Lotus BeanMachine Reference Guide

Properties Tab

The Properties tab of the Details window is where you customize the properties of parts. Properties determine how a part looks and behaves.

There are three types of fields in the Properties page: direct-edit, choice, and dialog. Click a cell to activate it, or use the cursor keys to move to the row you want, and then press Enter.

Direct-edit: Type directly over the highlighted current entry. When you are direct-editing, if you click the right mouse button, a pop-up menu is displayed providing clipboard function for your use (cut, copy, paste, etc).

Choice: Select an item in the list.

Dialog: Press the small button on the right and complete the fields on the dialog such as the color palette.

To display properties for a part, select the part on the Composer or use the Selected Part drop-down on the main toolbar.



Properties Tab Keyboard Shortcuts

Arrow keys	Moves selection emphasis through the property rows. Up/down arrows scroll up and down through the rows, highlighting each row
Enter	Activates or saves the current cell
Escape	Discards changes made while editing a cell

Using Absolute URLs in the Properties Tab
In addition to using local image, audio and text files as properties of parts in your applet, BeanMachine enables you to use absolute and relative URLs. This can be especially useful if you are creating an applet that uses a dynamic, multimedia part. For example, let's say you are building an applet with a Ticker Tape and you would like to change the message daily. Using a simple text editor, write the message you would like to display first, save it and place it on your server. You can then use this text file as the Ticker Tape message by entering its URL address in the text source field of the Properties tab. Then, whenever you want to change the message your Ticker Tape displays simply edit this text file. There is no need to republish your applet.

You can enter URLs in place of filenames for many of BeanMachine's parts. These includes Images, Animation and Ticker Tape. You can even use URLs as properties for parts like Audio and Rollovers. Getting content for a part from a URL is a great way to modify your applet without having to republish it. Next, we'll talk about using Relative URLs as properties.


Using Relative URLs in the Properties Tab
Often when constructing a complex web site, you will want to keep all your media (text files, images and photographs) in the same folder on your web server. Normally, this would present a small problem for building applets which require their own media. However, BeanMachine provides a way to maintain your organizational structure and still make cool stuff. You can do this through the use of relative URLs in the Properties tab of the Details window.

In BeanMachine, you can reference media relative to the HTML page which calls your applet. If you've had any experience coding HTML by hand, it's the same convention. Let's put it another way; in order to tell your applet to run, you have to have an HTML page that calls your applet. This HTML file is one of the files that BeanMachine produces for you when you publish. When you put the HTML file that calls your applet on a web server, it has a specific location, relative to other folders and files. By using a relative URL for a property such as picture or sound, you can tell your applet to go look for its source media in a different folder on the web server.

This is done using the following syntax for the property you are setting:

./path/filename.ext

For example, let's say myImage is contained in the myMedia folder on the same level as the HTML page. To use myImage as a picture property in your applet, you would enter:

./myMedia/myImage.gif

The ./ signals a relative URL and indicates that your applet should look for the myMedia folder on the same directory level as the HTML page. For example, you could tell your applet to look higher in the directory structure by using ./../myMedia. This tells you applet to go up one level and look for the folder there. As a result, you can string together a series of statements to look anywhere on your server's directory structure, such as ./../../myMedia/myImage.gif. This statement tells your applet to look for the image by going up two levels in the directory structure to find the myMedia folder.

BeanMachine will also accept forward slashes in place of back slashes. For example:

./myMedia/myImage.gif

is treated the same as:

.\myMedia\myImage.gif