You can change the appearance and composition of the Component Palette, so that it fits your needs for the kinds of projects you are creating. You can, for example, change the arrangement of tabs and components. You can also extend the Palette, adding components that you develop yourself, or that you import from other developers or other projects. (See "Customizing the Component Palette.")

You can create page templates, in order to create a "look and feel" for your projects. (See "Creating Page Templates.")

You can set environmental preferences to specify which editors to use for different kinds of files, the location of the Palette archive, your deployment options (such as the default deployment server), and which properties are shown in the Inspector. (See "Setting Environmental Preferences.")

Visual JavaScript is integrated with Composer plug-ins, and any plug-ins you have loaded are automatically available through the Tools menu. (See "Using Composer Plug-ins.")

Customizing the Component Palette

• Rearrange the tab positions and contents.
• Add new, blank tabs or load and unload tabs from the Palette archive.
• Install new components into the Palette archive and onto the current tab from source files, or import previously exported tabs with their components.
• Export sets of components as transportable packages.

Changing the Order of Tabs

Moving and Copying Components

To make a copy of a component, right-click the component and choose Copy from the context menu. To paste the copy to the same tab or another tab, right-click the background of the target tab and choose Paste from the context menu. The copy is inserted at the end of the tab. To paste the copy into a particular location on the tab near another component, right-click on the left or right half of that component and choose Paste from the context menu. The copy is pasted to the left or right of that component, depending on where you clicked.

Adding New Tabs to the Palette

Changes to the Palette are automatically saved, and the Palette state is retained between Visual JavaScript sessions.

Locating Palette Tab Files

<install dir>/palettes/defaultuser

To change the location of the Palette archive directory, choose Preferences from the Edit menu, click the Palette tab, and enter the Palette directory location. If you are using Visual JavaScript in a team development environment, you can have a separate directory for each user's Palette.

Adding Blank Tabs

The default name for the first new Palette tab is "Unnamed1". To change the tab name, double-click the tab, edit the name, and press Enter. Press Esc to cancel the edit action.

Removing Tabs

Figure 8.1    Removing the "Test" tab from the Palette

1. Select the Palette page you want to unload from the "Do not unload" list.

2. Click the right-arrow to move the selected tab to the "Unload" list. You can also double-click a tab in the list to move it to the other list.

3. Click OK. The specified tab is removed from the Palette window.

NOTE: Unloading a Palette tab does not delete its files form your Palette archive, it just removes the tab form the displayed Palette. §

1. Select the Palette tab you want to load from the "Do not load" list.

2. Click the right-arrow to move the selected tab to the "Load" list.

3. Click OK. The specified tab is added to the Palette.

NOTE: When all tabs in the archive are already loaded, the Load menu items are disabled. §

You can copy customized components from the Page Editor to the Palette, from which you can easily instantiate the customized version to other pages. This is one way of creating a style for your application.

Installing and Importing New Components

• Choose Install JAR File, Install JavaScript Component, or Install CORBA Object from the Component Palette submenu in the Edit menu.
• Right-click on the background of a Palette tab and choose JAR File, JavaScript Component, or CORBA Object from the Install submenu of the context menu.

When you install a source file, the proper Palette files are created and added to the Palette archive. In addition, any components that are defined in the source file are added to the current tab in the Component Palette.

To import a previously exported tab file, choose Import from the Component Palette submenu of the Edit menu, or right-click the background of the Palette and choose Import from the context menu. A file browser appears allowing you to select the .par file to be imported. In the file browser, specify the package file you want to import and click Open. The Palette files are created and installed in your Palette archive, and the tabs that are defined in the file (with their components) are added to your Palette.

NOTE: For information about creating your own components, see the Netscape Component Developer's Guide. §

When you have customized a component in the Page Editor and Inspector, you can drag it from the Page Editor back to the Palette to add a copy of it to the Palette. The resulting object is a version of the original component that contains your customizations.

Select the component and switch to the Structure or Source view to see the corresponding HTML code. This code is re-created when you place the customized component on a new page.

