Projects

Robert Nickel <robert@artnickel.com>

Reviewer: Christopher Hornbaker
Reviewer: Fabrice Mous

New Projects

The Quanta Plus project wizard (Project->New Project) makes project creation an easy task.


The Project Wizard.


The fields are pretty straight forward. It is best to fill them in from top to bottom. Filling in a project name will autocomplete all the folder structure for the rest of the project. All of the paths and author information fields can be configured later on clicking Project->Project Options (F7).

General Project Settings

Name

Here you fill in the name for your project. For example, we will call ours “foo.” When you fill in Name, File is filled out for you automatically.

File

This is the name of the Quanta Plus project file. By default, it is the name of your project, but in lowercase letters and without spaces. It uses the extension webprj (e.g. foo.webprj). This file is stored in the root of the project's Main Folder.

Server Settings
Protocol

Here you select the protocol you will be using to access you project. If your project is on the same machine that you are using Quanta Plus on, then leave the value at Local. The list of protocols shown here is dependant of your system setup. Available protocols include SSH, FTP, NFS, SMB, WebDAV, and many others. The protocol list is powered by KDE's powerful KIOSlave architecture. This framework allows every KDE application to easily access remote information as if it is local to the machine.

Host

Here you fill in the server address of the machine you want to access, unless you are working through the Local protocol. Either a hostname (hostname.example.com) or an IP address (127.0.0.1) can go here.

User

User name for logging onto the remote machine. This is case-sensitive.

Password

Password for logging onto the remote machine. This is case-sensitive

Port

Leave this field blank to use the default port for the protocol you are using. You may need to change this depending on your server's configuration.

Folder Settings
Main Folder

This is the root folder where all of the project files and folders will be stored.

Templates Folder

This is where the templates for this project will be stored. By default, its path is: Main Folder/templates; for example /home/johndoe/projects/example_project/templates. If you have a common set of files that you use for several projects, then it may be useful to point this field to it, instead of to the default.

Toolbars Folder

This is where the toolbars for this project will be stored. By default, it is Project destination /toolbars. If you have a common set of toolbars that you use for several projects, it may be useful to point this there instead of the default.

Project Sources
Add local or remote files

This allows you to get files from the local file system. You can choose multiple files or entire folders.

Use wget to download files from site

This option is great if you have static web content that you wish to download and modify. For server side scripting (e.g. PHP, Python, etc..) you will have to get the files another way.

Insert Files in Project

Insert file from

Check this if you wish to include files found in the path of the Main Folder. Leave unchecked when starting a project from scratch.

Filters
Insert only markup, script, and image files

Choosing this option will only insert markup, script, and image files into your project.

Insert files with the following mask

Choosing this option will display all files and folders within the Main Folder and allow you to be more specific with your choices.

Included files

This displays a list of the files in the Main Folder. You can choose the desired files for inclusion, by checking, or exclusion, by unchecking, in your project.

More Project Settings

Author

Insert your name (or alias) here.

Email

The address where you would like email regarding this project to go.

Project Defaults
Default DTD

Choose the markup language you will be working with the most within this project.

Default encoding

Choose the character encoding you wish the files in your project to be opened and saved with.

Use preview prefix

Check this to use a prefix for your previews. This allows you to set the path prefix to something other than your local file system. This is most useful for pages that contain dynamic content and are dependent on server processing (like PHP, JSS, Python, etc.). Simply type in the first portion of the address as it exists on that server and the filepath at the end will be complete by Quanta Plus. For example, if you have the domain bar.com and you are editing the index.html page, you could edit it on your remote machine (foo.bar.com), upload it to the server and press F6 to see the results from www.bar.com instead of your local file system.

Prefix

Enter the prefix you wish to use here.

Insert global templates

This makes a copy of the global templates in your projects folder tree.

Insert local templates

This makes a copy of the local templates in your projects folder tree.

The last screen of the new project wizard has 3 settings that can make your life easier. These settings are available for change from the Project->Project Options menu tree on the Network Tab or with the keyboard shortcut F7.

Using Projects

Project Files

By default Quanta Plus will open the last project accessed when launched. This behavior is not currently configurable.

To open another project, select Open from the Project menu or the Open Project icon on the toolbar. The open project dialog will pop up and allow you to choose the project you wish. Projects have a webprj extension.

When closing Quanta Plus, your project file will be saved automatically. You will be asked to save any changes before exiting if Quanta Plus detects any changed files. This same behavior occurs if you load a new project.

The Project Tree View

The project tree view gives you uncluttered access to the files in your project. This is where you manage the files in the current project.

For files, a right mouse button click brings up the following menu:



These items are fairly self-explanatory and will be left to the reader for exploration.

Folders are similar but do not contain the Open With and Open in Quanta Plus right mouse button menu items:



These items are left to the reader for exploration as well.

Uploading Projects

The Upload Projects dialog:


The Upload Projects dialog.


Host

This is the hostname of the server your copying the files to. Either fully qualified domain name, or an IP address will work.

Protocol

Transfer protocol to use for this upload. Depending on your version of KDE this list will vary. At the very least you should be able to choose from FTP, file (i.e. local) and NFS.

Port

Port for the transfer. Usually this will not need to be changed unless your network administrator is hosting a service on a port other than its well known port.

User

User name to use for authentication.

Password

Password to use for authentication.

Keep Password

Depending on your level of paranoia, this is a time saving feature, or a danger. Use it at your discretion. The password is kept on disk in plain text.

Path

This is the base path on the remote host that you will be copying files to.

Upload

Start the upload

Cancel

This will abort your transfer in progress or just exit out of the dialog if you change your mind before starting the upload.

All

Select all files in your project for upload.

Modified

Select all modified files for upload.

None

Unselects all files in the list.

Invert

Selects/Unselects all files in the list.

Expand All

Expands all folders.

Collaspe All

Collaspes all folders.

Update All

Refreshes list.