Where do I find more Site Styles?
Go to the Online view in NetObjects Fusion. From the main page, choose the link in the following sentence: “For articles, advice, and tricks for building a business Web site, click here.”

Once the page loads, look for the Goodies link and click on it. Now, scroll down until you see the Site Styles heading. You’ll find a bunch there.

How do I share my site with a colleague on my network, move it to a new computer, or send a copy to someone so they can work on it?
The easiest, and really the only way to do this, is to create a template and save it to a new directory, zip it up, then copy that zipped directory to the new PC or to whomever you are sharing the site with. Here’s what you do)

1) On your Local machine, create a new directory; this is where you will save your template.

2) Go to Assets view, and under the Assets menu, choose Verify All Assets. This will allow you to make sure everything is in your site that should be, and allow you to delete stuff that isn’t. Kind of like a house cleaning for your site.

3) n NetObjects Fusion, in Site View, choose, from the File menu, Export as Template. Save the template to the directory you just created.

4) Now, zip up that directory and use what means you have available to transfer that zipped file — email, CD-ROM, network drive, you name it, just as long as you can get it there. That zipped directory contains your whole site. You must make sure you ZIP up all the contents of the directory.

5) When you have the file on the machine you want, simply unzip the file using the same directory structure and you are almost good to go.

Note that the template you saved no longer has a .NOD extension, but an .NFT extension. This only denotes that it is a template file. I usually just rename it with a .NOD extension and continue on.

Now, when you are ready to move the site back to its original home, repeat the process again.

You may be asking, “Why can’t I just move the directory where the original site is?” Well, you could, but if you happen to be moving the site to a machine with a different directory structure, you will likely find that NetObjects Fusion can’t find your assets. This can be a big pain; so really, the template method is the best way to go.

Another good reason to export as a template is for archiving purposes. Say, for example, you are about to make a major change to a site (adding pages for instance), what I do is export the site as a template and name is something obvious, say “My_Site_January_1_2001.NOD.” This will be the site I make the changes in, and with the old site, I just zip up its directory and Archive it for later. Each time I make a noticeable change, I do this and name the site slightly different, say, for example, the next one could be “My_Site_February_1_2001.NOD.”

How do I create a Pop-Up window on my site?
There are a few ways to do this.

Or try the component method. Both Apollon and Coolmaps have available components that will make the creation of Pop-Up windows quick and easy.

Or, conversely, most good graphics programs will create thumbnail pages, and in some, they will even create the HTML for you — HTML that you can bring into NetObjects Fusion.

Or, if you only have a few of them, create the small versions in your image program and place them all on one page, then, on separate pages, place the larger images. I’d recommend noting the size of the larger images next to the thumbnails so users know what size of a file they have to wait for.

I’d also recommend NOT using the “Stretch” option in NetObjects Fusion to resize a larger picture down to a smaller one. This option is fine for minute changes, but the thing to remember is that this option only changes the viewable size of the image, not the file size, so that 1MB 8x10” picture that you resized in NetObjetcts Fusion to 1x2” is still 1MB.

Though the steps are ImageStyler, you can likely tweak them to work with your graphics applications HTML output.

Why can’t I get my page to resize to the size of any resolution browser window in NetObjects Fusion?
I guess the first thing to say is that NetObjects Fusion wasn’t designed that way. NetObjects Fusion is much like a desktop publishing program in that the idea is that where you place things is where they stay — browser issues and user browser settings aside.

I just copied and pasted text in from Microsoft Word and now there is all this extra code in the source file; it doesn’t look good or even load in Netscape, and I didn’t put the code there. What’s up?
When you copy and paste directly from Word, you will get a whole bunch of extraneous XML code courtesy of Microsoft. While this doesn’t pose a problem for current Internet Explorer versions, it could choke earlier versions of IE and will also either slow Netscape down to a crawl or not allow Netscape to render the page. And to top it off, your HTML file size will grow by leaps and bounds. So, to avoid this problem there are two options:

1) Copy and paste as normal, but right after you copy and paste, select the layout area of your page (or the Masterborder area if you copy and pasted the Word text there) and choose, from the Layout/Masterborder Properties palette the HTML button.

