Getting Started

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Our Getting Started Guide is a downloadable pdf document, included in this template package. It offers tips and tricks to help you get started, tips, screen shots and a template overview.

Ready, Steady, Go!

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Before you dive into your new project, make a back-up of the original template download. Keep a copy on a CD Rom (or another another secure method) to store your original template. You'll appreciate having this handy should you ever need to revert back to the original code.

EASY Steps 1, 2, 3 ...

Editing Flash File WITHOUT Flash

The master flash file is included but you don't need Flash to edit the image in the animated header. Use any plain text editor (i.e. NotePad WordPad, EditPad, etc.) to manage images. Here's how to edit using a plain text editor:

  1. OPEN the variables.txt file using your favorite plain text editor.

  2. EDITS - change images by editing the three image fields:

    photo1 = first image in rotation
    photo2 = second image in rotation
    photo3 = third image in rotation

    The illustration below shows the editable fields underlined in red.

    variables.txt example

    Note: use this image as a guide to edit only the text underlined in red. Do not delete or edit any other words or characters.

    Image location - if you decide to change the image for the flash movie, you will need to maintain a correct file path. This tells your movie where you have stored your image. In this case, the main01.jpg image resides in the 'images' folder.

Tip: It's easier to read the text file when you turn-on the "word wrap" feature.

Image Tricks

Let's review the small images found in this template. You'll be delighted to know that you can make your images look like this without any photo editing tool! That's right, we created a simple class, in the Cascading Style Sheet, which you can apply to any image to create the same effect. Look at our image 'before' and 'after' the CSS class is applied:

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before (no css effect)

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after (CSS effect)

It's very easy to apply this effect (shown in the left image) to any image - even images from your own personal photo catalogue. You can start with a square / rectangular shaped image and apply either of the two "border float" classes available in the style sheet. One class floats to left of your text - the other to the right. Here is an example of the html code used to apply this CSS class to a particular image:

example of code snippet

Sidebar Section

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Use this sidebar area to remind your visitors about current promotions, testimonials from customers, and other content relevant to your company.