Manipulating the Sidebar

   Sandvox handles sidebars very nimbly. If you change any sidebar item in a site, Sandvox changes that item on every other page on the site. This is a huge time-saver. You control which sidebar items you're seeing on each page by going to the Page Inspector and clicking on the Appearance tab. In the sidebar box, you'll see a list of all your sidebar items. Just cut them on or off as needed.

   In iWeb, because it acted like a page layout program, sidebars on two pages were two distinct elements. This means that if I wanted to post lecture dates in my sidebar, I needed to change it on every single page the dates are found. With a large blog, this quickly becomes too labor-intensive. Sandvox, on the other hand, is extremely clever. For every object created on your page except for the basic text block, you can choose whether it's Inline (moves with basic text block) Callout, or Sidebar. If Sidebar, the then it gets listed as one of the available sidebar elements and you can place it on any page that has a sidebar. So if I want to change my lectures, I simply click into any Presentations element on any page of the Original Green site where it appears, make my changes, and it automatically revises it on every page where it occurs. A HUGE time-saver!

   One caveat about sidebar manipulation: If you're working with a Collection of pages, you don't have to manipulate each page. Just go to the enclosing Collection page and make your changes there, and it'll reflect throughout all pages in the Collection.

   But what about deleting an item in the sidebar entirely, if you for sure won't ever be needing it again? Turning it off doesn't delete it; it just makes it not show up on the page where it's turned off. Here's how to do it: Click on the sidebar item to be deleted, then go to the Wrap Inspector. The Sidebar radio button should be clicked. Change that to Inline or Callout, which will move the item back to the main window, where it can easily be deleted. One more thing… here's a tip on manipulating sidebar font sizes.



© 2012 The Guild Foundation Press