When the HTML dialog box comes up, check the lower windows of the first two tabs. If there is any code in there, and you didn’t place it there, delete it. Once the contents of both tabs are deleted, click OK and you are good to go.

2) The second method is to launch Notepad and copy and paste all your Word content to Notepad first. Then, copy and paste from Notepad into NetObjects Fusion. This will strip out any extra coding.

The text on my page won’t format properly, even though I have edited the text styles. Why?
There is a chance that some formatting from the original source came in when you brought it into NetObjects Fusion. If you’ve tried the above and are still having problems, try selecting all the text in the text box and clicking the “Clear” button on the text properties dialog box. That will return your text back to the “Normal” state.

One thing to note, this method prevents the user from resizing the text to suit their needs – something to consider if you are building a site for folks who’s vision isn’t the best. Make sure, as Anton notes, that your font sizes aren’t too small.

If you need to have your fonts resizable, try using the following settings:

1) Under the Tools menu, choose Site Settings.

2) Click the Change button on the General tab

3) Set your Target Browsers and HTML Generation Settings to the following:

Browser Compatibility – Netscape/IE 2 and 3 (This will work on v4 and higher browsers as well, but just goes for the lowest version)

HTML Generation — Dynamic Page Layout

Text Formatting — HTML

Note: The above settings won’t work if you use Actions.

How can I get at the HTML to edit it as I build my site?
Well, I guess first off, NetObjects Fusion is an HTML generator, not an editor, so the HTML doesn’t really exist until you publish and generate the site.

Honestly, I rarely if ever have had the need to get in and much with the code. Been there, done that, don’t want to do it again if I don’t have to.

Now, there have been instances where I’ve need to add code, and that is actually rather easy to do. There are a few ways to go about adding code to Fusion.

HTML Source View. Found in Page view, click the HTML Source View tab and you’ll see a whole lot of code surrounded by gray boxes. This is the “code to be generated later.” You can’t edit this, but also notice all the white areas. This is where you can add code. I tend to use HTML Source View when adding code, say like scripts or counter code that isn’t seen. I just find it’s a little harder to place the code where you want using this method.

Object HTML. Object HTML is placed within an existing NetObjects Fusion object. This can include text boxes, graphics, the layout region, Masterborders, etc.

To access Object HTML, right click on a selected object or by clicking in a region (Masterborder/Layout) and selecting Object HTML. Then, enter or paste in your code or script and you are done!

A common need is to paste in code for a Hit Counter or another companies affiliate program. A good strategy here is to think in “containers”. You have this code you'd like to insert, you need a shell to hold it so it doesn't disrupt the rest of your layout.

1) Drag out a text box, or a 1 row x 1 column table to act as your shell.

2) Use the guides or the dimension indicators in the status bar to help size it.

3) Select it and right click.

4) Choose Object HTML > After Tag. Paste in your code. Done!

The Layout and Masterborder HTML options can be especially useful. Say you'd like to center the pages of your site. Rather than enter <center> into the Beginning of Body Layout HTML of every page, enter it into the Beginning of Body Masterborder HTML once and it will be applied to all pages using that Masterborder.

External HTML. The External HTML tool can be found on the Advanced Toolbar. It allows you to maintain a page (or snippet of code) in another tool, but manage it within the NetObjects Fusion environment.

Select the External HTML tool and drag out the area you'd like the external code to be placed. You have the option of asking NetObjects Fusion to manage any assets referenced in the code. This is neat, as it saves you the hassle of tracking and moving assets yourself!

More information on the above can be found in the NetObjects Fusion User Guide.

Where can I go to find out more tips and tricks about NetObjects Fusion?
Well, for a start, try these: