Last updated October 8, 1998
Contents:
What's New in HomeSite 4.0
HomeSite 4.0 is loaded with powerful new features designed to make HTML coding even easier than before.
- Completely redesigned editor, featuring:
- Multi-language syntax coloring. Supports independent color coding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, VBScript, SQL, ASP, PHP3 and Perl documents.
- Custom color coding. Each color coding scheme can be customized using different font styles for each element.
- Bookmarking (just click in the left gutter).
- Easier tag selection. Holding Ctrl while double-clicking will select the current tag; holding Shift+Ctrl will select everything from the current tag to the matching tag.
- Automatic conversion of special characters. (Note: This only applies to characters above ASCII 127.)
- Option to use spaces instead of tabs.
- New Style Sheet Editor. This editor can be launched either as a stand-alone program (it's installed in the same directory as HomeSite) or from these places in HomeSite's interface:
- Right clicking in a <style> block will enable an "Edit Style Block" menu item which will pass the style to the separate editor.
- Right clicking on a <link> to a stylesheet will enable an "Edit Linked StyleSheet" menu item.
- Dialogs for tags that support the STYLE attribute can launch the style editor for easy style attribute editing.
- CSS files in the file list can be edited by the style editor by right clicking on them and selecting "Edit StyleSheet."
- New Tag Inspector (F4). This "property sheet" display, which is the last tab in the resource pane, makes editing tags
incredibly easy. Attribute information can be sorted alphabetically and categorically, as well as by HTML version.
- The tag dialogs have been updated with CSS attributes and DHTML/DOM events.
- Tag Tree (above the tag inspector). Shows a customizable outline of HTML documents.
- Design view. Based on Microsoft's DHTMLEdit component, this feature enables visual page layout. Note that this feature requires Internet Explorer 4.01 or later - it will not work if you have an earlier version installed. Design view is integrated into the Tag Inspector for easy editing.
- At long last, customizable keyboard shortcuts (Shift+F8). In addition, you can now assign keyboard shortcuts to snippets.
- Integrated HTML validator. Closing a tag by hitting ">" (or pressing F6) will validate the current tag. Switch to the validation page in Settings (F8) to customize the validation level.
- Projects now provide integration with popular version control software such as Microsoft SourceSafe and PVCS.
- Backreferences are now supported in the regular expressions used in the Extended Find/Replace features.
- CodeSweeper feature, which applies a pre-defined set of formatting instructions to the current document. To configure the formatter, select "CodeSweeper Settings" from the Options menu. Because design view sometimes reformats code, we have included the ability to apply the auto-formatter when switching from design view -- just go to the Design tab in Settings to enable this feature.
- "Code Templates" feature. Configurable from the Settings dialog, this feature can be used to expand keywords to larger blocks of text. Hitting Ctrl+J will display the code template list unless the word at the cursor is a known keyword, in which case the keyword will be expanded automatically. For example, the keyword dt4 will insert the HTML 4.0 !doctype tag when you hit Ctrl+J.
- New QuickBar. It is similar to the tag toolbar in HomeSite 3.0, but also enables docking/undocking of toolbars.
- OLE automation and ActiveScripting. HomeSite has been redesigned so that third-party developers can write programs that automate HomeSite, adding new functionality. In addition, HomeSite supports ActiveScripting internally - power users can write JavaScript or VBScript files that automate HomeSite (or other applications), and then assign these scripts to custom toolbuttons. Please refer to the "Visual Tools Object Model" documentation in the Help tree for details. We recommend that all power users read this documentation.
- Spell checker hooks into Microsoft Word's spelling engine (if installed).
- To highlight spelling errors quickly, press Ctrl+F7. After you highlight errors, right-clicking on a misspelled word displays a popup menu that shows suggested corrections. To remove the spelling marks, simply hit Ctrl+F7 again.
- Dockable toolbars.
- Redesigned, threaded file list that won't slow you down while scanning large directories. Includes the document <title> for easy viewing.
- You can now easily switch between documents in any view (Edit, Design, or Browse).
- Improved performance of opening/closing multiple documents (approx. four times faster than 3.0).
- The separate palette area has been removed. Palettes are now displayed as floating controls under palette tool buttons.
- Thumbnails are now displayed in the Results area.
- Snippets can now be broken into private and shared snippets, so you can share snippets with other users on your network while still keeping a subset private. By default, shared snippets aren't activated, but you can change this by specifying a Shared Snippets folder on the "File Locations" page in Settings.
- There are now separate dialogs for Extended Find and Extended Replace.
- File dialogs now contain both local and remote files.
- Extended find and replace across folders is much faster than before, and no longer builds the list of files to search before doing the actual search.
- Extended find and replace now includes a Skip tags feature which will only match items that aren't in tags (including script and style blocks). Please note that this feature will slow down the search process and is not available in regular-expression search operations.
- Find/Replace now remembers the last 10 searches.
- Added a new dockable Special Characters window.
- Added "Restore Last Opened Files at Start-Up" to Settings (F8) (turned off by default). When set, at start-up the application re-loads all documents that were open when it was last shut down.
- Added "Save as Template" to the File menu. This saves the current document as a template that will appear on the Custom page in the New File Wizard (File > New). The New File Wizard now reads everything from the directory structure under \Wizards, so you can create new tabs by creating new subdirectories. Any files in these subdirectories will be treated as templates (with the exception of EXE files, which will be executed).
