Assets View - What is it?
Imagine owning a chain of fast food restaurants. Each
restaurant uses the same napkins, cups, and bags, and the employees wear the same uniform. It doesn't matter if you are in downtown Los Angeles or in the South of France - the
company profile remains the same. Remember, consistency is key to success with any company, whether it's a Web page or a place to get french fries.Now let's imagine that you decide to change the company
mascot from a King's Jester to a Circus Clown. Well, you already have 1,000 or so of these burger-carrying-mascots, so what do you do? Well, if this was a Web page and you had
NetObjects Fusion, you'd go to Assets view and within a few minutes, every page on your site would have a new mascot to greet its visitors. Assets view is your location for managing all of your assets.
Your assets are divided into four areas: 1. Files - external files: graphics, multimedia etc.
2. Links - external links
3. Data Objects -
data objects created for data publishing
4. Variables - predefined text entries From Assets view, you simply navigate to the page where an
asset is located and replace it with a new more up to date asset - NetObjects Fusion will then replace that item on all of your pages. You only have to do this once. In most HTML editors,
you have to change the graphics page-by-page, which can take hours or even days if you have a large site. Okay, let's check out the view - click on the Assets button to
go to Assets view. You will see a window like this one: 
Okay, so it will be much clearer from your Fusion window, but hey - this isn't LucasFilm. The main thing you need to be concerned with are the four areas I discussed above. They are
represented as tabs: Files, Links, Data Objects and Variables as seen below: 
Viewing your Assets
You choose which kind of asset to view by clicking one of the four tabs seen above. NetObjects Fusion opens to the Files tab
by default. Each asset type has a list that it uses for detailed information on those assets, seen below: Files: Name/Type/In Use/Location/Size/Date/Verify Status Links:
Name/Link To/Type/Target/Verify Status Data Objects: Name Variables: Name/Contents Take a look at your Assets view and look to see which list has
its text in bold. Most likely, it will be your Name list under Files assets, if this is the first time you have opened Assets view. See below for an example: 
Each header (Name, Type, In Use, etc.) is also used to sort out
your assets. The above example shows assets sorted by name. If you want them to be sorted by Type - you simply click on the Type title bar. NetObjects will then sort your assets by
Type and the list will then appear in bold.
Files
From the Assets view, click on the File tab (that is, if it isn't
already selected). Here, you will see a list of files associated with your site; these include: images, audio, video, applets/plugins, Java script, and HTML. Adding Assets 1. From Assets view click on the New button in the control bar as seen below:
2. The following file dialog appears: 
3. Click the Browse button and select the file you want to add.
If the new asset is an image file, its name appears on the image Assets tab of the Picture File Open dialog. The Pages field is all of the pages where your asset is being used. To change the
name, follow the instructions below. Editing Asset Names
How would you like it if your name was person856? And your brother or sister was person857? Well, just as confusing is having a gigabyte of images on your sight with no real name.
So, it might help to change "image45," which happens to be the company logo to something like "logo." And this is how you do it:1. Double-click the name in the files list to display the File dialog.
2. Type a new name in the Name field and click OK.
Displaying Pages If you want to see the page that a particular asset is being used on - just follow these steps:1.
Double click on the file asset you want. The File dialog will appear.2. In the Pages field, select a page you want to see - see the image below: 
3. Click the Go To button.
Page view will then open to your selected page. Replacing File Assets If the company changes its logo, all you need to do is change the image from Assets view and NetObjects Fusion will change
the image on all of the pages on your site. 1. Double click the name of the asset you want to replace. The File dialog appears.2.
Click the Browse button and select the file from the dialog. 3. Click OK.
If the asset you are replacing is an image, and the new image is not the same size as the original, you will need to go
through the site and resize the new images.Deleting File Assets - Not Being Used To delete a file that is NOT being used, simply select the file and hit the delete button.
To delete ALL files NOT being used, follow these steps: 1. From the Assets menu, select Delete All Unused File Assets as seen below: 
2. Click "yes" to remove all file assets that are not in use. Deleting File Assets - Being Used
If you want to delete an asset that IS being used, you must first delete all occurrences of the file throughout your site. You can do that by following these steps:1.
Double click the asset you want to delete. 2. From the File dialog
, select a page in the Pages field and click Go To.3.
You will now be in Page view - find the asset and delete it from the page. 4. Repeat these steps until you have deleted the asset from all of the pages. 5.
Now you can delete the file from Assets view by selecting it and hitting the delete key. Verifying File Assets To find out whether or not all file assets are in their expected directories, follow these steps:1.
From the Assets menu choose Verify All File Assets as seen below: 
A report of the path status of all files will be verified. NetObjects Fusion does this by listing the date and time found in the Verify Status column.
If a file's path information is incorrect and the file or folder cannot be found, you will get this dialog: 
To fix the paths, click on the Browse button and find the correct file or folder. If you don't want to enter a new location,
click on the Skip button and the verification process will continue.
Links
Click on the links tab and you will see a list of all the links used
in your site. Okay, let's learn a few things you can do here. Updating External Links 1.
Double click the external link you want to update. The Links dialog seen below will appear:
2. Update the URL by typing in the new location in the Link To field. 3. Click OK.
You can also change the name by typing the new name into the Name field. If you want to see the page any particular link is on, just select the link from the Pages field and hit the Go To button. Adding a Link 1. Click the New button seen below:
The Links dialog box will appear.2. Enter a name and destination for your link. 3. Click OK. Verifying Links 1. Sign on to the Internet if you have external links that need to be checked.2.
From the Assets menu - choose Verify All Links as seen below: 
NetObjects will show you a display bar as it verifies and reports the status of link destinations. The time and date will appear in the Verify Status column.
If a link's destination is not found it will display the problem in the Verify Status column. To fix broken links, follow the steps described in Updating External Links.
Data Objects
Clicking the Data Objects tab will display a list of all the data objects used in your site. You can edit the name and field names of an internal data object and add new fields.
Since Data Objects is an advanced topic, we will not go into detail here.
Variables Text variables help you to update text that appears
throughout your site. Perhaps you have a Manager of the Month and need to change this every 30 days. This is where you would do it. User defined variables are displayed in Assets
Variables view so you can edit, create, or delete them as needed. Since Variables is an advanced topic, we will not go into detail here. Okay, that's it for Assets view - Have Fun! |
