The care and feeding of the

Owens4-hms56 F-Key² Saver

A Tutorial in One Act
.

The F-Key² Saver owes its existense to the original Owens4 F-Key saver. That page was originally made for their personal use and they were very surprised at the phenomenon their page became.
The F-Key² is a natural progression of Owens4's original layout but it differs in one important area. Instead of using buttons and having single links to each website thereby offering you a total of 24 sites on the page, with Owens4's help and encouragement I have replaced those buttons with javascript pull-down menus.
Each menu has eight links giving the page a new total of 192 sites. I Hope you find it useful. AutoTransload a blank F-Key² below, or scroll down to the tutorial. .......hms56

Setting up your new F-Key² Saver
is a simple operation that can be completed and ready to accept your own links in a matter of minutes.

First, if you don't already have one you may obtain an F-Key² Saver by clicking on one of the above links. The button link will take you to the transloader with the URL for the F-Key² Saver already in place. The text link will take you to the F-Key² Saver itself. Do not transload the key yet or you will miss the rest of this tutorial. After you have clicked on the above link (not yet) you will see the Saver on your screen. You will then need to transload it to your home page. If you do not have a home page, get one here.

The means by which you will place the F-Key² Saver on your homepage is called transloading. If you do not know how to transload to your homepage learn here. Remember that if you change the name of this utility, and I think you should, be sure to add the suffix '.html' after the name you choose. This would be a good time to transload the F-Key² Saver to your homepage but be sure to come back to this tutorial for final instructions.


Customizing your F-Key² Saver


    Now that the Saver is safely on your homepage you can begin to customize it to suit your needs. Locate your F-Key² Saver on your homepage, enter the 'edit' mode and begin to edit it. This is very simple. You will see 24 identical scripts for the pull down menu buttons, each of which is set up to hold eight URL's.

The layout of these scripts is very straightforward. On the first button you will find links to this tutorial as well as to the F-Key² button maker. If you find it easier to do so, start with the second button. There, you will find the words 'Button Title'. You may delete those words and replace them with any text you choose. Remember to keep it short since it is, after all, going to be placed on a button.

Almost immediately after the button title you will see two sets of question marks. These have been placed on all the pull down menus to more easily illustrate the next two steps. The first set of question marks will be where you place the URL of the website of your choice. The second set of question marks will be where you place the text that will appear on your pull down button. The entire sequence of one link will look like this:          ---------------------------------------

<option value="your URL here"> your TEXT here </option> --------------------------------------- You may repeat this procedure up to eight times or more. You can add as many '<option value="URL">NAME</option> ' tags to a button as you want.

To summarize, once you are editing the F-Key² Saver you will see two sets of question marks for each link. Delete the first set and replace it with the URL of the desired web site. Delete the second set of question marks and replace it with the text you want to apear on the button. Be sure you place the URL accurately between the quotation marks. The site name should not have quotation marks around it. Repeat the same procedure eight times for each button until you have deleted all the question marks. It may sound like a lot to do but if you have your URLs handy, i.e., in your 'find box' or placed on a clipboard, the entire job shouldn't take more than a few minutes per button. With the new addition of the F-Key² Button Maker you should find this process much easier and be able to make at least one entire button at a time. It would be wise to take a few breaks while you are editing the F-Key². Remember, this key will hold nearly 200 URLs so don't expect to start and finish on the same day. The more time you spend being careful at this stage, the less time you will have to spend correcting mistakes.

Each time you stop editing the key be sure and save your work. When you leave the edit mode it's always a good idea to look at your progress and reload the page.

The most convenient way to use this utility is to save it to one of your 'favorites' folders and assign it an F-Key #. You will then have immediate access to it whenever you press that key.

That is all there is to it folks! Good luck with your new F-Key² Savers and I hope they prove to be a real public convenience.




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