This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Configuring Page Properties
Properties for a specific page are configured using the Page Properties dialog. You can access page properties by opening a page and selecting File, Properties.
The Page Properties dialog has five tabs.
TIP
If a Dynamic Web Template or ASP.NET Master Page is applied to the current page, many of the options in the Page Properties dialog will likely be disabled because they will be controlled by the Dynamic Web Template of Master Page.
General Tab
The General tab allows you to easily configure the page title, description, keywords, and other general information (see Figure 3.12).
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Figure 3.12. The General tab in the Page Properties dialog provides settings for page title and other general page settings.
The title you enter in the General tab displays in the title bar of the web browser when the page is viewed. The description and keywords you enter are added as META tags on the page to aid in search engine indexing.
You can also specify a base location, also known as a base href. The base href is the base URL for the page. For example, if you enter http://www.mysite.com/products as the base href, a link that points to software.htm will actually link to http://www.mysite.com/products/software.htm. This is convenient when your site’s directory structure changes often. By using a base href, you can easily update the absolute location of all links by changing one property of the page.
The Default Target Frame property allows you to specify a default frame for links that don’t explicitly specify a frame. This is most often used when you want links on a particular page to open in a new window. By setting the default target to New Window, you can force all links to open in a new window by default.
A background sound can also be set on the General tab. The sound is then played when the page is loaded. You can also choose to loop the sound a specific number of times or infinitely. Keep in mind that most people find background sounds annoying and are likely to leave your site if you force them to listen to a background sound. Before you choose to add a background sound, give it careful consideration.
Formatting Tab
The Formatting tab contains properties for a background image, hyperlink colors, and other page colors (see Figure 3.13).
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Figure 3.13. Formatting a page’s background and colors is accomplished using the Formatting tab.
In addition to specifying a background image, you can also specify that an image be added as a watermark. A watermark background remains stationary when the page is scrolled.
Hyperlink color and other page colors are also configured on the Formatting tab. Color changes made here are added to the page as embedded style sheets.
For more information on style sheets, see Chapter 17, “Creating Style Sheets.”
Advanced Tab
The Advanced tab, shown in Figure 3.14, contains settings for the page margins. Margin entries made here are applied to the page as an inline style on the <body> tag.
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Figure 3.14. Page margins are applied as an inline style so they work with all modern browsers.
Custom Tab
The Custom tab configures META tags for the current page (see Figure 3.15). The top section is for system variables (HTTP-EQUIV META tags), and the bottom section is for user variables such as keywords and description META tags.
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Figure 3.15. META tags are easily configured on the Custom tab. Note that settings made on the General tab carry over to this tab.
As shown here, any keywords and description information entered on the General tab shown previously in Figure 3.12 carry over to the Custom tab.
NOTE
An in-depth discussion of the META element is outside the scope of this book. If you’d like more information on this powerful HTML element, see http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=28768 & seqNum=8.
Language Tab
The Language tab configures the language for your page (see Figure 3.16). The language setting determines the page encoding for the page.
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Figure 3.16. Page language and encoding are configured on the Language tab.
Web browsers rely on the page encoding and language settings to determine how to properly display your page. Make sure you have correctly set these for the language and region you are targeting. In almost all cases, the default settings are fine. However, if you are designing a page for a specific region or language, be sure you set the encoding appropriately and test the site for the correct appearance.
The Language tab also enables you to control whether Expression Web includes a byte order mark (BOM) on your page. A byte order mark is a hidden sequence of characters at the beginning of a file that can be used to determine encoding characteristics of the file. Some file types (such as PHP files) can experience problems when a BOM is added to the page, so Expression Web enables you to configure which file types will and will not have a BOM added by default. You can override these settings in the Language tab for a particular file as shown in Figure 3.16.
- For more information on configuring BOM settings in Expression Web, see Chapter 11, “Configuring Page Editor Options.”