The advanced features are spread out all over the Web Design Tool. Let's take a quick tour and identify them so that you'll have an easier time using them. We'll explore each feature in detail in the subsequent parts of this tutorial.
- You've already seen the first advanced feature, the Save as template link, in Part 1 of this tutorial. It enables you to save any web page on your site as a template. How's that useful? Well, until now you couldn't copy the layout of the page and use it as a jump start for creating another pages The only way to keep the look and feel of your web site consistent was to drag and drop all those modules on to every page or cut and paste them one by one from a page you had already built. That was hard work. Fortunately, now you can design a web page to your heart's content and then make a reusable template out of it using the Save as template feature. The template you create appears as a Custom Template in the list of page templates available on Create Web page dialog, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Your custom page template
- Go to Page Manager, and click on the Site actions tile. You'll see two new choices as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Additional options on the "Site actions" menu
The first, Activate third-party design tools, allows you to set your account to use a web site design tool such as Microsoft Expression Web or Adobe GoLive instead of the built-in Web Design Tool. The second, Deactivate advanced design features, lets you deactivate advanced design features. Keep in mind however, that the deactivation does not get rid of work you've done with the advanced design features; it simply hides the features. Therefor, some of your design changes may remain even after you deactivate the advanced features.
- The next feature appears in Site Designer. Open any web page in Site Designer. You'll see a new menu on the Ribbon - Style Sheet, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: The Style Sheet option in Site Designer
Clicking on command opens up a CSS editor that lets you customize your web site's default CSS as well as add your own CSS markup.
- You'll find most of the advanced features in the page editor as new modules. Open any web page in the page editor and pull down the Modules menu. At the bottom of the menu, you'll see four new modules for customizing the headers, navigation bar, and footers of your web site, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Additional modules in Page Editor
You can turn off the default headers, navigation bar, and footers and use these modules instead. To turn off these elements for existing pages, the Choose page properties dialog has three new check boxes as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: New page properties
For new pages, the same three check boxes appear on the Create web page dialog, as shown in Figure 6.
Advanced options while creating new pages
And that's what that little click on the Activate advanced design features menu option does. We'll explore each of these features in detail in the upcoming parts of this tutorial.