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Screenbook Maker was designed so that screenbooks could be easily used by other programs. Each screenbook is a folder containing standard HTML and other files. To view the files in a screenbook, choose View in Windows Explorer.
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This opens a Windows Explorer window to the screenbook folder. The screenbook folder is the same name as the screenbook.
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Screenbook folders contain the following types of files:
- HTML files for the screenbook pages PNG image files for the screenshots (PNG is like GIF, but a new improved, standard format) sbook.txt : This is a file that Screenbook Maker generates for use with full text search. sbook.xml : This is the master file for the screenbook - explained later in this tutorial.
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If you click on Folders in Windows Explorer, you can see the parent folders of the current folder.
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Here the file tree is showing in Windows Explorer (right). You can see that the file tree matches the bookshelf tree in Screenbook Maker (left). Screenbook Maker has created folders in Windows Explorer with the same names as the topic, suptopic, and screenbook. The only difference is that the screenbook folders have a prefix (P1, Q1 etc) attached. This prefix is explained in the next tutorial in this series.
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In this example, the folder SbooksExcel is the bookshelf folder.
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Here we've clicked on SbooksExcel , and are viewing the files in the bookshelf folder. The bookshelf folder contains files common to all of the screenbooks in the bookshelf.
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Bookshelf files consist of the following:
- XSLT files : used for creating the HTML pages of a screenbook. These files are explained in a later tutorial in this series. HTML files : for example, the bookshelf table of contents cp_ files : any file beginning with cp_ will be copied by Screenbook Maker from the bookshelf folder to the screenbook folder whenever a screenbook is created or edited. PNG files : for the icons used by the screenbook HTML pages, and other pages sbook1.css : the CSS file for the screenbook (explained in a later tutorial in this series) sbook.js : the javascript for the screenbooks in the bookshelf sbooktoc.xml : the master file for creating the table of contents HTML options.xml : bookshelf options, for example, a list of FTP sites for the bookshelf
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You don't need to know anything about files in order to use Screenbook Maker. Screenbook Maker does everything for you automatically, including creating and saving files. However, knowing about screenbook files is useful if you want to use other programs to work with screenbooks.
For example, since screenbooks are standard HTML files, they can be edited with programs such as Macromedia Dreamweaver.
You can move, delete and rename folders using Windows Explorer, as long as you don't change the "level" of a folder. (For example, a screenbook folder must be the child folder of one of the "Tutorials" folders.)
Since bookshelves are simply folders containing standard HTML files, you can upload them to the web using any FTP program (in addition to using Screenbook Maker's built-in FTP client). However, you should note that some files are shared by screenbooks, such as the sbooks1.css file in the screenbook bookshelf. Therefore, when you upload screenbook files, you generally have to upload the entire bookshelf.
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One important point to understand when using screenbook files with other programs is the role of the xml master files: sbook.xml (in the screenbook folder) and sbooktoc.xml (in the bookshelf folder). Each time you create or edit a screenbook using Screenbook Maker, the following events take place.
- Screenbook Maker saves the screenbook text and links to the PNG screenshot files in sbook.xml. Screenbook Maker generates the HTML files for the screenbook from the bookshelf XSLT files.
A similar process takes place when select Regenerate Table of Contents from the Bookshelf menu.
In other words, the HTML files of a screenbook are derived files and are overwritten by Screenbook Maker. So, any changes you make to the HTML files with another program will be lost. In order to edit the HTML directly, you must copy the HTML files to another folder. (Screenbook Maker does not overwrite the PNG files unless you take a new screenshot, so you can safely edit these with the graphics program of your choice).
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The fact that Screenbook Maker overwrites HTML files may seem to be an inconvenience if you are using it with another HTML editor. However, using an xml file as the actual screenbook file has big advantages, and makes it even easier for other programs to work with Screenbook Maker. Screenbook Maker uses standard XSLT templates to transform the xml files into HTML. You can either edit the XSLT files that come with Screenbook Maker or create new ones to:
- Completely change the HTML output of Screenbook Maker. Add new files, or change existing ones. Create a version in a different format. As of this writing, XSLT files with Screenbook Maker provide conversion to several HTML formats (slide view, page view, and icon view), conversion to Microsoft HTML Help Project Files, and conversion of the bookshelf table of contents and options.xml to RSS. You can add a new XSLT file to convert to many other formats.
The Screenbook Maker XSLT files are covered in a later tutorial in this series.