Text Placeholders

Placeholders may be used anywhere in the text where the value of a descriptor should appear, even in other page or image descriptors. Samples of available descriptors include the title of the page, the caption of a picture or the name of the web master. By using placeholders, the text will always reflect the most current descriptor values.

A list of valid system and page descriptors can be found in the appendix. Image specific descriptors can be freely assigned by the user.

Placeholders are often used in Layouts and Layout Templates, when setting up image views. They allow common text blocks, such as a page header or picture caption to automatically adapt to the respective image.

Inserting a Placeholder

Move the text cursor to the location in the text where the placeholder should appear. Click the right mouse button and select Insert Field from the text editor context menu.

For image descriptors, simply bracket the descriptor name with double percent signs, and use it anywhere in a text block:

If a placeholder is wider than the text column where it is used, it will wrap into a new line. Text attributes (such as color or font settings) can only be applied to the entire placeholder, e.g., it is not possible to underline or boldface only a portion of it.

Resolving a Placeholder

Placeholders will be resolved, when the individual page is rendered to HTML code. If a descriptor is not unique on a page, then the first occurrence is used. When evaluating image descriptors, StudioLine ignores those images that are not dependent on the image prototype, such as the navigation buttons, banners and other design elements of the layout. The practical use of image descriptors is on image views, where image descriptors are used to dynamically provide the page content.

On pages that contain multiple images, it is possible to explicitly associate the descriptor values of a specific image with a text object. A practical application would be a standard text block with picture title and credits that appears next to each of several pictures on a page.