The basic unit of data is a page group. Each page group has

• a location on disk where the generated output files will be placed,
• default locations for images and preview images (thumbnails), and
• a remote location to which the output files are intended to be uploaded.

A page group can generate a single file (e.g. a HTML page), or several related files. To use the example of a simple picture gallery: this could consist of a HTML index page containing preview images, (or several index pages, for images 1-49, 50-99, etc.), with each preview image linked to its own detail page containing the full size picture, title, descriptive text etc. There could be separate index pages and detail pages for different versions of the images (e.g. larger ones) and the page group might also include a frameset page for the structure, or a contents page showing all picture titles in alphabetical order. As all these output pages are very much related to each other (e.g. they will often be joined together by menus and links), and they are all based on the same data, they belong in one page group in this system.

It is entirely up to the user to decide how much should go into one page group. The only requirement of the system is that all the generated files will be placed in the same local directory, and are intended to be uploaded to the same remote location. A web site with HTML files in several directories will therefore have to be divided into several page groups.

In this documentation, for instance, the contents page and top-level frameset comprise one page group which produces two HTML files. Each of the items in the contents menu (i.e. each of the documentation 'chapters') is a separate page group. Each of the example web sites, some of them consisting of hundreds of HTML files, is generated from one page group.

A page group should have one main user entrance point, e.g. a page called index.html or a page containing a frameset. This is the page which will initially be shown when the page group is viewed in a browser window using button .

see also:

screen: web page groups: field: page to be initially displayed

An element is quite simply a part of a web page. It can be a single word of text, an image or a hyperlink, or it can represent the contents of an entire page.

For instance, the block of text you are now reading (i.e. everything from the horizontal blue line down to this paragraph) is the result of one element. The 'see also' line is the result of another. This applies to most parts of this documentation, although some of the larger paragraphs (especially the ones with more than one illustration) are the result of two or three elements. We just happened to find this the most efficient way of working in this particular situation, but this is a flexible system where the user decides exactly what comprises an element. In the picture gallery sites on the examples page, for example, an element is generally one preview image, while in the example links page it is one hyperlink with accompanying text and/or image.

see also:

subscreen: web page elements

A web site can consist of one page group, or be made up of several.

Although a 'web site' as such doesn't exist in this system, page groups which form part of the same web site can be handled as a group by putting them on a list which represents the web site. To ensure internal link consistency, the entire web site can be generated before uploading any changed files.