HTML Utilities

The 16 predefined colors

In the popup menu in the dialog window shown above are all color names you have defined. Below is the hexadecimal number corresponding to the color selected in the menu.

Tip: Use the up and down arrows to navigate in the menu.

New:
To define a new color with a color picker.

Change:
To change a color with a color picker.

Remove:
To remove the color selected in the menu.

View:
To view a color in a color picker. (Clicking OK and Cancel in this picker have the same effect. No changes are saved.)

New by number:
To define a new color by specifying its hexadecimal number #RRGGBB in the dialog window shown below.

Change number:
To change a color by changing its hexadecimal number #RRGGBB.

• first create a file with the text which you want to use on many of your pages -- for example, directory buttons, your address etc.
• then define the file to be a footer.

When you later use "New document" you can select this file from a menu, and its content will be put inside the BODY element.

These files can of course contain any kind of text but I call them footers because my basic idea is that they should contain things you put at the bottom of every page.

In the popup menu in the dialog window shown below are the file names of the footers you have defined. Below is the full path corresponding to the file selected in the menu.

New:
Presents you with a file dialog to pick a file with a footer. This does not insert any text in your document. It only defines a file to be a footer.

Remove:
Removes the footer selected in the menu. Note: this does not delete the file. It is just no longer a footer.

Insert:
Inserts the footer selected in the menu in the document.

The reformatting is basically done such that the document would look as if you have typed it from top to bottom without changing anything. The following is done:

• Everything between SCRIPT, STYLE, and PRE tags as well as everything inside comments is left untouched.
• Line breaks are never inserted inside attribute values. If there is an attribute ATTR="blah blah", then "blah blah" is never broken into two lines. This is in particular to prevent that the event handlers are broken into two lines.
• Provided these constraints Alpha inserts line breaks and blank lines at appropriate places and indents the code where it should be indented, and otherwise tries to make the lines approximately equally long.

Unfortunately reformatting of the code is rather complex and therefore not lightning fast.

Alpha needs a helper application to do the uploading. Fetch, Anarchie, and NetFinder are the three ftp applications Alpha can talk to. Unfortunately, NetFinder doesn't send any error message back to Alpha if something goes wrong with the upload, for example that the password is wrong or the server isn't responding. Therefore, if you're using NetFinder Alpha always assumes that the upload was done without problems.

If Alpha doesn't know your password you are asked for it. (The textbox is made so narrow that it is impossible to see what you type.)

• First you are asked to select the folder which contains the files you want to move.
• Then you are asked to select the files you want to move from this folder.
• And then you are asked to select the destination folder.

Alpha then moves the files and then asks you if you want to update all links (this is the whole point of this function, so a 'yes' should be appropriate, but it gives you a chance to abort the update if you have moved the wrong files). Depending on if you have moved files in a home page folder or an include folder, the following will happen.

• If you have moved files in a home page folder the links in all HTML and CSS files (as determined by the suffix mapping) pointing to the moved files will be updated. Thereafter all links in the moved files are updated.
• If you have moved files in an include folder all include tags in the HTML files in the home page folder pointing to the moved files are updated.

Updating links may take a little while if you have very many files but should in most cases be a lot faster than to make the changes manually.

Limitations:

• Alpha only searches for strings like HREF="file" without checking that they are inside a tag. This means that Alpha could find links, which actually are not links. This should only be a problem if your making pages about HTML.
• You can only move files between subfolders in one home page folder, not between the different home page folders.
• Only files in the home page folder where you move files are updated, not the files in any other home page folder.

<!-- #LASTMODIFIED TEXT="some text" FORM="date format" -->
some text and date
<!-- /#LASTMODIFIED -->

Whenever the document is saved the date is changed. Don't write anything between the comment tags. It will be removed when the document is saved.

Character translation is done automatically of the text and date.

In the dialog window shown above you can specify:

• the text before the date. (Default: Last modified)
• the date format, long, abbreviated or short. On an American system these are:
  Saturday, October 19, 1996 9:10 PM
  Sat, Oct 19, 1996 9:10 PM
  10/19/96 9:10 PM
• if the weekday should be included in the date. (Does not apply to the short format.)
• if the time should be included in the date.

If you want to change how the date is displayed, just use 'Last modified' again and the tags will be replaced. It is not possible to have more than one pair of tags in a document.

Note! The short time format can be confusing. For example 4/5/98 means 4 May 1998 in some parts of the world and April 4, 1998 in other parts.

The index can be done using either PRE or an UL list. When Alpha makes the index it goes through the window and looks for all headers. If there is an anchor <A NAME="..."> inside a header that anchor is used when building the index, otherwise an anchor is inserted inside the header. Alpha then inserts

<!-- #DOCINDEX TYPE="PRE,3" -->
the index
<!-- /#DOCINDEX -->

The index consists of a list with links to the various headers.