Microsoft Office

CherylE over on the Office Live Small Business blog has some great tips and hints on how to give advanced design features a try.

You shouldn’t be scared to play with these features. Most of them affect only one Web page at a time, so you can add a new page and play as much as you want without risking any of your existing Web page customizations.

Turn on and find the advanced design features
Let’s take a look at easy ways for you to take advantage of the advanced design features. The only thing you need to do to see all of these features is to activate them in your Office Live Small Business account. This activation is an option in the Site actions drop-down list at the top of Page Manager. For more detailed instructions about activation, see “Activate the advanced design features.”

OK, they’re activated. So where can you find them? They’re sprinkled throughout the Web design tools in new menu options and new tabs in dialog boxes that you’re probably already using.

New design tabs for existing modules
Even without activating the advanced design features, you can create a form on one of your Web pages that collects data for a list in one of your business applications. For example, the owner of the Fourth Coffee site adds a form to collect online orders for pots of coffee to go. For more information about adding a form to a Web page, see “Collect customer information through a Web page.”

Forms are added to a Web page using a form designer module. When you activate the advanced design features, a new tab is added to the Form Designer dialog box. This tab, named Layout, includes several new design options for your form. Don’t get scared away when you first open the tab. The second and third design options require writing XSLT code. The first option, however, is a list of new form layout templates. You can select any one of the four templates to quickly give your form a whole new look by automatically aligning all of the items in the list. To see how a form appears with each of the templates applied, see “Customize a form on a Web page using the advanced design features.”

You can also display a list from one of your business applications on a Web page without using any advanced design features. For example, the owner of the Fourth Coffee site displays the dates and times for concerts at his store on a Web page named Events. For more information about displaying a list to a Web page, see “Display a list to your public Web site.”

Lists are added to a Web page using a list publisher module. When you activate the advanced design features, a new Layout tab is also added for this feature. This tab also allows you to edit XSLT code, but the first option is to apply one of four list layout templates. With a single selection, you can completely change the look of the list on the page. To see how a list appears with each of the templates applied, see “Customize a list on a Web page using the advanced design features.”

Save a Web page as a template
After you have activated the advanced design features, you have a new option for each page in the page list in Page Manager. With this option, you can save a page as a template.

You have probably used the templates that came with your Office Live Small Business account as you created new Web pages. For example, each time you added a new Web page, you could choose to add a new Calendar page. If you selected this option, your new page was actually a copy of a Calendar page template.

Let’s say that you have worked hard to design the look you wanted for the header and footer on your home page. You can now save your home page to use as a template for all your other Web pages. When you save the page as a template, it is added to your Template Gallery. The next time you add a new Web page, your custom template is listed as an option in the Add a page dialog box. For more information about saving a Web page as a template, see “Save a Web page as a template using the advanced design features.”

New module menu options
If you’ve done any customization of your Web pages, you have probably added a module. Modules are great shortcuts to add Web parts to your page. When you activate the advanced design features, new modules are added to the module menu in Page Editor. I talked about these modules in my last post about customizing the header, footer, and navigation bar. In short, they are useful if you want to have the header, footer, navigation bar, or site slogan appear somewhere other than the standard locations on any one Web page.

Again, you don’t have to be able to edit XSLT code to take advantage of these modules. You can simply add a custom footer module to a page and the contents of the standard footer automatically appear on the page.

So if you are tempted to try some new design options for your Web pages, activate the advanced design features in your account today!