These suggestions are particularly for page names, but also apply to file names; also any objects, geometries or shades that you rename.
Legal characters
Use only letters, numbers and perhaps the underscore character (_). Avoid punctuation marks and spaces. There will be occasions when you can use something else and get away with it, but don't make it a habit!
Meaningful names
Always rename your pages from the default page1, page2 etc. Make a name that will mean something to your visitor and you. It is much easier to correctly link to a page called PageEditor than to one called page25.
Keep your page and other names as short as possible. If a page name runs off the end of the Page Name edit box at the top of your screen, it is too long! But also don't make it so short that it loses its meaning.
Camel Capitals. To add clarity, use a mix of upper and lower case characters. They are sometimes called Camel Capitals, because they run up and down like a camel's humps -- think of a camel with two humps! Using these avoids the need for the underscore which adds a character to the length of the name.
Examples
For example, MyPage, MyPage3 and YourPage are acceptable, but not Peter's Page. PetersPage is OK, or if you insist, Peters_Page.
For colors you will use throughout your project, use names like red, blue, yellow etc.
For more examples, see the page and other names in this project. We try to practise what we preach!
Keyboard shortcuts (hot keys)
Many operations have keyboard shortcuts, written in the menus as for example:
Ctrl+S -- hold the Ctrl key down, then press S on your keyboard.
Ctrl+Shift+Tab -- hold the Ctrl and Shift keys down together, then press Tab
Some common ones that are used in most Windows programs:
Ctrl+S saves a file
Ctrl+C copies a selection to the Windows Clipboard
Ctrl+V pastes in a selection from the Windows Clipboard
Ctrl+X deletes a selection but puts it into the Windows Clipboard
Ctrl+Z undoes the last action
Some useful other shortcuts used by this program:
Ctrl+Shift+V pastes plain text into the Text Editor with formatting removed
Ctrl+Tab moves to the next page of your project
Ctrl+Shift+Tab moves to the previous page
The color picker eyedropper
The Quick Editor, Text Editor and others have color picker eyedroppers to make it easy to copy any existing color from your screen. To use them:
Click on the color picker eyedropper and drag it to a color anywhere on your screen that you want to copy
While you drag, the background to the eyedropper icon will change to the color under the eyedropper
When you drop, any text you type, or the object selected, will take on the new color.
To change the color of some existing text in the Text Editor, block the text by dragging with your mouse, then click on the eyedropper. As you drag the eyedropper, the color of the text block will change to the color of the eyedropper background.
Download your backup project
See the Publish tutorial about using Auto Backup to make automatic backups of your project whenever you publish. If you have uploaded your .ims project file to your site as a backup, you need to be able to download it again. Not all hosts accept .ims files so it pays to check beforehand.
To download your project file from your site, type an address like this into your browser address bar: "http://www.MyDomain.com/MyProject.ims"
for "MyDomain.com", substitute the actual domain name of your site
for "MyProject", substitute the actual name of your project file
After you press "Go" near the address bar, or "Enter" from your keyboard, you will likely get a File Download dialog box asking whether you want to save or open the file. Proceed with the download, and open the file to confirm that the whole process has worked.
If you can access your site via separate FTP, you should also be able to download via that process.
Relative URLs
The usual way this program works is keep all published links relative to the root folder of your site, where the html files are. This means you can move the whole published project to another location, and it will still work.
Consider a photo referenced in an HTML page like this (absolute URL): http://www.YourDomain.com/image/MyPhoto.jpg
That page and photo will work on your site, but if you want to run the same project offline on your local hard disk, you won't see the image. The path to YourDomain is not available in that case -- and that is the only place it will work.
Consider a photo referenced in an html page like this (relative URL): image/MyPhoto.jpg
That will work anywhere. The link is saying "go to the nearby image folder and show MyPhoto.jpg". The only requirement is that the image folder and contents must accompany the html page wherever you place it.
To go to a file in a lower level folder, like the MyPhoto.jpg, use a Link URL like this:
Link URL: lowerFolder/index.htmlor
Link URL: ./lowerFolder/index.html
Those two URLs are equivalent (but the first one is more efficient by two bytes).
To go to a link in a higher level folder, one level up, use use a link URL like this:
Link URL: ../index.html
To go to a link in a different folder at the same level, use use a link URL like this:
Link URL: ../sameLevelFolder/index.html
The bottom line is, where you have a choice, use relative URLs. They are not only much shorter, but they are also more flexible.
