Copy the commands to the commands folder and the objects to the right
subdir of your choice in the objects folder.


What does it do?
It's sort of like having templates merged with a simple xml based
database to allow you to make global changes from a single location.

What?

Here's an example:

You have installed the command/object combo.
You go to a site (start with a test site perhaps)
Perhaps you have an email address footer that you want to show up (and
be updated) on many pages. Normally you might use an object for this but

assume right now that you want to use web merge.

First thing to do is open a new blank page while viewing your current
site.
You need to create a .txt file that will contain the information about
your email footer, so click the "seek" button and choose a file
currently in your site,
then change the filename to something like emailfooter.txt
Now click NEW
Now click Load.

You see a sample element already created for you.
each element consists of a class (name) and some content (html)
try playing with the elements by creating new ones, deleting them, etc.
to modify an element, choose it, change the text in either field below,
then hit UPDATE.

create a new element called email_footer
and put
<b>andreww@netscape.com</b>
in it for now


Now click DONE for now.



Now go into a current page and drag and drop from the object pallete the
webelement object.
choose as it's name - email_footer

it creates a tag called webelement and gives it a class equal to the name
you specified.
do this on some other pages, perferably in the location you want them.

Now close those windows and run the web element command again.
choose load, and load the emailfooter.txt file

now choose run.

what happens now is that DW makes an array of all the elements you have
in your .txt file and compares them to all the webelement tags in your
site. Whenever there's a match, the command places the contents of the
tag from the .txt file into the location on the web page. (it also keeps
the
webelement tag so you can do this over and over and not lose the
location).


Now try opening one of the pages and see how it worked!


Why would you use this over library items?
you can collect related elements and place them in separate easy to
navigate files
you can have some dbase file generate the .txt files and you could then
globally update your site.
webmerge tags could be nested, but make sure you place the different
tags in different .txt files so that they dont interfere with one
another.
you only have one .txt file not a bunch of library html files
webelements is "blind" in that it allows you to put anything into an area,
not just HTML files but also xml, or anything.

it's very powerful - you can do some really interesting tricks with it.

this command requires the DWfile extension, you can find a link to that
by going to my site and looking at other commands that require it as
well.

Please comment on how useful it is, the UI, if you have problems,
questions, etc.