Use WebSphere Studio for Building Web Pages

by Shannon O'Donnell

If you have not yet installed the latest version of IBM's WebSphere Studio Developer Client tools, it's time to do so! There are many new development tools buried in the overall WebSphere Studio Site Developer Advanced IDE. In fact, you could probably spend a month simply discovering all the functionality. One of the cool things available to you with WebSphere Studio Developer Client is a pretty sophisticated WYSIWYG HTML editor.

Getting There

Assuming that you've installed the WebSphere Studio Developer Client tools on your PC, the first thing you need to do is to create a new AS/400 connection, known here as an AS/400 project. The AS/400 project you create here will allow you to establish the path to your AS/400 and the default library list you want to use (among other things).

Create a new AS/400 project as follows:

1. Click File, New, then Project, from the WebSphere Studio Developer Client IDE.
2. Click iSeries and then iSeries Project (on the right) in the displayed panel.
3. Now you need to pick a name for your iSeries connection. In this example I named my connection MyOwnAS400. You'll probably want to choose a more generic name for your own project. When you're done, click the Next button.
4. After you've chosen a name, you'll need to specify the New Connection (Figure 1). From this panel, you will enter your AS/400's IP address or host table name, and a name for the connection. Since you'll probably be using this connection information for multiple projects, use an easy to remember, generic name. When you're done, click the Next button.
5. The last step to creating a new AS/400 Project is to select the default library you want to use for this connection. When you're done, click the Finish button.

Figure 1: Create a default connection before you get started

Creating a New HTML Web Page

Now that the housekeeping is out of the way, let's create a static HTML Web page.

Figure 2: Creating a new HTML Web page is easy

Here are the steps you need to take.

6. Click File, then Other, from the WebSphere Studio Developer Client IDE.
7. Click the WEB tree item, on the left hand side of the screen, and HTML file, on the right-hand side of the screen (Figure 2).
8. Click the Next button.
9. Give the new HTML file a name, then click the Finish button.

You can now begin editing the HTML file (Figure 3).

Figure 3: WebSphere Studio gives you a lot of editing choices

Things You Can Do

Here, briefly, are some of the things you can use the WebSphere Studio Developer Client HTML editor for:

• Displaying content in a default browser. As with any WYSIWYG editor, all changes are immediately visible and displayed pretty much the way they'll look in any Web browser. However, if you want to see what your Web page looks like in your default Web browser, click the menu item Tools, then click the submenu item Web browser, and, finally, select your browser. The HTML file currently being edited will be displayed in the browser.
• Special image effects. You can achieve some pretty cool imaging effects with the WebSphere Studio Developer Client HTML editor, like creating a checkerboard image (Figure 4) from your own images, which you can then use as a fairly sophisticated HTML image map by using rollovers and events. You can also insert image slide shows (build the slide show as you go along), and there's even an Image Insertion Wizard, which allows you to select any image and add special effects to it, such as borders and even a floating fish!
• Logo creator. Also buried in the HTML editor is a pretty cool logo creator. To use it, click Insert, then Logo, and enter the text you want turned into a logo. There are many different logo styles, backgrounds, colors, text, and font enhancements, as well as lots of other cool features.
• Form builder. Of course you can create standard and advanced HTML forms, too, including adding push buttons, text fields, radio buttons, and the like. If you are still not sure about how to build forms for your HTML pages, this is a good place to start.
• JavaServer Pages. Included with the WYSIWYG editor is complete support for JavaServer Pages, including the ability to insert your own Java Beans, JSP Expressions, JSP Scriptlets, and pretty much any other type of JSP function available.
• Miscellaneous insertion features. Other items you can insert into your HTML Web page from the WebSphere Studio Developer Client HTML editor include Java applets, ActiveX Controls, plug-ins, marquees, and much more.

Figure 4: Insert the items you need into your new Web page

Explore

The WYSIWYG HTML editor with WebSphere Development Studio Client has many features and easily rivals Microsoft's FrontPage editor. And since the WebSphere Studio Developer Client is available for free from IBM (with a Software Subscription, of course!), there's really no reason why you shouldn't begin using it for all your HTML editing needs. Take some time and explore the tool, and see what's available to you.

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