Copyright: HomeSite Copyright ©1996 by Nick Bradbury


Help Contents
Contents

Introduction

Introduction

Release Notes and Comments

Design Assumptions

Learning HTML

Uninstalling HomeSite

Windows NT

About the Author

Technical Support

Using HomeSite

Toolbars

Directory Pane

Settings and Preferences

Editing

Options

Common Questions

How do I?

HomeSite Shareware

HomeSite Shareware


Introduction - Introduction
Introduction

   Welcome to HomeSite v1.2, the freeware version of the most powerful - and most affordable - HTML editor available for Windows 95.  Here are a few help pointers to get you started:

•	Learning HTML

•	Editing

•	Customizable tag coloring

•	Drag-and-drop image and anchor tag creation

•	Settings and preferences

•	Toolbars

•	Custom toolbars

•	Common questions

•	HomeSite Shareware Version


Release Notes and Comments

Please read the document HISTORY.RTF for information concerning changes since the last release.


Design Assumptions

HomeSite is designed for those comfortable with HTML - if you're looking for a  WYSIWYG environment that hides the HTML syntax, HomeSite is not for you.  There are a number of excellent WYSIWIG authoring tools, such as Microsoft's FrontPage and Netscape's Navigator Gold, that you may find more suitable.

HomeSite is first and foremost an HTML editor.  In looking at other HTML editors, I found that many (if not all) of them filled the screen with menus and toolbars loaded with every HTML tag available.  Instead of taking this approach, HomeSite's QuickTag toolbars contain only the most frequently used tags.  This way, you're not forced down a labyrinthine menu just to save yourself from typing <B></B>.  Even though I've dropped many tags from the toolbar, the application is customizable - you may add up to fifteen custom tag buttons for each custom toolbar.


Learning HTML

Many web authors already have a favorite HTML reference.  Rather than create yet another HTML reference, I designed HomeSite so that you can add your own reference to it.  HomeSite's 'Apps' toolbar enables you to add Windows help files as separate toolbuttons - simply add your favorite reference to this toolbar, and HTML help is just a click away.

The reference I use is Stephen Le Hunte's excellent HTML Reference Library, which you can find at http://subnet.virtual-pc.com/~le387818/.  Stephen has done a much better job with this help file than I would've done, and he has made it free to the public.  I highly recommend it.

There are also a number of great HTML references available on the web, including:

A Beginner's Guide to HTML	http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html
Introduction to HTML	http://members.aol.com/htmlguru/about_html.html
HTML Quick Reference	http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/lynx_help/HTML_quick.html
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 HTML Reference	http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/author/newhtml/default.htm
HTML Reference Manual	http://www.sandia.gov/sci_compute/html_ref.html


Uninstalling HomeSite

Uninstalling HomeSite is a simple process - just go into Control Panel, double-click on 'Add/Remove Programs,' then double-click on 'HomeSite.'

Note: Because HomeSite stores custom button information in the registry, the uninstall does not remove all registry information.  If you're certain you want to delete this information, use REGEDIT.EXE to delete the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\HomeSite.


Windows NT

HomeSite has been tested under both Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0, and a few cosmetic problems have been found.  At this time it is recommended that you run HomeSite only under Windows 95.


About the Author

The author is a recluse who doesn't have too much to say about himself.  He is, however, also a cartoonist, and as such isn't above a little shameless self-promotion...

So, if you're a comic strip fan, or just in need of a laugh, stop by http://www.dexnet.com/dexter.html for your weekly dose of Dexter.

Note: Some cartoons may be inappropriate for small children or small-minded senators.  'Nuff said.


Technical Support

Technical support is not available to users of the freeware version of HomeSite, but stop by the HomeSite FAQ page at http://www.dexnet.com/homesite/hs_faq.html for up-to-date information about HomeSite and solutions to common problems.


