Actinic Brochure Pages & Fragments

Actinic Brochure Pages & Fragments Explained

There are two main types of page you can create within Actinic - brochure pages and product pages, there are distinct differences. Product pages display your products or the sections of your online shop, whereas brochure pages display information on your company. Typical examples of brochure pages are home page, about us page and find us page etc. These pages are mainly text based.

On any website, there will always be a home page, as the name suggests this is the starting page where all visitors will land if they type in your web address. For example, if you typed http://www.websitedesigned.co.uk/ into the address bar on your browser, you would land on our home page. Home pages are usually named 'index.html' or 'index.htm'. These are the standard names for a home page. When a visitor types in a web address, these are the pages looked for by each browser.

Actinic Brochure Page as your Home Page

Home Page Icon If you select the 'content' tab within Actinic, you will see (at the very top of the tree) a picture of a house. This is your home page and will be the first page viewed by visitors to your store. There are no set rules on what you should show on this page, however it is widely regarded as an introduction to your company, with perhaps some links through to special offers or promotions. The aim with your home page is to create some interest and make visitors want to look further. Your home page is a normal brochure page in Actinic, however it is specified as the home page by selecting the checkbox on the 'General' tab of the 'Page Details'. You can only have one home page per website.

How to Create a New Brochure Page in Actinic

The easiest way to create a new brochure page is to right-click on the 'home' icon and select 'New Brochure Page' from the shortcut menu. Actinic will prompt you to name the page and ask you to complete a number of settings for the page. This is your brochure page now created, you now need to add some content to it.

Entering Text or Images Into a Brochure Page

To give your visitors something to see, you will need to add some content to the brochure page(s). In Actinic, content is added to brochure pages using 'fragments'. If Brochure Pages and Fragments are starting to get a bit confusing, think of a brochure page as the photo album and the fragments as the photos. You would create a photo album by adding photos, this is exactly what you are doing with brochure pages and fragments.

Adding Fragment(s) to a Brochure Page

Add Fragment Once you have created your brochure page, right-click on it in the content tree and select 'New Fragment'. The type of information you want to include in your fragments can vary somewhat and to assist with this, Actinic provides a number of different fragment layouts (templates). If you want to just show an image, then the 'Image Only' layout would be ideal for example. You will note on the 'layout' tab of your fragment, there is a dropdown box which lists the layouts available, select the most appropriate. If you choose a layout and then later wish to change your mind, simply select a different one.

You can have as many fragments on a page as you wish. Although all fragments will collectively create a brochure page, they are treated individually, enabling you to create any look you would like. If you take a look at the home page on this website, you will see an image at the top and you will then see five bands of text, each with their own headings/images. On this example page (at the time of writing), there are six fragments in total, one 'image only' fragment at the top and five 'text and title' fragments underneath, four of which have an image defined also. You can choose whether to add an image or not, just leave the field blank if not required.

Additional Layout Features Available on Fragments

In addition to selecting standard layouts for your fragments, you can create your own brand new layouts OR 'embed' html into an existing fragment. I will explain these options individually.

Creating Brand New Fragment Layouts

New Fragment Layouts Actinic provides ten different layouts for fragments. Occasionally, you will find that none of these quite do what you want them to, this is not a problem as you can create your own and add them to the options available in the dropdown list. To create your own layout, you will need a basic understanding of how Actinic works and some 'html' experience is essential. If you select <new> from the dropdown list of available layouts, you will be prompted to name your new layout and choose which layout to base it on. Choose an existing layout which is closest to what you want to end up with, as all of the correct parts actinic needs to function will automatically be included.

Design Library New Fragment Layout Once you have created your new layout, it is available to adjust via <Design><Library><Layouts><Fragments>, you should see it listed alongside the other layouts. Double click on your new layout and a window willl open where you can make any changes to the layout. You just need to move the various parts around to suit your requirements.

Embedding HTML Into Actinic

Embed HTML In Fragment Actinic gives you the option to embed html into fragments. To specify that you want Actinic to process certain parts as 'html' and not as 'text', you need to wrap the html in specific embed tags that Actinic assigns for this purpose. At the very start you have '!!<' and at the very end you have '>!!'. Actinic will process everything between these markers as html. If you wish to do this, I would suggest selecting a 'text only' fragment and then embedding your html into the description field of this fragment. If you already have the html, this can be a quicker way than creating a new layout, especially if this is a one-off and something you will not need to use anywhere else. The most typical use of this feature is to add a table, usually with more than one image to show. A 2-row, 2-column table for example could be embedded into a fragment description field as follows:

!!<<table width="100%" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td> </td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
</table>>!!

Whether you use an existing layout, create your own brand new layout or embed your own html into an existing layout, Actinic gives you full flexibility to achieve whatever you need.

Extra Tips & Tricks For Brochure Pages and Fragments

If you want to have your fragments displaying in more than one column, select the brochure page in the content tree, select the layout tab and change 'Column Count For Brochure Fragments' to whatever you would like. Three columns would be the maximum usually for readability
If you want to adjust an existing fragment layout, do not amend the original, take a copy of it and work on the duplicate, thus leaving the original in tact
Always snapshot before you make any changes in Actinic
If you mess up an existing layout, right-click on it in the <design><library> and select 'Revert To Factory Settings'
When writing text into the description field, you have some icons to help you change the look and feel of the text

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