HTML Utilities

Colors... - You can define and name colors to use as background, text and link color etc. on your www page. Later, when you insert an element with a color attribute, you can choose the color for the attribute from a menu. A set of 16 basic colors is provided by default. These are the 16 color names defined in HTML 3.2. The predefined colors do not show up in this dialog because you are not allowed to change them.

The 16 predefined colors

	Black = "#000000"		Green = "#008000"
	Silver = "#C0C0C0"		Lime = "#00FF00"
	Gray = "#808080"		Olive = "#808000"
	White = "#FFFFFF"		Yellow = "#FFFF00"
	Maroon = "#800000"		Navy = "#000080"
	Red = "#FF0000"		Blue = "#0000FF"
	Purple = "#800080"		Teal = "#008080"
	Fuchsia = "#FF00FF"		Aqua = "#00FFFF"

In the popup menu in the dialog window shown above are all color names you have defined. Below is the hexadecimal number corresponding to the color selected in the menu.

Tip: Use the up and down arrows to navigate in the menu.

New: To define a new color with a color picker.

Change: To change a color with a color picker.

Remove: To remove the color selected in the menu.

View: To view a color in a color picker. (Clicking OK and Cancel in this picker have the same effect. No changes are saved.)

New by number: To define a new color by specifying its hexadecimal number #RRBBGG in the dialog window shown below.

Change number: To change a color by changing its hexadecimal number #RRBBGG.

Home Pages... - To define which folders contain the files of different sites, see the section about how to configure HTML mode.

Footers... - A footer is a file with text which you automatically can put into the BODY of the document when you create a new document. To use this function,

first create a file with the text which you want to use on many of your pages -- for example, directory buttons, your address etc.
then define the file to be a footer.

When you later use "New document" you can select this file from a menu, and its content will be put inside the BODY element.

These files can of course contain any kind of text but I call them footers because my basic idea is that they should contain things you put at the bottom of every page.

In the popup menu in the dialog window shown below are the file names of the footers you have defined. Below is the full path corresponding to the file selected in the menu.

New: Presents you with a file dialog to pick a file with a footer. This does not insert any text in your document. It only defines a file to be a footer.

Remove: Removes the footer selected in the menu. Note: this does not delete the file. It is just no longer a footer.

Insert: Inserts the footer selected in the menu in the document.

Editing	Functions for easier and quicker editing.
Character Translation	To translate characters to and from their HTML entities.
URLs	Everything for managing the URL cache.
Windows	Everything for managing the window cache.
Check Links	Functions to scan files in your home page folder and check that all links, HREFs SRCs etc. point to files which exist.
Includes	Functions to dynamically include files in your document.
Extend	To add new HTML elements, or new attributes to existing elements, to HTML mode.

Move Files... - To move files between different folders, automatically updating all links which points to any of these files in every file in a home page folder or include folder, as well as updating all links in the moved files.

First you are asked to select the folder which contains the files you want to move.
Then you are asked to select the files you want to move from this folder.
And then you are asked to select the destination folder.

Alpha then moves the files and then asks you if you want to update all links (this is the whole point of this function, so a 'yes' should be appropriate). Depending on if you have moved files in a home page folder or an include folder, the following will happen.

If you have moved files in a home page folder which does not have a corresponding include folder

the links in all HTML files (as determined by the suffix mapping) pointing to the moved files, will be updated.
all links in the moved files are updated.

If you have moved files in a home page folder which has a corresponding include folder

the links in all HTML files in the home page folder pointing to the moved files, will be updated.
all links in the moved files are updated.
the links in all HTML files in the include folder pointing to the moved files, will be updated.

(In this case you can optionally choose to only update the home page folder or include folder, but normally you should update both.)

If you have moved files in an include folder

all links in the moved files are updated
all include tags in the HTML files in the home page folder pointing to the moved files are updated.

Updating links may take a little while if you have very many files but should in most cases be a lot faster than to make the changes manually.

Limitations:

Links within comments , , are also updated (which is a bug or a feature, depending on how you see it).
Alpha only searches for strings like HREF="file" without checking that they are inside a tag. This means that Alpha could find links, which actually are not links.
You can only move files between subfolders in one home page folder, not between the different home page folders.
Only files in the home page folder where you move files are updated, not the files in any other home page folder.

Last Modified... - Adds tags to the document which makes it possible to automatically add the date and time when the document is saved. Two tags inside HTML comments are inserted:


some text and date


Whenever the document is saved the date is changed. Don't write anything between the comment tags. It will be removed when the document is saved.

Character translation is done automatically of the text and date.

In the dialog window shown above you can specify:

the text before the date. (Default: Last modified)
the date format, long, abbreviated or short. On an American system these are:
Saturday, October 19, 1996 9:10 PM
Sat, Oct 19, 1996 9:10 PM
10/19/96 9:10 PM
if the weekday should be included in the date. (Does not apply to the short format.)
if the time should be included in the date.

If you want to change how the date is displayed, just use 'Last modified' again and the tags will be replaced. It is not possible to have more than one pair of tags in a document.