Toolbars

Main Toolbar

The HTML Speedbar

QuickTab Toolbar

Fonts Toolbar

Tables, Frames and Lists Toolbars

Tag List

Advanced Toolbar

Apps Toolbar

Custom Toolbars


Main Toolbar

Apart from the standard toolbuttons (cut, copy, paste, open, save, undo, etc.), the main toolbar contains the following:

	Displays the replace dialog			Indents the selected lines
	Displays the extended replace dialog			Unindents the selected lines
	Switches to full screen display mode			Toggles the display of the Directory Pane
	Browses the current document using your external browser			Toggles the display of the tag list


The HTML Speedbar

The HTML Speedbar is a series of toolbars that provide quick access to the most common HTML tags.

These toolbars can be hidden through the SpeedBar in the Settings dialog.


QuickTab Toolbar

The QuickTab toolbar displays the most frequently used HTML tags, such as bold and center, for easy access.  In addition, the QuickTab toolbar provides the following functions:

Displays the QuickStart dialog

Displays the QuickAnchor dialog

Displays the QuickImage dialog

Displays the QuickRule dialog

Displays the QuickComment dialog


Fonts Toolbar

The Fonts toolbar displays common font tags that aren't already on the QuickTab toolbar, such as heading styles.


Tables, Frames and Lists Toolbars

The Tables, Frames and Lists toolbars contains several buttons related (oddly enough)  to tables, frames and lists.   These toolbars also provides the following features:

Displays the Table Wizard

Displays the QuickList dialog

Displays the Frame Wizard


Using HomeSite - Toolbars - Tag List
Tag List

The tag list displays a dropdown list of HTML tags.  Tags are inserted into the current document by clicking the toolbutton to the right of the list.


Advanced Toolbar

The advanced toolbar contains advanced items such as Forms, ActiveX controls and Style Sheets.  Many of these items are specific to either Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator and are noted so in the toolbutton tooltips.

In addition, any dialog used to create Netscape- or Microsoft-specific features will display the icon of the appropriate browser.


Apps Toolbar

The Apps toolbar lets you quickly access other applications that you may use during web page development.  To add or remove applications from this toolbar, click the configure button to display the dialog below:

Note that the Command Line allows you to pass the name of the current document.  This can be extremely useful when using applications such as the CSE 3310 HTML Validator, which accepts the filename of a document to validate.

Just to get you started, here's the URLs of a few applications that I've found useful when creating web pages:

Name	URL
CSE 3310 HTML Validator	http://www.flash.net/~wiersch/htmlvalidator.html
MapThis!	http://galadriel.ecaetc.ohio-state.edu/tc/mt/
GIF Construction Set	http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html
PaintShop Pro	http://www.jasc.com/
HTML Reference Library	http://subnet.virtual-pc.com/~le387818/
WS_FTP95	http://www.csra.net/junodj/ws_ftp32.htm


Custom Toolbars

The Custom Toolbars allow you to define up to fifteen custom buttons for each toolbar.  To add or remove buttons from these toolbars, click the configure button.

Toolbar Name	The caption to display on the tab containing this toolbar
Caption	The caption to display on the button
Hint	The hint text to display for the button
Start Tag	The starting HTML tag (ex: <TITLE>)
End Tag	The ending HTML tag, if any  (ex: </TITLE>
Note:  You can type anything into the Start Tag and End Tag fields, including tabs and line returns.  In other words, you're not limited to just using HTML tags - in fact, you can place entire HTML documents or scripts here if you wish.


Directory Pane

The directory pane gives you quick access to all your HTML documents and web graphics.  To open a document in the editor, just double click on it.  Or to insert an <A> or <IMG> tag, just drag-and-drop a file to the desired insertion point.  You can even drag-and-drop sound and animation files into the editor.

Right-clicking on a document displays the document options menu.  This menu allows you to copy, rename or delete (via the recycle bin) an HTML document.  It also allows you to display a document's properties, including a list of all external links.  In addition, choosing 'Edit' when an image or multimedia file is selected will open that file in its associated application.

