Operation Manual

32 Web Site Design and Construction
Let’s take a look at the site structure of our template document.
 Use File/Open... (or the Startup Wizard’s Open Saved Site
option) to bring up the H
ANDSON.WPP project you opened and
saved in Chapter 2. Display the Studio’s Site tab.
This template site starts with a simple, single-level structure: a Home
page plus four section pages (also at the top level) which haven’t yet
acquired any child pages. By the way, it’s up to the site designer as a
matter of convenience whether to create the section pages as actual
child pages of the Home page. In this case they are all on the same
level. However, no site can do without a Home page—so whatever
level the section pages are on, the Home page occupies a unique
position at the “root” of the site tree: the portal to the site as a whole.
In the last chapter you used the Page Locator to display specific pages.
The Site Structure tree works in a similar way, but with a subtle
difference.
 Single-click the entry for the About Us page in the tree. Notice its
entry turn dark blue and the entry title turn bold. Below the tree,
notice that the Filename listed is “page2.html.” Now click the
News page entry and you’ll see the file name update. Meanwhile,
nothing has changed in the workspace... the Home page is still on
display, with the “eye” icon (indicating the page on view) still
shown in its entry.
 Now double-click any page other than Home.
When using the Site Structure tree, the first click on a page entry
merely selects the page, which you might do for example if you were
about to delete it. Properties of the selected page appear below the tree.
To actually view the associated page or edit its design elements, you
need to double-click its entry. This allows you to alter your site
structure or set properties of any page independent of which page
you’re currently editing in the workspace.
The order in which pages appear in the Site Structure tree matters a lot
if you choose to include navigation aids that let users browse the site in
that same order. For example, the prominent navigation bar at the top
of this template site includes buttons that link to each of the initial
major pages. These navbar buttons mirror the Site Structure page
sequence. As we’ll see in the next section, the concept of navigation is
one that WebPlus strongly reinforces.