You can also select any block of HTML in the Structure view and drag it to the Palette, from which you can easily copy it to a new page. The block of HTML is treated as a component. Among the built-in components, the HTML Table is an example of this kind of "Palette component."

When you drag a component from the Page Editor to the Component Palette, Visual JavaScript displays the Adding Component to Palette dialog box, shown in Figure 8.2. Use this dialog box to specify how the component should be displayed in the Palette. Specify the name to be displayed for the new component, the description that appears when you move the cursor over the component (called the tool tip), and an icon to represent the new component.

Figure 8.2    The Adding Component to Palette dialog box

To export one or more tabs, choose Export from the Edit Component Palette submenu of the Edit menu. To export a single tab, right-click on the background of that tab and choose Export from the context menu. A file browser appears allowing you to specify a name and location for the transportable package file, which has a .par extension.

NOTE: For information about creating your own components, see the Netscape Component Developer's Guide. §

Follow these steps to create a page template:

1. Create a page with the desired contents. You can, for example, choose colors, font styles, and images.

2. Choose Save Page As from the File menu.

3. Save the page in the <install dir>/Templates directory, as <pagename>.html.

4. Optionally, create a <pagename>.txt file in the same directory. The first line of this file is used as an extended display name for the page file in the Project Window. The second line, if any, is used as a tool tip that appears when the user moves the cursor over the page file in the Project Window.

5. Optionally, create <pagename>.gif file in the <install dir>/Images directory, to be used as the icon for the page template in the Create a New Page dialog box. The icon image must be 16x16 pixels. You can, for example, edit a copy of the Blank Page icon (<install dir>/Images/BlankPage.gif) and save it as <pagename>.gif.

Figure 8.3    The Preferences dialog box

HTML browser. A browser for previewing and running your application, such as Netscape Navigator, which is the default value.

HTML layout editor. A visual editor for HTML files, such as Composer, which is the default value.

HTML source editor. A text editor for HTML files, such as emacs or Wordpad.

JavaScript source editor. An editor for JavaScript source files listed under the JavaScript Files in the Project window.

Image editor. An editor for image files listed under the Images folder in the Project window.

Browser for debugging. A browser for debugging your application. (Since you can only use the JavaScript debugger with Communicator 4.0, you might need to distinguish this from the runtime browser.)

JSB editor. An editor for .jsb files listed under the Data Files folder in the Project window.

Palette and Application Preferences

When you have selected the Application tab of the Preferences dialog box, you can set the following preferences:

• Select "Show expert properties" if you want the Inspector to display internal as well as user-level properties. Note that internal properties are set by the system and cannot be edited. This setting is off by default.
• Select "Enable non-Western character encoding" if you want to view or build pages that use any character set other than ISO 8859-1, which is the default character set. This setting is off by default.
Note that the character set to be used by a page is controlled by the Content Type property of the page object. See "Inspecting Other Objects" for more information.

When you deploy a project, the deployment values of the project are used as default values in the Deploy to Server dialog box. The project values override the preferences. See "Deploying and Compiling Applications" for more information.

You can set these deployment preferences:

Compile and install project on Enterprise Server 3.0. Select this if you are using Enterprise Server 3.0, or later versions, and wish to take advantage of the remote compilation feature.

Enterprise server name. Enter the name of the deployment server machine.

Default deployment directory. Choose whether to use HTTP or file copy to transfer files to the deployment machine.

• If you choose HTTP, enter the URL for the deployment location. (This is the same in both text fields.)
• If you choose file copy, enter the path to the deployment location from your development machine. If you are deploying to a remote machine, enter the path to the deployment location from the server machine in the Path on Enterprise Server field. (This is often the same path except for the device.)

NOTE: There are some limitations on the extent to which Visual JavaScript supports Composer plug-ins. Refer to the Netscape Component Developer's Guidefor details. §

Communicator install dir/program/plugins

Last Updated: 11/06/97 13:24:55