Using the Favorites Tab

So you took a quick look at the Actions Bar in HTML Kit, counted 11 tabs and 130+ buttons and then discovered that some of these buttons opened up massive drop-down menus containing a kazillion more buttons.

Then you broke into a cold sweat, panicked, threw your hands up in the air and ran out of the room screaming.

Heh heh...

Don't worry about it...

I pretty much did the same thing.

(And I'm an experienced web author.)

But wait a minute. Come back here. It doesn't have to be like this. Yeah that's right... Come on back and sit yerself down. No, I'm not going to tell you that it was all just a dream. What I am going to tell you is that the Actions Bar, like other components in HTML Kit, is also highly configurable. Yes that's right. You can have it exactly the way you want it.

How?

Well let's start by...

Adding buttons to the Favorites tab

By default, the Favorites tab on the Actions Bar is empty. You can populate the Favorites tab with any buttons appearing on any other Actions Bar tab.

TO ADD A BUTTON TO THE FAVORITES TAB ~

Right click on the Actions Bar button that you want to add to Favorites
Click on [+] Add to Favorites

All done.

(Rinse. Repeat.)

TO REMOVE A BUTTON FROM THE FAVORITES TAB ~

Go to the Favorites tab.
Right click on the button that you wish to remove.
Click on [-] Remove from Favorites

TO REMOVE ALL BUTTONS FROM THE FAVORITES TAB ~

Go to the Favorites tab.
Right click on any button
Click on Remove All from Favorites

SOME PARTICULARS ~

As soon as you add any buttons to it, the Favorites tab will appear first in the line of Actions Bar tabs.
The order of the buttons on the Favorites tab is configured according to an HTML Kit default setting (i.e. the order can't be changed.)
If you attempt to add a button to the Favorites tab and you discover that the option [+] Add to Favorites is greyed out (unavailable), it means that this button is already there.

So which buttons should you add to the Favorites tab?

Well here's a couple of recipes...

Beginner Favorites tab configuration

STARTING OUT...

I was a beginner once and this is probably the way I would want to configure things on the Favorites tab if I had no CSS experience and I was still using <font>...</font> tags and such to format all my text.

Using the Beginner Favorites tab configuration, you can:

Put your text in a web page template
Define page headings
Format text typeface, size and color
Make text bold, italics or underlined
Drop in horizontal rules
Make paragraphs and block quotes
Insert images
Make hyperlinks
Make tables
Make lists
Convert carriage returns into <br> tags.

...among other things.

None of these 15 buttons contain any massive drop-down menus and if you're just starting out they should easily handle all your web authoring needs.

(Click to close)

The following is a screenshot of the Favorites tab loaded with 15 buttons especially suited for newcomers to HTML editing. Hover your mouse pointer over each button to see the first part of its tooltip as it appears in HTML Kit and to see which Actions Bar tab the button came from. (This will help you quickly locate the button should you wish to add it to your Favorites tab.) Click on the button in the image to jump to more details about exactly what it does in HTML Kit.

beginnerfavorites (2K)

Advanced Favorites tab configuration

MY FAVORITES TAB

If you're an advanced web designer then there's not much I can really tell you about how to configure your Favorites tab. You know what your needs are and where your tastes lie so all that remains is to just do it to it. Perhaps my configuration will at least give you some ideas about how to do yours.

If you're a novice web designer then I should explain that I mainly use CSS to format text in my web pages hence I rarely have need for <font>...</font> tags or <p>...</p> tags anymore. These are replaced by <span>...</span> tags and <div>...</div> tags respectively.

Nor have I need to insert any of the HTML Kit default templates since I construct my own highly specialized templates. For bold or italics font styles, I use keyboard shortcuts and I never use underlining (that's only for hyperlinks, people!)

I initially started out by employing the DIV and SPAN buttons on my Favorites tab but eventually replaced them with HTML Kit plugins that I created which included more options especially suited to creating pages for Iron Spider.

(Click to close)

Here's a screenshot of the 15 buttons that I initially added to my Favorites tab. Hover your mouse pointer over each button to see the first part of its tooltip as it appears in HTML Kit and to see which Actions Bar tab the button came from. (This will help you quickly locate the button should you wish to add it to your Favorites tab.) Click on the button in the image to jump to more details about exactly what it does in HTML Kit.

My Favorites tab (2K)

Description of Actions Bar buttons

Here's a list of the Actions Bar buttons appearing in the beginner and advanced Favorites tab configurations that I suggested above. The 'default button' refers to just clicking on the button without opening its drop-down menu (if applicable).

BEGINNER OR ADVANCED

Make link... (Objects tab)

This will open the Tags Wizard to the Hyperlink Anchor dialog. This is a very convenient tool for building hyperlinks to various other pages in your website.