How to save the "working environment" in WeBuilder

[Hondoe]

I just purchased and installed WeBuilder 2010 and am using it as an HTML editor.

I always want the program to open files, both individually and from a list, with the Vertical Split enabled.

Can I configure the program to open files automatically this way?

Also, can the program to be set up with the Tabs for each open program both larger and at the top instead of the bottom of the screen?

Finally, is there a way to have a specific line of code be inserted using the Context Menu? Or a Hot Key? (I often want to insert the same sets of lines in different files or different places in a file)

thank you very much

[davenz]

While you can customise and set up the GUI any way you like I don't think you can start it with preview already enabled. It is only one mouse click or function key away though. As for the Tabs, I assume you are talking about each open page and the page tabs? I don't think you can size them other than crudely by using larger GUI fonts, but as for moving them, just grab the toolbar and drag it to the top (or wherever you want it). Once everything is set up the way you want it, save your layout under the View\Save Layout dialogue. Again, while you can customise the context menu, I don't think you can set it up to do what you want. You can easily set up a snippet to do it though, and simply call it with whatever key combo you want. This is almost doing what you want.

Welcome to the group and you won't be disappointed with WeBuilder, it is by far the best editor I have used (though my opinion is just that - I'm not a real coder, just a hobby web builder who has tried a lot of editors and was very happy finding with this one).

Dave
davethompson.co.nz

[Hondoe]

Dear Dave,

Thank you very much for your clear and detailed response.

As a novice to the program, I'm still learning it. Unfortunately the program's built in Help function is very poor (gets a D grade, e.g. when I searched for the words "customize context menu", it gives a "No topics found" message. -- is there a better help resource available?)

So far, the only important design flaw that I've noticed is that when viewing a page with the Vertical Split, while the auto-refresh works fine, unless I scroll the preview down to the area that I'm editing, the program doesn't show that area.

Yes, I was able -- thank you very much -- to drag the tabs to the top. Yay!

I don't know how to create snippets yet, but look forward to exploring this feature.

thank you again for your great help.

p.s. what is the function key combo for getting a Vertical Split? I couldn't find it anywhere

[davenz]

I always found the help to be comprehensive and adequate for what I needed, but as I said, I'm just a hobby coder with no special requirements. Anything else I couldn't figure out was resolved with a post here.

While I have said before this is the best editor I have used, I didn't say it was perfect. I also find the auto refresh/preview system sometimes difficult. I like to have changes reflected straight away in the preview screen, (yet for some reason when I posted this here many seemed to think that unreasonable). Other editors I have used could manage real-time updates so setting the refresh time to 1 second should be fine, but it isn't. Each time the page refreshes, it robs focus, so if I am typing with the preview window open, I'll only get half of what I am typing. I work around that by not having the preview window open. However, this is complicated by the fact this only happens when pages are quite long and have lots of code (the editor does have issues with very long lines of code within the same tag). Short pages don't have the refresh issue. The other problem is that as you have found out, the preview sometimes bounces back to the top of the page, while at other times it will scroll straight to the section of the page I am working with. I can find no rhyme nor reason for it going either way but it isn't a big deal for me as most of my pages aren't miles long anyway, but I can see that would start to annoy someone with screeds of code and they'd have to keep scrolling down the page every time to preview their changes. However, a big plus for the internal preview is the ability to preview style sheets - many other editors just use a standard template and apply our styles to it whereas WeBuilder previews our own style sheet - I like this much better.

While some of this sounds like so much whining, I still stand behind this being the best editor I have used. It is light, powerful and (mostly) fast, has an extensive feature list and is very reasonably priced. While I would make changes to the editor if I was the head developer there, these would not necessarily be welcomed by everyone else who uses the software! The software that would be perfect for me, or you, or anyone else does not exist - we just have to use whatever is out there and try to fit that around our way of doing things. Hopefully any software we use improves and enhances our workflow, our coding abilities, our creativity and the eventual end product; in this respect for me at least WeBuilder ticks all the boxes; many of the other editors I shelled out my hard-earned money for simply don't.

Snippets are hugely powerful and I use them quite a lot. Another simple-yet-essential feature is autoreplace - when used in conjunction with snippets you can avoid typing frequently used code or expressions altogether and just assign keywords, tokens and shortcuts; very cool.

I don't think there is a shortcut assignable for split-screen preview but I could be wrong there.

Have fun exploring the software.

Dave
davethompson.co.nz