Introduction
The first and most important thing to know about Arachnophilia is that
it can be changed to suit your needs.
Arachnophilia's menus and toolbars are nearly all created from macros — macros you can change, changes that Arachnophilia remembers.
This design choice results from the general usefulness of a macro architecture, and more important because it simply is not possible to include enough hardwired tags and features to satisfy even a small minority of serious Web developers. The macro architecture supports the saving and loading of specific sets of macros, so macro sets that support specific kinds of work can be loaded, or they can all reside in the default macro file and be switched on and off at a keystroke.
But that is really a digression — to read in-depth about the macro system, read
The Arachnophilia Macro Architecture. For now, we can get started learning how to manipulate Arachnophilia's many HTML tag editing features.
Building a Web Page
Choose
File ... New ... HTML file.
Type a title. You will then see, more or less, this:
1 <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 3.2//en">
2
3 <!-- Created on Mar 4, 2002 1:23:46 PM -->
4
5 <html>
6 <head>
7 <title>
8 My Page!
9 </title>
10 <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Arachnophilia 5.0">
11 <meta name="FORMATTER" content="Arachnophilia 5.0">
12 </head>
13
14 <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080" alink="#ff0000">
15
16 |
17
18 </body>
19 </html>
20
Notice the editing cursor in particular ("
|
"). A lot of Arachnophilia'a behavior vis-a-vis HTML tags revolves around the cursor, text selection, and the like.
The most basic tag activity is to select a block of text and apply a tag to it. Like this — Type a sentence:
1 <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 3.2//en">
2
3 <!-- Created on Mar 4, 2002 1:23:46 PM -->
4
5 <html>
6 <head>
7 <title>
8 My Page!
9 </title>
10 <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Arachnophilia 5.0">
11 <meta name="FORMATTER" content="Arachnophilia 5.0">
12 </head>
13
14 <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080" alink="#ff0000">
15
16 A Sentence.|
17
18 </body>
19 </html>
20
Now drag the mouse across the sentence, so it looks like this:
1 <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 3.2//en">
2
3 <!-- Created on Mar 4, 2002 1:23:46 PM -->
4
5 <html>
6 <head>
7 <title>
8 My Page!
9 </title>
10 <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Arachnophilia 5.0">
11 <meta name="FORMATTER" content="Arachnophilia 5.0">
12 </head>
13
14 <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080" alink="#ff0000">
15
16 A Sentence.|
17
18 </body>
19 </html>
20
This is called "text selection." Now press the toolbar button marked like this:
. You will see:
1 <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 3.2//en">
2
3 <!-- Created on Mar 4, 2002 1:23:46 PM -->
4
5 <html>
6 <head>
7 <title>
8 My Page!
9 </title>
10 <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Arachnophilia 5.0">
11 <meta name="FORMATTER" content="Arachnophilia 5.0">
12 </head>
13
14 <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080" alink="#ff0000">
15
16 <b>A Sentence.|</b>
17
18 </body>
19 </html>
20
The selected text will now appear in
boldface
when viewed in a browser.
The Details
Remember this series of actions
— it is how tags are applied to text blocks in Arachnophilia:
- Select the desired text.
- Activate the desired macro (by way of a toolbar button, a menu item, or a keystroke).
Important:
If you don't like how the action came out, simply
undo it:
- Press this toolbar button:
- Or, press Ctrl-Z
Now let's look at how these editing macros work. You want to become comfortable with creating and editing Arachnophilia macros as soon as possible, so it is by no means too soon to be looking at this topic.
Point the mouse cursor at the toolbar button marked
, right-click the mouse, and choose "Edit." The macro editing window will appear (with a file tab of its own, so you can switch back to your document at any time). The "Bold" macro content is very simply this:
<b>|</b>
The vertical bar character "|" means "Put any selected text here."
This is the simple way Arachnophilia's macros enclose a text block with tags.
Remember this use of the vertical bar symbol — it is the key to writing simple, effective macros.
There are a large number of such HTML tag macros in the macro section "HTML Tag toolbars" (on the left-hand panel of the main Arachnophilia display). To make one or more of these toolbars appear, simply click it with the mouse, then press "x" on the keyboard or use the right-click context menu. When developing Web pages, you can use this method to choose which toolbars to put on display as you work.
And — most important — if you don't see a tag you need,
just add it.
Point the mouse at an appropriate toolbar folder, press the right mouse button, and choose "New." Type in the tag you need, give it a memorable name, and click "Accept."
Share This Page