Page Tips and Techniques

Importing, exporting, and moving

You can cut or copy text from any word processor that supports Rich Text Format (RTF), and either paste it into a CuteSITE Builder page, or move it into the page by dragging. You can then choose Edit > Cut, Edit > Copy, and Edit > Paste, as well as their keyboard and icon accelerators, to move text from page to page.

You can cut or copy text from CuteSITE Builder to the Windows clipboard for use in other applications. You can also drag files (from Windows Explorer) or URLs (from 4.X browsers) into CuteSITE Builder pages.

Imported formatting and styles

If Edit > Paste or Edit > Paste Special appear grayed on the menu, it means that there is no content on the clipboard, or that the information on the clipboard is in a format that CuteSITE Builder cannot import using these commands.

One format CuteSITE Builder can import is Microsoft's "rich text format" (.RTF). Just as in CuteSITE Builder text format, .RTF format allows named styles to be associated with paragraphs of text. Whether you use Paste or Paste Special when importing RTF text depends on how you want CuteSITE Builder to translate these named styles.

Edit > Paste Special lets you choose from two options:

n   Preserve the exact appearance of text (RTF only) does not carry over the style names. Instead, it uses local formatting (overrides to each page area's default style) to make sure that text appears exactly as it did in its previous location. This option is available only using Paste Special.

n   Apply CuteSITE Builder styles that match document style names (RTF only) takes note of the style names used in the text, and matches them with CuteSITE Builder styles. Any names that match will have the corresponding CuteSITE Builder styles applied; the others are discarded. This choice is recommended if you plan to take full advantage of the styles included with CuteSITE Builder page layouts and Web designs. This is the regular functionality of Paste; it can be chosen as an option when you choose Paste Special.

With Word 97, Microsoft Word introduced an AutoFormat feature called Define styles based on your formatting. When this feature is enabled, Word sometimes defines new or redefines unused styles based on manual formating you apply to a paragraph, and then applies those styles. As a result, you can potentially have Word97 file that use named styles extensively, even if you never (manually) either defined or applied styles yourself. If your file have gained numerous styles in this way, neither option may meet your needs, although preserve exact appearance might come closer.

You can also drag and drop text and other content between another application and CuteSITE Builder. If the format used for the transfer is RTF, this is the equivalent of choosing Edit > Paste.

Naming pages quickly

Although you can quickly name a page by typing in its title field or using the Page Properties dialog box, there are several ways to name it even more quickly:

n   You can display the outline, click each page title, and type a new name.

n   You can create a list of links to a sequence of pages, using the title and summary fields. Click on the resulting list to edit titles and summaries for all of the pages in the sequence.

Copying the look of a page

CuteSITE Builder lets you customize the look of each page by changing its colors, margins, display of navigation links, background pictures, and arrangement of borders. Once you define a page you like, you can easily reuse its look. The various ways you can do this differ according to how they treat the page's content:

n   Use your model page to create a page layout, which you can then apply to other pages. In this case, any content in your model page becomes non-editable static text that appears on every page to which you apply the page layout.

n   Clone your model page; in other words, make an identical copy. In this case the content in both pages remains just as it was. You can select and copy multiple pages at once.

n   Divide the model page. In this case, two pages result, both with the same identical look, but with the content divided between them at the place where you requested the break. You can also divide a page and create two different types of links to the new page that results.

To affect the look of an entire CuteSITE Builder file, apply or create Web designs.

Adding background pictures or edge effects

You can add background pictures to either the page body or border through the Properties box. You can also change the background color for the page body or borders, or add edge effects to borders, in the Properties box.

Creating overlapping pictures in pages

The current release of CuteSITE Builder overlaps pictures under only one condition: when one of the pictures is a background picture and the other is inserted in text. For sophisticated overlapping, mix the pictures in another graphics program before inserting them.

You can overlap pictures you insert in the map. Choose Map > Priority to change the priority of overlapping pictures in the map.

Copying pages between files

You can drag and drop pages between CuteSITE Builder files. To make this easy, open two instances of CuteSITE Builder at once. When focus is in the map, you can also choose Edit > Cut, Edit > Copy, and Edit > Paste, as well as their keyboard commands and icons, to move map elements between CuteSITE Builder files. (When focus is in the page area, you can do the same with text.)

Note that if you copy a page whose page layout name corresponds to a page layout name in the new files, the page layout definition in the new files takes precedence over the page layout definition in the original files. This means that the page may look differently in the new files. To ensure that the page looks the same, choose Format > Apply Page Layout and apply the [no page layout] option to the page before copying it.