MX

Widgets & placeholders – it’s all automatic!
In Web Designer MX Premium a widget is any object you can place on your web page that displays
some sort of dynamic content, that may also be interactive. That content may be sourced from an
external website (e.g., a news feed widget) or may be published with the website (e.g., a slideshow
widget cycling through a selection of photos). On the Web Designer Premium canvas, a widget is
represented by a static 'placeholder' image that defines the position and dimensions of the widget on the
page. And attached to that placeholder is the HTML code and files (e.g., Flash, Javascript, photos, etc.)
that make the widget function in the exported page.
A placeholder is normally an image that looks like a static snapshot of the widget itself, but it can be a
simple rectangle or any other object. The placeholder usually has the same dimensions as the widget, so
that you can sensibly position it with respect to other content on your page.
The good news is that placeholder images are normally rendered automatically for you by Web Designer
Premium.
Types of Widget
There are basically three types of widget, which differ in the way that you customize and configure them
in Web Designer MX Premium. A brief description of each type follows, but more detail about each type
is provided later in this chapter. However for all three types of widget you can simply double click on the
placeholder image to edit them.
Web Editable Widgets
When you customize these widgets, a web browser window opens up onto the remote website that
provides the widget and you configure and customize the widget using that web interface.
Locally Editable Widgets
These widgets are edited in Web Designer Premium itself, but typically in a separate multi-page
document that makes the whole set of content for the widget easily editable. For example, for a slide
show widget that cycles through 10 photos, all 10 photos would be easily visible and editable within the
widget's multi-page document that's used to edit it. Again, usually you'll insert these widgets from the
Designs Gallery
.
Manually Editable Widgets
These are widgets that you add manually by either pasting the HTML code for the widget directly into
Web Designer Premium or by using the "Utilities" > "Web Properties" > "Placeholder
" tab to insert the code. Or you create them by importing a file such as an animation file or movie file onto
your page.
No other interface is provided by Web Designer Premium for editing the widget, other than the
Placeholder
tab that allows you to change the file or code that defines the widget.
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