vtom.htmScripting the Visual Tools Object Model/a for more information on the VTOM scripting engine.
The following table displays the icons for each folder type along with a description of when you should use each folder type.
Icon | Folder Type | Usage |
---|---|---|
![]() | Virtual folder | Use when you want to organize files from several different locations into one location in HomeSite. |
![]() | Auto-inclusive folder (physical) | Use when you want all of the files (or all files of a certain type) in a specific directory to be included in your project. |
![]() | Manual-inclusive folder (physical) | Use when you want to choose exactly which files, on a file-by-file basis, in a specific directory are included in your project. |