Using Assistants In NetSmith

Assistants are a very powerful tool for generating simple pages all the way up to full blown websites. They will provide you with a series of inserts asking you for various things about the page. Instead of the inserts saying something like "Insert Link", they will say something like "What is your email address?" or "What is your favorite website?" When an insert appears, the Assistant Navigator, which is a small window to guide you through the insert, will open. Inserts can also ask you to pick files, folders, colors, or just ask you a basic question. To create a new document from an assistant, go under the File menu and highlight the New... submenu. Select "Using Assistant" from this menu. A window will come up with a list of available assistants. Selecting an assistant will give you a description of what the assistant does. You must enter a page title and file name. The file name is the title of the window (like index.htm) and the title is the title of the webpage.

After you fill out all of the inserts, NetSmith will do some final parsing and create a new HTML file that will contain a webpage based on what you just entered into the inserts. You can edit this file further or use it as is.

You can also write your own assistants.