RADpage Tutorial - Components

First let's take a look at the dynamic parts of this sample Web page (the advertising banner at the top, and the page counter below the next paragraph). Each time you click the "reload" or "refresh" button in your Web browser you should see those items change. The advertising banner will alternate between several sample images, and the page counter will increment by 1. (Click your "reload" or "refresh" button now to see it in action)

We refer to these dynamic features as components. Counters and random banners are two of the simplest components. Later, we'll see more powerful components that can be applied to areas such as the creation and/or maintenance of entries in a registration database, as well as to e-commerce applications such as online shopping systems.

Components can be thought of as tools or modules that can be added to your Web pages as needed to perform certain functions. These components can then be edited to change or enhance their functionality using RADpage. At this point, it would be a good idea to go ahead and

Notice that RADpage launches its own window. You can, however, select Docked in the view menu, to edit in a single window (IE only).

You should see small blue handles appear in your main browser window. These handles mark the locations of all components on this page. Some handles look like vertical bars. Others look like the left or right pointing chevrons you see on opposite sides of the page counter (like this ). Still others look like a return key or enter symbol to indicate a line break. In all cases they are blue to help you spot them easily.

We suggest that you click one of the chevrons on either side of the page counter (three paragraphs above) to see what happens. The RADpage window will show the current properties of the counter.

Notice that each property allows you to change how the page counter operates. For instance, you can stop the counter (prevent it from incrementing) by placing a check mark in the box next to the "Frozen" property. Alternatively, you could hide the page counter from view, providing yourself with a private method of monitoring Web page hits, without having to rely on reports or services provided by the ISP hosting your Web site. You could also change the name of the counter. A new name will create and initialize a new counter. Switching back to the old name causes the page to resume counting from its former value.

Select one of these options now and press the save button at the bottom of the RADpage window to see how RADpage automatically updates your Web page based on these new settings. If you like, you can play with these values for awhile to see how they affect this page, or you can proceed to the next page in this demonstration.