Using the Objects Palette and Toolbar

Like other applications in the Creative Suite, GoLive has an impressive array of palettes and tools accessible from the Window menu. You can, of course, configure the palettes however you'd like, but for now let's explore the default configuration. Choose Window, Workspace, Default Workspace to return the palettes to their default locations. For more information on using palettes, workspaces, and keyboard shortcuts, refer to Chapter 4, "The Key That Makes It All Work: Integration."

The Objects Palette

On the left side of the screen is what appears to be a toolbox similar to that found in Photoshop, ImageReady, Illustrator, and InDesign. In this case, looks are deceiving because in GoLive, it's really two palettes in one. The top portion, called the toolbox, contains some basic tools. The bottom portion is the Objects palette, and it functions differently than the toolbox. The Objects palette has a pop-up button at the top (see Figure 9.5). Clicking a button opens a set of objects in the lower portion of the palette. Hover your mouse over a button, and a ToolTip with the name of that set of objects pops up. You can also select a set of objects by clicking the Palette Options button at the lower-right corner of the Objects palette and choosing the name of the set from the list. To limit the available objects shown to only those that conform to a specific Document Type Definition (DTD), choose Configure from the Palette Options and select the DTD of your choice.

Figure 9.5. Choosing from the different pop-up buttons on the Object palette.

Did you Know?

Those of you familiar with older versions of GoLive might want to revert the Objects palette to its old look. You can easily do that by clicking the Toggle Orientation button at the lower left of the Object palette, which separates the toolbox and the Object palette.

You can use all the objects in the Objects palette by dragging and dropping them into place. You can also place many of them by double-clicking on them.

The Inspector Palette

Objects are configured via the context-sensitive Inspector palette. For example, you could drag and drop a Table object from the Basic set of the Objects palette onto a page and then set its attributes, such as the number of rows and columns or its width and height, via the Inspector palette. The Inspector palette changes according to whatever object is currently selected so that you can set the attributes for that particular object (see Figures 9.6 through 9.8). You can tell which object is selected by reading the label in the lower-left corner of the Inspector palette.

Figure 9.6. The Inspector palette offers attributes for the currently selected object. This figure shows a Table object selected.

Figure 9.8. The Inspector palette attributes with a file selected.

Figure 9.7. The Inspector palette attributes with a Smart object selected.

The Toolbar

If you look closely at the toolbar at the top of your screen, you'll see that what initially appears to be one toolbar is actually four toolbars docked together: the Main toolbar, the Document toolbar, the Version Control toolbar, and the Adobe Services toolbar. You can turn off one or all of the toolbars via the Window menu, but you need to separate them first. Put your cursor over one of the dividers, and it will turn into a white hand icon; now click and drag to detach a toolbar from its neighbors.

The Main toolbar is context sensitive, like the Inspector palette. It contains a different set of tools depending on whether you are working on a page, a site, a layout grid, and so on (see Figure 9.9).

Figure 9.9. The Main toolbar helpfully switches its set of tools according to what you are working on. Here are the two modes you'll see the mostthe Site toolbar (top) and the Document toolbar.

As you go through this chapter, you'll learn how to use the toolbox, the Objects palette, the toolbars, and the Inspector palette together to easily create pages, place images and text on those pages, link them together to build a website, and upload the whole enchilada to the web server.