Note: The file types displayed in the document list can be modified through HomeSite's settings dialog.  If you regularly use extensions such as CGI or TXT, for example, this is where you would add them so that they appear in the document list.

More:

Document Properties


Document Properties

The document properties dialog, which is accessed by right-clicking on a document in the Directory Pane and selecting "properties," gives you easy access to a document's title, creation date and last modified date.  In addition, the properties dialog provides a list of all the external links that are contained in the selected document.


Settings and Preferences

General Preferences

File Locations

File Types

Editor

SpeedBar


General Preferences

The General Preferences page contains these items:

Choose the format for tags created when multimedia files are dropped into the editor.

Auto-fill HEIGHT and WIDTH for <IMG> tags

Force filenames to lowercase for <IMG> and <A> tags

Lowercase all inserted tags

Auto-save changes before viewing documents in external browser


File Locations

On this page you may specify the name of an HTML file to use as a template when creating new documents.  Anytime a new document is created, the contents of the selected file will be inserted into the editor.

This page is also where you specify the external browser(s) to use when the browse button on the main toolbar is pressed.  If more than one browser is specified, then selecting the browse button will display a menu containing all the specified browsers.


File Types

The File Types page also contains options allowing you to specify which file extensions denote HTML documents.  Files containing any of these extensions will appear in the directory pane's file list.

In addition, you may specify the default extension to use when saving HTML documents.


Editor

The Editor page is where you specify how you'd like tags to appear when Color Coding is turned on.   The font selected in the first frame is used for all text, but individual colors and styles (bold, italic, etc.) can be applied to different tags.  When color coding is set to minimal, all tags are colored using the 'Other Tags' settings.


SpeedBar

This page allows you to specify which toolbars to display with the HTML Speedbar.  If you're short on screen space, or if you find that you don't use some of the toolbars (most people, for example, will never use all five custom toolbars!), you can hide them here.


Editing

In HomeSite's editor, everything you type is color coded when you move off an edited line (provided color coding is turned on, off course).  This lets you easily pick out mistakes and formatting problems.  The editor contains a number of options which are easily accessed by right-clicking.

If a block of text is highlighted, the Selection submenu on this popup will be enabled, which contains powerful formatting features that allow you to convert the selection to a list or table or to strip tags from the selection.

HomeSite also supports block indenting, so you can click [image] or [image] to indent or un-indent entire blocks of text.

More:

Document Color Coding

Searching and Replacing


Document Color Coding

HomeSite supports color coding of HTML tags, which makes editing documents much easier than with simple text editors. Color coding may be changed by selecting 'Color Coding' from the 'Options' menu.

There are three levels of color coding:

None	Display all text in black, as in standard text editors such as Notepad.
Minimal	Apply color coding to all tags (i.e.: text between '<' and '>'), using the font defined for 'All Other  Tags.'
Full	Apply color coding to all tags, using different font styles and colors for specific tags.
Note: On slower machines, or when editing larger documents, it is recommended that you set color coding to 'None.'

The font styles used when color coding are completely customizable.  For example, if you prefer to show table-related tags in bold, or you want comments displayed in italics, you can easily change HomeSite's font settings.  Just go to the options dialog and change the font settings to suit your tastes.


Searching and Replacing

HomeSite contains powerful search and replace features that ease the maintenance headaches associated with web authoring.  Besides the simple find and replace functions (which are self-explanatory), HomeSite contains an extended replace feature that allows you to find and replace text in entire directories.

Unlike most replace operations, extended replace isn't limited to simple words or phrases - you can replace entire blocks of text, if desired.

IMPORTANT:  The extended replace function does not confirm each replacement - once you click 'Replace All' and confirm your action, you will not be warned before each replace operation!  For safety, it is recommended that you make backups of your files before using extended replace.


Options

Full Screen

Tag List

Special Characters


Full Screen

Full Screen mode expands the HTML editor and browser to fill the entire screen.  To switch back to normal size, hit the <Esc> key, or right-click in the editing window and uncheck the "Full Screen" menu option.


