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More on Components
The previous page introduced the concept of components and showed how RADpage allows you to edit the values of various properties associated with those components. In this page we'll go a step further and show how to edit a component's contents as well.
You may have noticed that component tags operate in pairs, each with its own end-tag. These end-tags are necessary to group your page contents together into logical associations.
Normally, the most common component in a Web page is the paragraph tag. To edit the contents of this paragraph, for instance, click on the component bar at either the beginning or end of the paragraph. Then, in the RADpage window, click the Edit button (Internet Explorer), the Preview button (Netscape), or the Content button. Alternatively you can also double-click on a component to invoke the edit function. Now you can WYSIWYG edit contents of the component inside the main window and edit the source code inside the RADpage window. You will notice that changes in either window show up in both windows. The Content button just allows you to modify the source code without WYSIWYG editing. At this point you can make any changes to the text you desire and save them by clicking the Save button (or CTRL-S). Try it and see how it works.
RADpage always shows you a functional view of a page, containing all
components an server side functionality, just as any visitor of your
site sees it. You might have noticed however, that during editing of
a text portion, components contained therein show up as placeholders.
So for example this counter 
| Exercise: Try adding a counter to this page: Click on Insert in the RADpage menu. (It appears as an underlined hot-link in the upper window with the blue background.) Two lists of pre-developed components will appear: Generic Components and Application Components. Select Counters from the list of Application Components and then, on the following display, select Counter. Finally, click on a component handle anywhere on this page. The new counter component will be inserted at the position immediately following the component you selected. |
In order to insert a component inside a text paragraph, open the
paragaph for editing, put the cursor at the right position and press
CTRL-I (or use the 
toolbar icon).
It's even easier to delete an unwanted component. All you need do is select a component by clicking on one of its handles and then, in the RADpage window, click the Delete button.
RADpage normally produces well formed XML pages (xhtml style with additional tags representing components). It can however also work on ordinary HTML tags that are imported, inserted by an external HTML editor or by using the WYSIWYG editing functions of internet explorer from RADpage. You can also embed heitml (pronounced Hi-TML) programs into your pages and RADpage assists you in doing that in an XML well formed way.
In order to view applications the heitml middleware needs to be installed on your web server. It translates your application pages (also called heitml pages) via several steps into HTML that normal HTML browsers can display.
When creating simple applications with RADpage you do not need to know about heitml (except that your hosting provider must support it). More complex applications can be created by using heitml directly as a programming language. It is even possible to program your own components with heitml.
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