- Revamped the print feature so that it no longer shells to the browser.
- The internal browser once again has the Edit tool button, which opens the current page in the editor. Note that this is enabled only for local files.
- The Help Tree now includes a bookmarking feature. Right click on a help file to add a bookmark, and click on the bookmark tool button to display a list of bookmarks.
- The Anchor dialog once again lists all #named references in the current document.
- Multiple server mappings may now be specified
- Holding the Ctrl key while selecting an item in the tag tree will select that tag, its matching tag, and anything in between.
- Editor line numbering now takes word wrapping into account.
- Right-clicking on an event handler in a tag (onClick, onLoad, etc.) adds a "Navigate to Function..." item to the editor's popup menu. Selecting this menu item will locate and highlight the function called by the handler.
- Palettes can now be extracted from GIF files. Select "Create Palette" from the dropdown on the palette dialog for to this feature.
- HTML can now be drag-and-dropped from Internet Explorer 4.0. Note that you'll need to hold <Ctrl> when selecting in Internet Explorer for this to work.
- The link verification, validation and search results now have a "Browse..." item in their popup menus which will convert the list to an HTML document and open it in the default browse.
- HomeSite now loads faster and is much more resource friendly under Windows 95/98. Documents are cached rather than kept in memory, which will help Win95 users who have experienced resource problems in the past. Please keep in mind, though, that resources under Win95/98 have an internal limit that's not affected by RAM (that is, no matter how much memory you have, you'll always have the same resource limit). This means that running several large applications at the same time on Win95/98 may drain resources regardless of whether you have 16MB of RAM or 128MB of RAM. If you run several applications at once and find yourself bumping into these resource limits quite frequently, we strongly recommend upgrading to Windows NT, where these resources limits do not exist.
- The Resource Tab now contains an undockable "SiteView" tab that shows a link outline of a page. Right-clicking on SiteView brings up several options, including the ability to switch between a "tree" view of the page and the default "chart" view. The tree view is more appropriate for pages with many links.
- Project features have been re-implemented. This new implementation is very different from 3.0's in that the projects are based entirely on existing directory structures. In 3.0, you could create "virtual" folders that don't exist anywhere on your hard drive, which led to a lot of confusion. Note that remote projects (projects created from FTP servers) are also supported now. To create a project, either right click on the upper project pane and select "New Project," or select "New Project" from the main project menu. You only need to specify a name for the project and the directory you want it to reflect. Also note that unlike 3.0, project files are stored in their associated directories and not in a separate "Projects" folder.
- The local file list now has a drive combo at the top for easier navigation between drives. The directory tree will use the selected drive as its root.
- The resource tab now has smaller tabs, and only displays images (no text) on the tabs.
- Holding the Ctrl key while dragging file from Explorer will now open the dropped files rather than insert links for them.
- Tag Completion has been simplified. Instead of specifying the start and end tags, now you only need to specify the start tag. When the ">" key is pressed, HomeSite checks whether that tag is in the tag completion list, and if so it adds the end tag.
- Selecting "File->Copy To" or "File->Move To" from the filelist's popup menu now includes remote servers. This enables copying/moving any type of file to an FTP server.
- Link verification now support image maps.
Changes Since the Final Release Candidate
- Hitting F1 displays help for the HTML tag currently being edited (if any). This works best when help is shown below
the help tree instead of in the main browser (to enable this layout, click the fourth toolbutton on the help page in
the resource tab).
- Line numbers can now be toggled in the gutter. When working with long, word-wrapped documents, leaving line numbers off
may improve performance.
- The splash screen can now be hidden (not available in the evaluation version).
- Clicking a link in SiteView highlights that link in the current document.
- Right-clicking on the list of keyboard shortcuts in the customization dialog displays a "Browse.." popup menu item. Selecting this item
will display the list as a web page (for printing, etc.).
- The "Common" toolbar now includes the DIV tag.
- The palette tool menu now has an "Edit Palette" item where "Create Palette" used to be. This will open the current palette for editing. To create a pallete, click "New Palette" on the edit dialog.
- The "Prompt for password" checkbox has been removed from the Configure FTP Server dialog. Prompting is now done automatically whenever the logon fails.
- The "Use passive mode" checkbox has been removed from the Configure FTP Server dialog. This setting is now automatic.
Known Issues
- "Design View" is not compatible with the Internet Explorer 5.0 pre-release. If you have the IE5 pre-release installed, do not use design view.
- The source code preservation employed when switching from Design mode back to Edit mode is not perfect. Sometimes tag or attribute case is changed, and white space may be altered. Microsoft is working on these issues for the next version of DHTMLEdit
- HomeSite 3.x and Cold Fusion Studio 3.x shared the same registry key (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Allaire\Studio), but this is no longer the case. Cold Fusion Studio will continue to use HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Allaire\Studio, but HomeSite 4.x will use HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Allaire\HomeSite4.
- The validation engine causes a delay of several seconds when it's first used (such as when hitting ">").
- IntelliMouse support requires the latest drivers (version 2.2 as of this writing) from
Microsoft.
- The Microsoft Office spell checker crashes if you
select the "English (Australian)" dictionary. The only work-arounds are to use the integrated
spell checker or to select another dictionary, such as "English (United Kingdom)".