Alchemy Help:
Web Editor window

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The Alchemy Web Editor Window

The Web Editor is a programmer's-style editor rather than a WYSIWYG editor. We wanted to provide you with a tool that would be both flexible and easy to use, and that you could use to edit CGI-BIN sources as well as HTML content. While WYSYWIG editors are easy to use at first, they eventually become restrictive and must be upgraded each time a new HTML extension is introduced, and they don't allow you full access to all of the features of the HTML language. In short, you have to do things their way.

The Alchemy Web Editor lets you do things your way. Your HTML code is displayed in its native format, and you can use whatever tags and extensions you want, however you want. We provide keyboard shortcuts for common operations like formatting text and inserting tags, and there are dialog boxes for inserting complex tags such as images and tables.

Each of the fields in a dialog corresponds to an option within an HTML tag. For example, an image tag has the options SRC, WIDTH, HEIGHT, ALIGN, etc. When you use the Insert image dialog to insert an image, the fields SRC, WIDTH, HEIGHT, ALIGN, etc. appear within the dialog. When you fill in these fields and press the Ok button, the field values will be converted to OPTION="VALUE" pairs within the resulting HTML IMG tag which is inserted into your text.

The Web Editor is built around the concept of an edit buffer. There is a single editor window which contains a set of buffers, and the current buffer is displayed in the window. Each time you open a new document in the editor, a new buffer is added to the list and becomes the current buffer. You can cycle backwards or forwards through the list by using the keyboard, menu or toolbar, or pick buffers from a pop-up list. There is always at least one buffer in the buffer list.

What are all those buttons for?

The Web Editor contains a tool palette which is attached to the left-hand side of the window. You can access any of the items on the tool palette by clicking on it with the mouse, by selecting its corresponding menu item from either the Insert or the Format pull-down menu, or in many cases by typing a shortcut key.

Tool
Box 		Menu Keyboard Description
Insert/Template/Document body... Inserts a BODY tag
Insert/Template/Document template Inserts a new document template. You can use the File/Save current buffer as document template menu item to define your own template.
Insert/Template/Insertion block Shift+F1 Inserts a block of text that you supply using the File/Save current buffer as insertion block menu item.
Insert/Reference/Local reference (file)... Shift+F2 Inserts an anchor which refers to a local file name:
HREF="myfile.htm"
Insert/Reference/Network reference (URL)... Shift+F3 Inserts an anchor which refers to a URL:
HREF="http://www.blahblah.com"
Insert/Reference/Internal reference... Shift+F4 Inserts an anchor which refers to an internal search target:
HREF="#MyTarget"
Insert/Reference/Search target... Shift+F5 Inserts a search target to which you can refer with an internal reference:
NAME="MyTarget"
Insert/Image... Shift+F6 Inserts an inline image file picked from the Open File... dialog
Insert/Embeded document Inserts an embedded file picked from the Open File... dialog
Insert/Ordered list Shift+F11 Inserts an ordered list template
Insert/Unordered list Shift+F12 Inserts an unordered list template
Insert/Definition list Inserts a definition list template
Insert/Table... Shift+F7 Inserts a table template
Insert/Special character... Shift+F8 Inserts a special character picked from a dialog
Insert/HTML tag... Shift+F9 Inserts an HTML tag picked from a dialog
Insert/Applet... Inserts an APPLET tag
Insert/Date stamp Shift+F10 Inserts the current date, as in "April 1, 1996"
Insert/Horizontal rule Shift+Enter Inserts an HR tag
Insert/Paragraph break Alt+Enter Inserts a paragraph tag
Insert/Line break Ctrl+Enter Inserts a line tag
Format/Header style/Header style 1 Alt+F1 Surrounds the selected text with H1 - /H1 tags
Format/Header style/Header style 2 Alt+F2 Surrounds the selected text with H2 - /H2 tags
Format/Header style/Header style 3 Alt+F3 Surrounds the selected text with H3 - /H3 tags
Format/Header style/Header style 4 Alt+F4 Surrounds the selected text with H4 - /H4 tags
Format/Header style/Header style 5 Alt+F5 Surrounds the selected text with H5 - /H5 tags
Format/Header style/Header style 6 Alt+F6 Surrounds the selected text with H6 - /H6 tags
Format/Text style/Strong Alt+F7 Surrounds the selected text with STRONG - /STRONG tags
Format/Text style/Emphasized Alt+F8 Surrounds the selected text with I - /I tags
Format/Text style/Underline Alt+F9 Surrounds the selected text with U - /U tags
Format/Text style/Font Alt+F10 Surrounds the selected text with FONT - /FONT tags
Format/Text style/Character... Alt+F11 Formats the selected text using options you select from the Character options dialog
Format/Alignment/Center Alt+F12 Surrounds the selected text with CENTER - /CENTER tags
Format/Alignment/Preformatted Surrounds the selected text with PRE - /PRE tags
Format/Remove HTML tags Removes all HTML tags from the selected text
Insert/Form/Single-line text box Inserts a single-line text entry box form control
Insert/Form/Multi-line text box at the current cursor location Inserts a scrolling multi-line text entry form control
Insert/Form/Check box Inserts a check-box form control
Insert/Form/Radio button Inserts a radio button form control
Insert/Form/Drop-down menu Inserts a drop-down menu form control
Insert/Form/Push button Inserts a push button form control
Insert/Form/Hidden field Inserts a hidden field form control

What's on the menu?

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