Adding a Customized HTML Template

You can use your own custom HTML templates for greater control over the appearance of your Topics, Table of Contents, and Index in HTML, XHTML, JavaHelp, and Oracle Help for Java.

For example, you may wish to add a banner-like graphic or logo that appears at the top of every page and above the Topic Heading, or a Footer at the bottom of your page containing copyright information using a custom body_template.htm file.

To add your own customized HTML Template:

1. Develop your custom HTML template outside of Author-it in the tool of your choice.

   We recommend the template references the stylesheet used by Author-it, or your styles will not be found, by adding the tag: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css"> within the pages Header section.

2. You can use Tables, Javascript and/or any HTML code to control the placement of data and the exact look and feel you want.
3. Author-it will look for the following tags as follows:

   <title> </title>	Defines the HTML Page Title that is displayed in the title bar of the browser. Substitution is resolved in the following order: As the Title defined in the Media object HTML tab. If a Start New Page checkbox is selected, and the Page Title has been specified under the Topic object HTML tab, this Title will be used. If neither of the above are specified, then the HTML Heading of the Topic is used.
   <pagetitle>	This can appear any number of times. It is replaced with the same text as <title> is above.
   <aitdata>	This tag acts as a placeholder for the Author-it data. This placeholder is replaced with all the published HTML code that makes up your Author-it topic. If this tag cannot be found, the data will be placed directly before the closing </body> tag.

4. Specify the file name and path to your precoded HTML template in the Media object/s used by your Topic, Table of Contents and Index objects.
5. If your HTML template refers to any external resources, like graphics, you can include them using the Additional File property in the Media object. Author-it will copy these files to the publishing folder at the same level as your HTML pages, so make sure they are referenced properly, not to a sub-folder like "Images", or "Graphics".
6. Once your HTML template has been specified, Author-it will use it when creating your HTML pages instead of creating its own default page using the settings in the Meta Data, Background, and Text Colors tabs.