To participate to the creation of a website with WebJaxe, it is first necessary to register. To do that, just go to the registration page (there is a link from the first page), and fill in the different fields.
The login is a unique identifier. A new user is choosing the login, but (as opposed to the fields for the firstname and the lastname), the only letters accepted are the letters from a to z, with no space or special character.
Choose an original password, but don't lose it ! You can ask for help to the administrator if you lose it, but changing a password is not automatic.
Once the registration form submitted, the administrator will be able to validate (or not) your registration. It is only after the registration is validated by the administrator that it becomes possible to log in, with the chosen login and password.
To log in, just enter the login and password chosen at registration time.
Creating a website is done with a number of contributions. A contribution corresponds to a set of pages on a given subject (usually less than 10 pages). A contribution is a folder containing an XML file with the text of the pages, and the files of the images used in the pages.
Certain contributions are only used to link contributions with each other. For instance, it is possible to create a contribution for the whole website to create, and this contribution will only contain links to the other contributions.
Contributions are organized into projects. A project gathers contributions and authors on a given subject. All the authors in a project can edit all the project's contributions.
As a user, you can create a new project, a new contribution, and edit the contributions created by other users if these contributions are in a project of which you are author. The administrator can add authors or contributions to a project.
A project can be exported. This operation starts the download of a ZIP file containing a copy of all the contributions in the project.
There are two methods to create a new contribution in WebJaxe: the creation of an empty contribution, and the import of an existing contribution. In both cases, it is necessary to specify the associated project and the Jaxe configuration (which corresponds to the XML language).
In the case of an import, the imported file must be a ZIP file with the name of the contribution. This ZIP file must contain a folder with the name of the contribution, containing an XML file with the name of the contribution. For instance, the imported file could be "my-contribution.zip", containing a "my-contribution" folder, with a "my-contribution.xml" file inside.
Since contribution export uses the same organization, it is easy to export a contribution from a WebJaxe site and to import it into another one.
There are 10 possible operations on a contribution :
WebJaxe's editor requires Java 1.5. It opens in a new window. Be careful not to close the initial window in the web browser, because that would make the edition window disappear without letting you save the document.
There is a bug in Firefox and some other web browsers which prevents reading XML files if the option "Allow third-party cookies" is disabled. With these web browsers, this option must be enabled in the preferences.
The editor works with the XML meta-language, and entered texts are thus organized with begin and end tags. Each piece of text is surrounded by tags that give it meaning. New elements can be inserted with the menus, or with the insertion panel on the left of the window. The insertion panel only displays elements that are allowed at the cursor position, in order to prevent the creation of an invalid document (a document that does not respect the rules of the chosen XML language).
The available elements, as well as the tree rules for the elements, are defined by the XML language chosen by the administrator. It is important to learn the chosen language to use the editor in the best way. A specific documentation exists for the XPAGES language, whose WebJaxe configuration is provided with WebJaxe.
There exists a user guide for the Jaxe application, that mostly applies to WebJaxe's editor. However, there are some features that don't exist in WebJaxe. Some other features are disabled because of security restrictions imposed to Java applets by web browsers. In particular, a copy-paste is not always possible between WebJaxe and another application. Web browsers block the copy-paste in order to prevent a Java applet to read the contents of the clipboard. It is possible to work around this restriction by doing a drag-and-drop, which is equivalent (web browsers allow that because the action is explicitly done by the user).
Update: A bug in Java Virtual Machine 1.6.0_19, fixed only in the 1.6.0_21 JVM, prevents drag-and-drop to copy text content. There is a workaround for this bug (aside from updating the JVM, which might not always be possible). This workaround also allows the Java applet to do simple copy-paste, which can be very useful. The following lines just need to be added to the .java.policy file in the user home directory (for instance /Users/$USER on MacOS X or C:\Documents and Settings\%username% on Windows) :
grant codeBase "http://SERVER.NAME/WEBJAXE_FOLDER/-" { permission java.awt.AWTPermission "accessClipboard"; };
This page is used to manage the files associated to a contribution. They are usually files of images used when editing the XML document. It is possible to organize these files with directories. To add a new file, just click on the corresponding button, choose the file on the local hard disk, and click on the "Add" button. It is then displayed in the list of files for the current directory.
Once an image file is added, it is possible to use it during edition. For instance, with the XPAGES language, an image is added by first creating an "Image environment", and then adding a "File" inside. The path to the image file in the contribution is used as the "file name", for instance "logo.png". The image is displayed in the editor when the dialog is validated.
The Changes history button displays when the XML document is changed.
Each history is followed by the login of the author who has changed.
You can compare versions of the XML document, and check the differences between each version of the document and the latest version.
Change the user interface language. The default language is one that was chosen during the registration on WebJaxe.
The new password must use at least 4 characters, and must contain only letters without accent, numbers, dashes or underscores.
The email adress must be valid.