Using HomeSite - Options - Tag List
Tag List

The Tag List button displays a floating dialog containing a list of HTML tags and attributes.  To insert an item from the list into the current document, simply double-click on it.


Special Characters

In addition to the floating tag list, HomeSite also has a floating dialog containing the most common Special Characters (also known as Extended Characters).  To display this dialog, simply select "Special Characters" from the "Options" menu.


How do I?

If you don't find the answer to your question here, make sure to stop by the HomeSite FAQ page at http://www.dexnet.com/homesite/hs_faq.html.   This page will be updated regularly with answers to the most common questions.

•	I'm running at 640x480 and I can't see all the toolbuttons.  How do I change this?

•	I associated HomeSite with HTML files, but when I double-click on a file in Explorer, HomeSite opens with a blank document.  How do I fix this?

•	I edit a number of large documents, and it takes several seconds to open each one in HomeSite.  How do I speed this up?

•	I like to save my HTML documents with a non-standard file extension, but when I do this they no longer show up in HomeSite's file list.  How do I change this?

•	I've already used up all 15 of HomeSite's custom toolbuttons.  How do I create more?

•	I use an HTML syntax checker on my documents, and it generates a list of line numbers where errors occur.  How do I quickly move to these line numbers in HomeSite?


HomeSite Shareware - HomeSite Shareware
HomeSite Shareware

HomeSite v1.2 is freeware - you may use it without charge.  However, a much more powerful shareware version of HomeSite is also available.  The shareware version includes all the features of the freeware version plus:

•	Multiple-document editing

•	Built-in browser

•	Spell-checking

•	Project manager

•	Right-click tag editing

•	Web publishing

•	Open documents directly from the Web

•	Saved styles

For details, stop by the HomeSite homepage at http://www.dexnet.com/homesite.html


configure button.


configure button.


By default, HomeSite will insert a <BGSOUND> tag for sound files, and an <IMG DYNSRC> tag for animation files. These tags are, however, specific to Microsoft Internet Explorer.  You can change this behavior so that HomeSite uses Netscape's <EMBED> tag instead.


By default, when images are selected during the creation of an <IMG> tag, HomeSite will automatically fill in the HEIGHT and WIDTH of the image.


By default, HomeSite adds the names of selected files exactly as they appear.  Since many pages are hosted on case-sensitive UNIX systems, however, you may wish to always insert the filenames as lower case.


By default, HomeSite inserts tags in uppercase.  Check this option to change this.


By default, HomeSite will prompt to save changes before launching an external browser.  Check this to force HomeSite to automatically save changes.


The easiest way to free up screen space is to select "Toolbar Layout" from the "Options" menu, and choose a Horizontal toolbar layout.  In addition, you can hide the main toolbar, speedbar, color bar and status bar to free up even more space.  Each of the toolbars that make up the speedbar can also be hidden - just right click on any of the toolbars and select 'Show/Hide Toolbars.'  And to really make the most of space, switch to full screen mode.


For the association to work in Explorer, select "Options" from Explorer's  "View" menu, and switch to the "File Types" page.  Double-click on the HTML file type in the "List of Registered Files," and then double-click on the "Action" associated with HomeSite. All you need to do is add "%1" (including the quotes) to the end of this entry, i.e.: C:\HTML\HomeSite.exe "%1" And also make sure that "Use DDE" is unchecked.


To speed up loading of large documents, turn off HomeSite's color coding.


You can customize which files appear in the document list by going into settings and switching to the 'File Types' page.  Just click the 'Add' button at the bottom of the page to add a new extension.


Actually, HomeSite has 75 custom toolbuttons, but by default only the first 15 are visible.  To show the other 60, right-click on any toolbar and select "show/hide toolbars."  Then just choose which sets of custom toolbuttons you'd like to show.


Just click CTRL+G and enter the line number - HomeSite will position the cursor at the start of the line.  Make sure to turn word-wrap off before doing this, or else the line numbers won't match up with your syntax checker!